From continent to continent a multitude of observers have gathered an immense range of facts, which show that amid numerous differences in detail the religions of the lower culture may all be ranked together on the basis of a common interpretation of the surrounding world. Philosophy suggests that man can only explain nature in terms of his own experience. He is encompassed by powers that are continually acting on him, as he to a much smaller extent can in his turn act on them. By various processes of observation and reflection (p. 85), he comes to the conclusion that within his body lives something which enables it to move and feel and think and will, until at death it goes away. To this mysterious something many names are given, and for purposes of modern study they are all ranked under the term "spirits." This explanation is then applied to the behaviour of all kinds of objects within { 55} his view; though it does not at all follow that this was actually the first explanation. The animals that are stronger and more cunning than himself, the trees that move in the wind, the corn that grows so mysteriously, the bubbling spring, even the things that he himself has made, his weapons, tools, and jars, all have their "spirits," so that the entire scene of his existence is pervaded by them. To this doctrine, with its many branches of belief and practice, Sir E. B. Tylor, in his classical work on _Primitive Culture_ (1871), gave the name of "Animism," and the religions founded upon it are called "animistic," or sometimes, from the multitude of unorganised spirits which they recognise, "polydæmonistic" religions.
Such religions belong to no specific ethnic group. They appear either in existing practice or in the shape of occasional survivals in all of the three great racial divisions of mankind--the white or Caucasic, the yellow or Mongolian, and the black or Negroid. They are to be found under the Equator and among the Arctic snows. They are sometimes associated with a peculiar form of social structure regulating inter-tribal relations known as _totemism_. It was at one time supposed that this designated a stage of evolution through which all peoples had passed. The totem or clan-sign, whether animal or plant, or more rarely an inanimate object like wind, sun, or star, was supposed to have { 56} become an object of worship, and various theories were invented to explain the divisions and subdivisions of the clans, and the selection of their special signs. Hence, it was argued, came the cultus of beast and bird and tree; hence the altar and the idol; hence the animal sacrifice and the sacramental meal. In clever hands it supplied a universal key. The extraordinary intricacy of the subject, and the widely scattered character of the evidence, prevent any discussion here. But the most recent researches have not sustained these attempts. Among the Central Australian tribes the totems are not worshipped, they are in no sense deities, no prayers or sacrifices are offered to them. They may be brought into the sphere of religion in some tribes as part of a social order to which a superhuman origin is ascribed (p. 171). But totemism cannot be established as the typical form of "primitive religion" any more than any other complicated system. Its general diffusion is questionable. At the present day there are large areas over which no signs of totemic organisation are found; and many phenomena which were formerly assumed to be proofs of totemism in the higher religions of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece, and Italy, now receive other explanations.