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Updated: June 26, 2025
Tylor treats of waking hallucinations in much the same manner as he deals with 'travelling clairvoyance. He does not study them 'in the field of experience. He is not concerned with the truth of the facts, important as we think it would be, but with his theory that hallucinations, among other causes, would naturally give rise to the belief in spirits, and thus to the early philosophy of Animism.
Herbert Spencer and Tylor are among the writers who have given a masterly description of this phase of the human intellect, and history and ethnography have confirmed the accuracy of their researches and conclusions.
This led to a reconsideration of the patriarchal theory; and for a time it was widely held that in the early stages of society a matriarchate prevailed, in which women held the supreme power. Further support came from Morgan, with his knowledge of the maternal family among American aborigines, and he was followed by Professor Tylor, McGee, and many other investigators.
The customs of the people have been carefully studied and recorded by Bancroft, Schoolcraft, Morgan, Tylor, McGee, the Spanish historian, Herrera, and other travellers. When first visited by European anthropologists the country was divided into provinces, and in many provinces the people lived in communities or little republics.
Tylor, twelve years before Mr. Spencer wrote, had demolished Sir Samuel Baker's assertion, as regards many tribes, and so shaken it as regards the Latukas, quoted by Mr. Spencer. The godless Dinkas have 'a good deity and heaven-dwelling creator, carefully recorded years before Sir Samuel's 'rash denial. We show later that Mr.
But animism would seem sometimes to be used by Dr. Tylor in a wider sense, namely, as "a doctrine of universal vitality." In dealing with the myths of the ruder peoples, as, for example, those about the sun, moon, and stars, he shows how "a general animation of nature" is implied. The primitive man reads himself into these things, which, according to our science, are without life or personality.
But need that somebody have been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt, for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth.
Tylor also derives all religion from the worship of spirits, but in a different way. His is the most comprehensive system of Animism, using that term in the narrower sense of soul-worship.
Cushing, “My Visit to the Zuñi Indians,” Century Magazine, 1883. Prof. Tylor gives these passages in his account of the Zuñi Indians, “The Patriarchal Family System,” Nineteenth Century, 1896. I have quoted from him. Mrs. Stevenson, in the Report Bureau Ethnological, XXIII, pp. 290-293.
'The theory of family Manes, carried back to tribal Gods, leads to the recognition of superior deities of the nature of Divine Ancestor, or First Man, who sometimes ranks as Lord of the Dead. As an instance, Mr. Tylor gives the Maori Maui, who, like the Indian Yama, trod first of men the path of death.
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