that no people has yet been discovered which has not already developed to a greater or less extent an animistic philosophy.  On theoretical grounds it is probable that animatism preceded animism; but savage thought is no more consistent than that of civilized man; and it may well be that animistic and panthelistic doctrines are held simultaneously by the same person.  In like manner one portion of the savage explanation of nature may have been originally animistic, another part animatistic.

Origin.—­Animism may have arisen out of or simultaneously with animatism as a primitive explanation of many different phenomena; if animatism was originally applied to non-human or inanimate objects, animism may from the outset have been in vogue as a theory of the nature of man.  Lists of phenomena from the contemplation of which the savage was led to believe in animism have been given by Dr. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Andrew Lang and others; an animated controversy arose between the former as to the priority of their respective lists.  Among these phenomena are:  trance (q.v.) and unconsciousness, sickness, death, clairvoyance (q.v.), dreams (q.v.), apparitions (q.v.) of the dead, wraiths, hallucinations (q.v.), echoes, shadows and reflections.

Primitive ideas on the subject of the soul, and at the same time the origin of them, are best illustrated by an analysis of the terms applied to it.  Readers of Dante know the idea that the dead have no shadows; this was no invention of the poet’s but a piece of traditionary lore; at the present day among the Basutos it is held that a man walking by the brink of a river may lose his life if his shadow falls on the water, for a crocodile may seize it and draw him in; in Tasmania, North and South America and classical Europe is found the conception that the soul—­[Greek:  skia], umbra—­is somehow identical with the shadow of a man.  More familiar to the Anglo-Saxon race is the connexion between the soul and the breath; this identification is found both in Aryan and Semitic languages; in Latin we have spiritus, in Greek pneuma, in Hebrew ruach; and the idea is found extending downwards to the lowest planes of culture in Australia, America and Asia.  For some of the Red Indians the Roman custom of receiving the breath of a dying man was no mere pious duty but a means of ensuring that his soul was transferred to a new body.  Other familiar conceptions identify the soul with the liver (see OMEN) or the heart, with the reflected figure seen in the pupil of the eye, and with the blood.  Although the soul is often distinguished from the vital principle, there are many cases in which a state of unconsciousness is explained as due to the absence of the soul; in South Australia wilyamarraba (without soul) is the word used for insensible.  So too the autohypnotic trance of the magician or shaman is regarded as due to his visit to distant regions or the nether