However, it does not follow from the fact the idea of the soul is derived from the idea of mana that the first has a relatively later origin, or that there was a period in history when men were acquainted with religious forces only in their impersonal forms. When some wish to designate by the word preanimist an historical period during which animism was completely unknown, they build up an arbitrary hypothesis;[863] for there is no people among whom the ideas of the soul and of mana do not coexist side by side. So there is no ground for imagining that they were formed at two distinct times; everything, on the contrary, goes to show that the two are coeval. Just as there is no society without individuals, so those impersonal forces which are disengaged from the group cannot establish themselves without incarnating themselves in the individual consciousnesses where they individualize themselves. In reality, we do not have two different developments, but two different aspects of one and the same development. It is true that they do not have an equal importance; one is more essential than the other. The idea of mana does not presuppose the idea of the soul; for if the mana is going to individualize itself and break itself up into the particular souls, it must first of all exist, and what it is in itself does not depend upon the forms it takes when individualized. But on the contrary, the idea of the soul cannot be understood except when taken in connection with the idea of mana. So on this ground, it is possible to say that it is the result of a secondary formation; but we are speaking of a secondary formation in the logical, not the chronological, sense of the word.
But how does it come that men have believed that the soul survives the body and is even able to do so for an indefinite length of time?
From the analysis which we have made, it is evident that the belief in immortality has not been established under the influence of moral ideas. Men have not imagined the prolongation of their existence beyond the tomb in order that a just retribution for moral acts may be assured in another life, if it fails in this one; for we have seen that all considerations of this sort are foreign to the primitive conception of the beyond.