Animistic and Dynamistic Ideas

Abstract

Until 1867 all especially strange forms of worship and every expression of “primitive” religion or cultus was called “fetishism.”’ But in 1867 in a lecture to the Royal Society in London, Edward Tylor pointed out the existence of a large number of similar religious facts for which he considered a new name necessary: “animism.” By this he meant, “the child-like conception of the animation of all of nature” and the belief in “countless spiritual beings who are at work in the whole process of nature.” The term “animism” really signifies an important discovery in the field of ethnology, and it was maintained until increasing insight into the character of the phenomena made the necessity of a second division apparent. The term “animism” also proved to be covering data which were too dissimilar. The belief in the activity of countless spiritual beings is undeniable, but “spirits” is in many cases an inaccurate term. A “spirit” is an individual, personal being with a definite will, confronting men as a friend or foe, but in many forms of belief this individual element is absent. The objects or phenomena themselves are spiritually determined, and there is no distinction between “spirit” and “nature.”