EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 5 



even the chemical composition, of those enormous lifeless masses 

 which we call sun, moon, and stars, has been a long and laborious 

 journey, how long no one can tell. It is still almost always 

 possible to find tribes or peoples somewhere on the earth living 

 under one or more of the various conditions which the more 

 highly developed peoples have apparently passed through, and 

 there is no great difficulty in finding primitive tribes to-day holding 

 such childish interpretations of nature as we have just described. 

 This circumstance enables anthropologists, ethnologists, and his- 

 torians to draw with considerable confidence the broader outlines 

 of the probable history of the more highly developed nations, 

 such as those of western Europe and North America, nations 

 in the progress of which, since the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century, science has played a notable part. 



The first stepping-stones towards scientific knowledge are 

 wonder and curiosity, and peoples are still to be found so low in 

 intelligence as to be almost destitute of curiosity. As a rule, 

 however, most human beings, no matter how primitive, have 

 some curiosity concerning, and some sort of explanation for, the 

 commonest events, such as day and night, life, death, sickness, 

 health, sun, moon, stars, winds, seasons, and the like. And one 

 of the commonest, simplest, and probably most natural, is that 

 already referred to as the childish or personal interpretation of 

 nature; viz., that which assumes everything to be in a sense 

 alive and possessed of some sort of being, animation, or personality, 

 kindred to man's own. This primitive interpretation has been 

 called animism. At present, however, the term animatism 

 finds more favor among certain anthropologists, apparently for 

 the reason that the notion of mere diffuse vitality, or general 

 "animation," is even more primitive, as observed in certain 

 peoples of low development, than is the idea of a specific "soul" 

 (anima) differentiated from the body and possessing a separate 

 existence. For example, a tree blown by the wind may seem to 

 a man of very low development to be merely quivering with life, 

 and bending before some more powerful but invisible influence, 

 diffused, hazy, unembodied, and without personality or name 



