differ at all."[2] The Indian's notion of the life of plants and
stones is on the same level of unreason, as we moderns reckon
reason. He believes in the spirits of rocks and stones, undeterred
by the absence of motion in these objects. "Not only many rocks,
but also many waterfalls, streams, and indeed material objects of
every sort, are supposed each to consist of a body and a spirit, as
does man."[3] It is not our business to ask here how men came by
the belief in universal animation. That belief is gradually
withdrawn, distinctions are gradually introduced, as civilisation
and knowledge advance. It is enough for us if the failure to draw a
hard and fast line between man and beasts, stones and plants, be
practically universal among savages, and if it gradually disappears
before the fuller knowledge of civilisation. The report which Mr.
Im Thurn brings from the Indians of Guiana is confirmed by what
Schoolcraft says of the Algonkin races of the northern part of the
continent. "The belief of the narrators and listeners in every wild
and improbable thing told helps wonderfully in the original stories,
in joining all parts together. The Indian believes that the whole
visible and invisible creation is animated. . . . To make the
matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest as
well as highest class in the chain of creation are alike endowed
with reasoning powers and faculties. As a natural conclusion they
endow birds, beasts and all other animals with souls."[4] As an
example of the ease with which the savage recognises consciousness
and voluntary motion even in stones, may be cited Kohl's account of
the beliefs of the Objibeways.[5] Nearly every Indian has
discovered, he says, an object in which he places special
confidence, and to which he sacrifices more zealously than to the
Great Spirit. The "hope" of Otamigan (a companion of the traveller)
was a rock, which once advanced to meet him, swayed, bowed and went