MCGEE] PRIMITIVE MYSTICISM $29 
the art of writing, i. e., as those who remain in prescriptorial culture; 
for the longest single step in the development of mind and the widest 
chasm dividing humanity is that marking the transition from the 
lowly stage of unaided thinking to the stage of mechanically extended 
memory and mentation. 
Mysticism of primitive thought—All primitive men are mystics. 
Believers in extranatural potencies, inexpert observers, and incon- 
stant reasoners, their vague faith veils or counterfeits realities and 
clothes its own figments with all manner of attributes, oftener incon- 
gruous than germane. In their simple (and presumptively primeval) 
aspect, the fear-born figments are grotesque shadows or fantastic dupli- 
cates of actual things moved by capricious or malicious motives, like those 
of human kind; in somewhat advanced thought the figments are more 
complex, and are incarnated chiefly in self-moying things and invested 
with enlarged and intensified autonomy; while in the higher stages of 
primitive culture the figments are idealized into mystical potencies 
conceiyed to actuate the objects and powers of the universe in accord- 
ance with impulses and motives such as those observed to control 
human action. And this lowly faith, with its imputation of animistic 
impulses and agencies to all nature, is far more than mere abstraction; 
in all its aspects the belief is profound and paramount; it is an ever- 
present possession, passing often into complete obsession, whereby 
action and thought are habitually and wholly controlled. 
In every phase of primitive culture the mystical potencies imputed 
to natural things are held to be the chief factors of failure or success 
in the ceaseless strife for existence. So these potencies are invoked 
by fasting, propitiated by sacrifice, celebrated by feasting, and expa- 
tiated and glorified by individual and collective ceremony, as well as 
by the marvelously persistent tradition of prescriptorial culture. The 
first effect of recurrent ceremony is to crystallize the animistic con- 
cepts and concentrate the imputation of potency on the more conspic- 
uous objects of current experience, and hence to lead to the deification 
of strong and swift beasts, venomous serpents, rapacious birds, turbu- 
lent waters, destructive volcanoes, and other impressive things; though 
since the successful men and tribes give more thought to joyous 
glorification and less to anxious propitiation than their unsuccessful 
contemporaries, the beneficent potencies tend to survive and the 
maleficent mysteries tend to die out of the darksome—but ever bright- 
ening—faith of primitive men. Yet throughout the whole domain of 
lowly culture the mystical potencies are dominant factors of thought. 
In all aspects of primitive faith the controlling mysteries are con- 
ceived as associated with symbolic objects and actions; and by reason 
of this notion both mysteries and symbols are zealously enshrouded in 
ever deeper mysticism. So, fetishism and shamanism grow apace; 
not only ceremonial objects, but places and persons and forms of utter- 

