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Updated: June 3, 2025
It is hardly necessary to allude to those spirits which animistic ideas have attached amongst other objects and places, to trees and wells. They are fully dealt with in Dr. Tylor's pages, and must not be forgotten in connection with the present question.
So here is a case of the savage origin and persistent 'survival' of a hypothesis, the most potent hypothesis in the history of humanity. From Mr. Tylor's point of view, his concern with the subject ceases here, it is not his business to ascertain whether the abnormal facts are facts or fancies. Yet, to other students, this question is very important.
Tylor's affection for his theory leads him, perhaps, to that opinion; while my affection for my theory leads me to prefer documentary evidence in its favour. The question can only be settled by specialists. As matters stand, it seems to me probable that ancient China possessed a Supreme Personal Being, more remote and original than Heaven, just as the Zuñis do.
The most general term for the belief in the various orders of gods thus becomes the belief in invisible, super-material beings, like, and yet superior to man. It is for this reason that Professor Tylor's definition of religion as "the belief in spiritual beings so long as we do not use the term "spiritual" in its modern sense" seems to me the moat satisfactory definition yet offered.
Tylor's well known name will at once suggest itself, and that of Herbert Spencer; the former, in his great work on the "Early History of Mankind and of Civilization," and other writings, the latter, in the first volume of his "Sociology," and in his earlier works, have respectively established the doctrine of the universal origin of myths on the basis of ethnography, on the psychological examination of the primary facts of the intelligence, and on the conception of the evolution of the general phenomena of nature.
Enough has been said to show the position of anthropology as regards evidence, and to prove that, if he confines his observations to certain anthropologists, the censures of Mr. Max Müller are justified. It is mainly for this reason that the arguments presently to follow are strung on the thread of Mr. Tylor's truly learned and accurate book, 'Primitive Culture.
I allude to the singular custom of the "couvade," in which the father is put to bed on the birth of a child. I take the following account of this curious practice from Mr. Tylor's philosophical "Early History of Mankind". The couvade is developed to the highest degree in South America and the West Indies. The following account is given by Du Tertre of the Carib couvade in the West Indies.
Among more modern writers J. G. Muller, in his excellent "Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen" , clearly recognises "gespensterhafter Geisterglaube" as the foundation of all savage and semi-civilised theology, and I need do no more than mention the important developments of the same view which are to be found in Mr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture," and in the writings of Mr.
It would be a natural outgrowth of this predicament to leave the ends unjoined, which indeed the savage often did. When paint instead of incision or relief came to be the decorative agent, the lines or bands would be left unjoined in imitation. As those acquainted with Tylor's "Early History" will realize, and myth of observation like the above would come to be assigned in after ages.
Tylor's theory of animism, then, as set forth in his great work, Primitive Culture, is that "the belief in spiritual beings" will do as a definition of religion taken at its least; which for him means the same thing as taken at its earliest. Now what is a "spiritual being"? Clearly everything turns on that. Dr.
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