physitheistic

Updated: May 2, 2025

Having discovered this, with a vast accumulation of evidence, we are enabled to carry philosophy back one stage beyond physitheism, and we can confidently assert that all the philosophies of civilization have come up through these three stages. And yet, there are fragments of philosophy discovered which are not zoötheistic, physitheistic, nor psychotheistic. What are they?

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56

All these tribes are found in the higher stages of savagery, or the lower stages of barbarism, and their mythologies are found to be zoötheistic among the lowest, physitheistic among the highest, and a great number of tribes are found in a transition state: for zoötheism is found to be a characteristic of savagery, and physitheism of barbarism, using the terms as they have been defined by Morgan.

John Wesley Powell - Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians: First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the: Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80,: Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56