back again. Another Indian revered a Canadian larch, "because he
once heard a very remarkable rustling in its branches". It thus
appears that while the savage has a general kind of sense that
inanimate things are animated, he is a good deal impressed by their
conduct when he thinks that they actually display their animation.
In the same way a devout modern spiritualist probably regards with
more reverence a table which he has seen dancing and heard rapping
than a table at which he has only dined. Another general statement
of failure to draw the line between men and the irrational creation
is found in the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune's Relations de la
Nouvelle France.[6] "Les sauvages se persuadent que non seulement
les hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres
choses sont animees." Again: "Ils tiennent les poissons
raisonnables, comme aussi les cerfs". In the Solomon Islands, Mr.
Romilly sailed with an old chief who used violent language to the
waves when they threatened to dash over the boat, and "old Takki's
exhortations were successful".[7] Waitz[8] discovers the same
attitude towards the animals among the negroes. Man, in their
opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of
nature and high above the beasts; these he rather regards as dark
and enigmatic beings, whose life is full of mystery, and which he
therefore considers now as his inferiors, now as his superiors. A
collection of evidence as to the savage failure to discriminate
between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, has been brought
together by Sir John Lubbock.[9]


[1] Primitive Culture, i. 167-169.

[2] Among the Indians of Guiana (1883), p. 350.