provisionally observe, in passing, that the ethical ideas, such as they
are, even of Australian blacks are reported to be inculcated at the
religious mysteries (_Bora_) of the tribes, which were instituted by and
are performed in honour of the gods of their native belief. But this topic
must be reserved for our closing chapters.

Mr. Tylor, however, is chiefly concerned with Animism as 'an ancient and
world-wide philosophy, of which belief is the theory, and worship is the
practice.' Given Animism, then, or the belief in spiritual beings, as the
earliest form and minimum of religious faith, what is the origin of
Animism? It will be seen that, by Animism, Mr. Tylor does not mean the
alleged early theory, implicitly if not explicitly and consciously held,
that all things whatsoever are animated and are personalities.[10] Judging
from the behaviour of little children, and from the myths of savages,
early man may have half-consciously extended his own sense of personal and
potent and animated existence to the whole of nature as known to him. Not
only animals, but vegetables and inorganic objects, may have been looked
on by him as persons, like what he felt himself to be. The child (perhaps
merely because _taught_ to do so) beats the naughty chair, and all objects
are persons in early mythology. But this _feeling_, rather than theory,
may conceivably have existed among early men, before they developed the
hypothesis of 'spirits,' 'ghosts,' or souls. It is the origin of _that_
hypothesis, 'Animism,' which Mr. Tylor investigates.

What, then, is the origin of Animism? It arose in the earliest traceable
speculations on 'two groups of biological problems:

(1) 'What is it that makes the difference between a living body and a
dead one; what causes waking, sleep, trance, disease, and death?'