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CHAPTER V 
RELIGION 
Spirits and Gods. The idea that dominates all 
Filipino religion is the belief in a class of supernatural 
beings called anito. This term is hard to translate; 
because it includes gods or divinities proper; evil or 
beneficent spirits of lower rank; and finally the souls of 
dead human beings. An anito is therefore any being 
which possesses the intelligence of a human person and 
equal or superior faculties, but lacks a corporeal body. 
The word is of widespread use in the East Indies and 
Oceania, and the concept of the anito is undoubtedly 
an extremely ancient one in this part of the world. Its 
particular meaning varies somewhat from tribe to tribe 
in the Philippines, some groups thinking rather of gods 
and spirits, and others primarily of the souls of dead 
human beings, when they use the term. The Bisaya 
and peoples of Mindanao generally replace anito by the 
Sanskrit term diwata when they refer to a deity or to 
any supernatural being that has never had a human 
existence. Anito is however the generic term in 
Tagalog and in a number of other languages, and has 
become well established in European usage. Some of the 
Spaniards have gone so far as to describe Filipino 
religion in general as being a system of aniteria. 
It is significant that the Filipino classes good and 
evil spirits together as anito just as he does not essen- 
tially distinguish between the great named gods and the 
lesser spirits which he recognizes only as classes. It is 
the fact of supernatural existence without a body that 
constitutes an anito, not particular rank or power or 
inclination toward moral or immoral acts. It is for the 
same reason that the souls of the dead are included. 
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