PRE-ANIMISM 59 



and the unusual ; they fear, but know not why, or what, they 

 fear. For ignorance is the mother of mystery, and the 

 mysterious is ever dreaded. Primus in orbe deos fecit timor ; 

 said Statius, 1 following Lucretius, who, in the First Book of 

 his immortal De Rerum Natura, anticipates later theories. 

 "Fear, in sooth, takes such a hold of all mortals, because 

 they see so many operations go on in Earth and heavens, the 

 courses of which they can in no way understand, believing 

 them, therefore, to be done by Divine power." 2 Seventeen 

 centuries later Hobbes wrote in his Leviathan* : "This feare 

 of things invisible is the naturall Seed of that which every 

 one in himself calleth Religion ; and in them that worship, 

 or feare that Power otherwise than they do, Superstition." 



The mental state of the savage, and of races far above 

 him, is one of nervous instability. And the cause of this lies 

 in " the feare of things invisible." " From all quarters of the 

 uncivilized world we hear that terror or fear is the predomi- 

 nant element in the religious sentiment ; that savages are 

 more inclined to ascribe evil than good to the influence of 

 supernatural agents ; that their sacrifices and other acts of 

 worship more frequently have in view to avert misfortunes 

 than to procure positive benefits ; or that, even though 

 benevolent deities are believed in, much more attention is 

 paid to malignant ones." 4 Dr. Westermarck fortifies this 

 statement by references too numerous to quote here. But as 

 an example or two we have, first, that of "the Indian, to 

 whom the turning of a leaf, the crawling of an insect, the cry 

 of a bird, the cracking of a bough, might be," says Parkman, 

 " the mystic signal of weal or woe." 5 " No one," says Monier 

 Williams, "who has ever been brought into close contact 

 with the Hindus in their own country can doubt the fact that 

 the worship of at least ninety per cent, of the people of India 

 in the present day is a worship of fear." 6 " The Lower Congo 

 tribes are not progressive ; their spirits are curbed and crushed 

 by fear of exciting the cupidity of the charm-doctors. Their 

 life's object is the appeasing and propitiating of the evil 



spirits Life is passed in a condition of constant dread." 7 



"The underlying principle of the religion of the Kacharis of 



1 Thebais, Bk. iii, 661. 2 I, 151-154. 



3 Pt. i, ch. xi, of Man. On this matter Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 

 Pt. i, Mem. iii, sub-section 5, " Fear, a Cause," is well worth reading-. 



4 Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 613. 



5 Jesuits in North America, p. Ixxxiv. 



6 Brahmanism and Hinduism, p. 230. 



7 Herbert Ward, A Voice from the Congo, pp. 228, 241. 



