PRE-ANIMISM 61 



to the Times, said "that the evidence in a large percentage 

 of bastardy appeals takes the Court back to some occasion 

 of great religious excitement." x And an unexpected effect of 

 that movement is shown in the statistics of the Ramyer 

 County Lunatic Asylum namely, that between 1904 and 

 1905 the proportion of patients admitted suffering from 

 alcoholic insanity fell from 16 to 12 per cent., while the 

 proportion suffering from religious mania rose from i to 

 6 per cent. 



To return to our "primitive" type : man had not as yet 

 conceived of phenomena as divided into the natural and 

 supernatural, or of himself as consisting of material and 

 spiritual. It is a stage represented by the Samoyed, of 

 whom Castren says : " They do not know of any spirits 

 attached to objects of nature, but worship the objects as 

 such ; they do not separate the spirit from matter, but adore 

 the thing in its totality as a divine being." Ontology was 

 unborn ; there was only the inchoate sense of surrounding 

 power, and of powerlessness to cope therewith ; hence the 

 feeling of inferiority and dependence ; and, withal, the domi- 

 nant primary instincts of sex and hunger which impelled 

 man to be ever on the watch to outwit competitor and foe. 

 Language is here vague, because these matters can be 

 defined only vaguely, as with the impersonal before the 

 personal, and as with the unnamed before the named are 

 reached ; a stage described in the Babylonian Creation-epic : 



There was a time when, above, the heaven was not named ; 

 Below, the Earth bore no name. 



Some help comes from the extant lower culture. We shall 

 never understand the savage until we realize our common 

 affinity. Speaking of the Pagan races of Borneo, Messrs. 

 Hose and McDougall say: "Their primary impulses and 



emotions seem to be in all respects like our own The 



Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by 

 no means conduce to further his best interests or deeper 

 purposes ; but so do we also. He often reaches conclusions 

 by processes that cannot be logically justified ; but so do we 

 also. He often holds, and upon successive occasions acts 

 upon, beliefs that are logically inconsistent with one another ; 

 but so do we also." 2 The psychical unity of man being 

 proven, it is obvious that the nearer we can get to the 



1 Times, February 4, 1905. 



2 Pagan Tribes of Borneo, vol. ii, p. 222. 



