186 GUSHING — EEMARKS ON SHAMANISM. [April 23, 



concomitant of his own or of any other form of life, is breath, 

 which like force or stress, is invisible ; hence he reasons that force 

 is breath, and conversely that breath is the force of life. He sees 

 that this breath enters into and issues from every living being, and 

 since every such being has distinctive form, he further reasons that 

 every separate form, whether animate in our sense or not, has life 

 of some kind or degree. He has, for example, no knowledge of 

 air — as a gas — no knowledge of it other than as wind, and no con- 

 ception of wind other than as breath, as the sort of something that 

 he feels when he blows upon his hand and knows absolutely that he 

 or his own breath is blowing, and that this breath it is that is coex- 

 istent with his mortal existence. 



Therefore, he thinks not only of all forms as living, but also of 

 the wind as necessarily the breath of some living form or being. 

 And since his own little breath is so intimately of himself, he 

 naturally imagines that this other greater breath must needs be as 

 intimately that of some otnerand correspondingly greater and more 

 powerful — what though invisible — being. He also imagines that 

 this great being of the wind resides in the direction whence comes 

 prevailingly its wind or its breath. Now when he observes that 

 there are prevailing or distinctive winds of the diverse directions, — 

 that of the north which blows hardest of them all and chiefly in 

 winter; that of the west which blows more temperately and chiefly 

 in spring time ; that of the south, which blows softly and most fre- 

 quently in summer ; that of the east, which is again more fierce 

 and chilly, and blows mostly in autumn ; he not only severally 

 locates these winds in their various quarters, but also differentiates 

 them, and believes that the wind-being of the north produces cold 

 and winter ; of the west, moisture and spring ; of the south, warmth, 

 dryness and summer ; of the east, coolness again, frost, and there- 

 with the aging or maturing of all growing things, and autumn. 

 And so to him the element of the north world is wind (or air, breath) 

 preeminently; of the west world, water; of the south world, fire; 

 and of the east world, earth or its seeds ; and that each of these ele- 

 ments is produced by oris under the dominion of the special wind-god 

 of its quarter ; yet all combine, in the regular succession of the sea- 

 sons, to make this World of the Middle what it is from year to year. 



Now we shall see how this kind of belief comes to affect very 

 directly the organizations, institutions and ceremonials (Shamanistic 

 in particular) of primitive man, by examining into his mode of 



