INTRODUCTION 



the difference between the two, growing ever 

 more definite [in lower animals] as intelligence 

 evolves, must be in him [i. e. in primitive man] 

 more definite than in all lower creatures. To 

 suppose that without cause he begins to con- 

 found them is to suppose the process of evolu- 

 tion is inverted." The superstitions of animism 

 must therefore be due (§ 67) to "secondary be- 

 liefs," which "some striking experience" arouses 

 in man. Spencer then, in a series of chapters, 

 proceeds to explain the " striking experiences " 

 (dreams, associations of ideas aroused in con- 

 nection with death, etc.), which in his opinion 

 give rise to the belief in ghosts. Thereupon, 

 through the ancestor-worship theory, he under- 

 takes to reduce all the phenomena of primitive 

 religion to derivatives from belief in ghosts. 

 In chapters xxi. xxiii. and xxiv. Spencer ex- 

 plains, upon this basis, the tendency to regard 

 images, plants, inanimate objects, and nature in 

 general, as the abode of spirits, or as themselves 

 animated. In chapter xxi. Spencer sums up 

 the whole " primitive theory of things " in the 

 same general terms. Animism and fetichism 

 are thus explained in ways decidedly foreign to 

 those that Fiske held in his own early period. 



Spencer's views, at least as he states them, 

 have not been very extensively accepted by an- 

 thropologists. Moreover, in the more recent 

 cxliii 



