ANIMISM. 7 



Both animism and vitalism separate from matter a 

 directing principle which guides it. At bottom they 

 are mythological theories somewhat similar to the 

 paganism of old. The fable of Prometheus or the 

 story of Pygmalion contains all that is essential. 

 An immaterial principle, divine, stolen by the 

 Titan from Jupiter, or obtained from Venus by the 

 Cypriot sculptor, descends from Olympus and 

 animates the form, till then inert, which has been 

 carved in the marble or modelled in the clay. In a 

 word, there is a human statue. It receives a breath 

 of heavenly fire, a vital force, a divine spark, a soul, 

 and behold ! it is alive. But this breath can also 

 leave it. An accident happens, a clot in a vein, a 

 grain of lead in the brain — the life escapes, and all 

 that is left is a corpse. A single instant has proved 

 sufficient to destroy its fascination. This is how all 

 men picture to their minds the scene of death. The 

 breath escapes ; something flies away, or flows away 

 with the blood. The happy genius of the Greeks 

 conceived a graceful image of this, for they re- 

 presented the life or the soul in the form of a butter- 

 fly (Psyche) leaving the body, an ethereal butterfly, 

 as it were, opening its sapphire wings. 

 ^ But what is this subtle and transient guest of the 

 human statue, this passing stranger which makes of 

 the living body an inhabited house? According to 

 the animists it is the soul itself, in the sense in 

 which the word is understood by philosophers ; the 

 immortal and reasoning soul. To the vitalists it is 

 an inferior, subordinate soul ; a soul, as it were, of 

 secondary majesty, the vital force, or in a word, life. 



Primitive Animism. — Animism is the oldest and 

 most primitive of the conceptions presented to the 



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