§ 5. Some Features of Primitive Belief. — We have seen that the formation of new beliefs depends at every step on the nature of the beliefs which are established. Thus, in reviewing the history of human thought, we have to take account of two points. On the negative side we have to remember that complex systems of ideas which are familiar to us have not yet come into being in earlier stages of development. In particular, the power of mechanical construction, and the mechanical understanding of natural process was in the beginning extremely rudimentary and limited in the range of its application. Hence there are certain general conditions of interaction between material things constantly recognised by modern culture which are not present to the mind of the savage, or even to the ignorant members of civilised society. For early thought, it is abstractly conceivable that anything should act on anything else. The unity of the individual thing determines the connexion of its parts; it is not the connexion of the parts which produces the unity of the thing. Hence there is no reason why the component parts of the individual whole should not interact even when they are separated from each other in space. Besides this, the primitive view of what is and is not part of an individual whole differs from ours. The savage is in this respect powerfully influenced by associations which we should call casual and irrelevant. Whatever he has habitually connected in thought with a person or thing, he is disposed to regard as part of that person or thing, and as having sympathetic communion with it. He continues to associate vividly the dead body with the ghost, the amputated limb with the man who has lost it, and he cannot help feeling that what is done to the body makes a difference to the ghost, or that what is done to the amputated limb makes a difference to the man who has lost it. Similarly, he habitually associates a man's clothes, or his tools and weapons, or his other belongings, with the man himself; in thinking of the personal belongings, he is impelled to think of the person, and he is led to regard them as part and parcel of the total personality. Hence these external appendages are for him no mere external appendages; the unity of the individual is present and operative in them. By appropriating a dead man's spear, he may appropriate his skill and goodfortune, and the like. The unity of the world in general is vaguely conceived after the analogy of the unity of the individual thing. The unity of the world is not explained according to a system of uniform and abstract laws regulating the connexion of its parts. On the contrary, things and events are supposed to be capable of sympathetic communion just because they form part of the same world. Anything from this point of view may be really connected in determinate ways with anything else. Specific characteristics, powers, and modes of behaviour, will appear as ultimate and inexplicable. They will appear as what we should call occult qualities intrinsic to the things themselves, and not as admitting or requiring further analysis or explanation. Any interaction or real connexion may be accepted as a fact, if it be vividly impressed on the mind in relation to some strong practical interest. For example, there is no keener or more widespread practical interest than that which is felt in the course of future events. Hence we find all over the world a belief in signs and omens, and methods of divination. Often appeal is made in various ways to a superhuman being supposed to possess prescience. But in the most simple cases, anything which is found suggestive to the persons interested may be regarded as a sign. Among the Tshispeaking tribes of the Gold Coast, divination is practised by the priests in a variety of ways as they are guided by the caprice of the moment. In time of war, a method of ascertaining which party will get the better, is to haul on a rope fastened to a tree till it breaks. While it is being pulled, the names of the combating parties are called out alternately, and the name which is called out at the moment when the rope breaks is that of the party which will gain the advantage. We may compare the belief in fortunetelling by cards, which is sometimes found among ourselves.

This then is the first point to be emphasised in contrasting cultured with savage thought. The limitations imposed on our ideal construction by our preexisting knowledge, and especially by our mechanical view of nature, are nonexistent for the savage mind. But besides considering the ideas which are absent from the savage mind, we must also consider the positive nature of the ideas which are most predominant in his thinking. We have seen that the conception of individual unity is familiar to him and constantly utilised by him; but among all individuals those which are most familiar, interesting, and best known, are human beings,himself and the members of the society in which he lives. Hence the constant and prevailing tendency which we find in primitive thought to interpret all things in terms of personal life and personal relations. Whatever arrests his attention and fixes his interest as a source of good and evil to himself, is regarded by him as having some sort of conscious existence more or less analogous to his own. This is possible because of his failure to understand the mechanical explanation of natural events and processes. When the structure and operation of a piece of mechanism is fully understood, it can no longer be regarded as a separate and independent agency prompted by internal impulses, analogous to the will of personal beings. But where the principle of action is regarded as something ultimate and independent, intrinsic to the nature of the individual thing, there is nothing to prevent the mind from treating the agency as personal or quasipersonal. The cataract or the whirlpool appears a living thing to the poet in his poetic moods; for in these moods he ignores the fact that the water is simply behaving in accordance with certain abstract laws under certain given conditions. This fact is not ignored by the savage; it has never been realised by him. Hence what may be a transient play of imagination in the civilised mind, is the permanent and serious attitude of the savage mind. It is permanent and serious because it is prompted and upheld by practical needs. In presence of personal agencies, he can never feel himself utterly helpless. He can always attempt to influence them as he influences his own fellows in society. He can propitiate them by offerings, by prayers, by selfhumiliation, by flattery, and even by threats and punishments. Of course, these means often fail; but they fail frequently in the case of human beings. Personal caprice and perverseness introduce incalculable elements into the problem. But this only serves to make possible the survival of the anthropomorphic point of view. Failure can always be explained, and apparent success can always be regarded as convincing evidence. Continued malignancy on the part of the supposed personal agency can always be ascribed to deep resentment of neglect shown to it, or of injury done to it, consciously or unconsciously. Besides it is always possible to say that things would have been still worse if proper methods had not been taken.

It has been shown that the primitive conception of personal existence differs in many points from our own; and this difference appears in the mode of personifying natural objects and agencies. Just as the human person has an internal and external self, personified things have also an internal and external self; and as the internal self in the case of human beings is a sort of duplicate of the body, so all things which are regarded as separate agencies are supposed to have spirits of a similar kind. Hence the widespread savage doctrine that everything has its "double." The ghost of a spear may exist and kill people after the spear itself has been destroyed. When sacrifices of food, clothes, and utensils are made to the dead body, their spiritual counterparts are appropriated by the soul. We saw that the same individual may have not only two but many impersonations of this kind, all in sympathetic communion with each other, so that the unity of the whole is present and operative in all of them. This is even more true of natural agencies personified, when they are powerful and important. Savage deities often originate and are conceived in this way. To select an instance at random, there is a god called Behnya worshipped by the Tshispeaking tribes of the Gold Coast. Behnya is primarily a river; he has also a human shape, with whip and sword. He has an image and stool, which used to be washed with the blood of human victims offered to him. The body of the human victim was cut into small pieces, and distributed round the outskirts of the town, rendering it impossible for a hostile force to make an entrance. There was also a certain rock in which his influence was present and operative. Thus the river itself, the human shape, the image and stool, the pieces of the body of the human victims, and the rock, were all separate vehicles of the influence of Behnya. He was impersonated in all of them.*

* Ellis, The Tshispeaking People of the Gold Coast, chap. v.