10.
Animism Is the Belief in Spiritual Beings
Englishman Edward B. Tylor, one of the founders of anthropology, proposed the term animism to refer to the belief of spiritual beings in nature and in humans. Tylor referred to indigenous people as “lower races” and “savages.” But he rose above the prejudices of his time by placing these people on the same continuum as “high modern culture,” in which he also saw elements of animism. Animism remains a useful term to characterize the worldview of shamans.
The first requisite in a systematic study of the religions of the lower races is to lay down a rudimentary definition of religion. By requiring in this definition the belief in a supreme deity or of judgment after death, the adoration of idols or the practice of sacrifice, or other partially-diffused doctrines or rites, no doubt many tribes may be excluded from the category of religious. But such narrow definition has the fault of identifying religion rather with particular developments than with the deeper motive that underlies them. It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source and simply to claim, as a minimum definition of religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings. . . .
I propose here, under the name of Animism, to investigate the deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy. Animism is not a new technical term, though it is now seldom used. From its special relation to the doctrine of the soul, it will be seen to have a peculiar appropriateness to the view here taken of the mode in which theological ideas have been developed among mankind. . . .
Animism characterizes tribes very low in the scale of humanity, and thence ascends, deeply modified in its transmission, but from first to last preserving an unbroken continuity, into the midst of high modern culture. Doctrines adverse to it, so largely held by individuals or schools, are usually due not to early lowness of civilization but to later changes in the intellectual course, to divergence from, or rejection of, ancestral faiths; such newer developments do not affect the present inquiry as to the fundamental religious condition of mankind. Animism is, in fact, the groundwork of the Philosophy of Religion, from that of savages up to that of civilized men. And although it may at first sight seem to afford but a bare and meagre definition of a minimum of religion, it will be found practically sufficient; for where the root is, the branches will generally be produced.