Animatism

ANIMATISM. - An expression introduced into ethnological and religio-historical subjects by R. R. Marett, and which is meant to characterize a supposed stage chronologically preceding animism, that is, a first stage of religious development in which humanity would have conceived all inert things as endowed with will and force, but not yet with a soul. Deeper research has clarified the non-existence of such a way of thinking among primitives, and has therefore demonstrated that it is a mere a priori assumption. In fact, the psychological attitudes of primitives regarding things are four: 1) the primitive sees and takes objects for what they are, that is, realistically: a very widespread mentality and one found everywhere, as proved by weapons, tools, etc., made for a specific purpose, as well as the entire complex of agriculture, hunting techniques and livestock breeding; 2) the primitive sometimes conceives things as pervaded by a spirit or by the soul of a deceased person, that is, as animated, but in this case one must speak of a truly animistic attitude (v. ANIMA, ANIMISMO); 3) there is then the attribution of dark impersonal forces to various objects, forces that F. R. Lehmann calls "mana", a complex that today, through the work of M. Mauss, H. Hubert and, in part, K. Th. Preuss, is instead called "Magism"; 4) we have, finally, the phenomenon of the personification of things without animistic and magical contaminations, and it is found everywhere, but particularly among the most ancient peoples.

Now, while the four attitudes recalled above possess ample documentation, animatism continues to be without it even today. On the other hand, the few facts of alleged animatism reported by researchers who traveled to the places, such as E. W. Thalbitzer with reference to the Eskimos who herd reindeer and A. A. Popov for the Tawgisi tribe of the eastern Samoyeds, are by no means sufficient to document the existence of animatism, all the more so since it is not clear whether the elements identified should not be attributed to simple animism or personification. It is easy, therefore, to understand why in the updated bibliography it is difficult to encounter the word animatism. The only one to still treat it thematically was the Swede N. Söderblom, but even he remains uncertain between animatism and animism in the attribution of specific facts. In the ethnological field, however, animatism now represents a completely superseded hypothetical phase.

Having proposed and upheld animatism made Marett appear to many as the founder of that current which sought to see the origin of religion in magic. But wrongly so, since some years before him J. H. King, starting from all the ethnological and psychological findings then known, and in strong polemic against Tylor's animism, was laying the foundations of pre-animistic magism, so that the historical priority belongs to King alone. And even the opinion that magism together with the a priori animatism gave rise to religion has not been able to find any scientific confirmation, because the greatest development of magic is not found among the ethnologically most ancient peoples, but precisely among peoples with a more specialized economy and society; the culturally less specialized peoples recognize, in fact, a Supreme Being who is creator and ethical, and present, if anything, only initial traces of magical beliefs.

Michele Schulzen