Animism

ANIMISM. - 1. ETHNOLOGY. - This term generally denotes the tendency of certain primitive peoples to attribute a soul not only to man but also to things. In particular, those tribes that practice a special cult of the dead and of souls are called animistic. On this factual animism E. B. Tylor built his theory of animism, which comprises three distinct parts, namely: an attempt to explain the origin of the idea of the soul; a hypothesis concerning the historical succession of certain forms of religion; finally, his opinion regarding the position of factual animism in that series.

The idea of the soul would have arisen in the mind of primitive man from two sequences of phenomena: from the observation of the sleeping, sick, dead man; from the observation of dreams, ecstasy, visions. In the first group, primitive man would have had the impression that something had more or less left the body; in the second, that this very unknown element acted on its own impulse, and therefore was capable of existing independently. Thus would have arisen the idea of a soul distinct from the body and capable of surviving it. A dualism subsequently applied also to animals and plants, and even to inorganic nature. From this there would soon have arisen the idea of the pure spirit, that is, always free from union with the body; and, therefore, the attribution of a spirit to all objects and elements of nature. Whence a more evolved polytheism, in which, finally, one divinity asserted itself over all the others.

Tylor thus supposes an evolutionary scale that, starting from animism, through the cult of spirits and polytheism, reaches monotheism. His ideas triumphed in the scientific sphere for some decades, then inevitably declined. Today, in fact, the opinion of Tylor concerning the origin of the idea of the soul, and it is instead held that primitive man may have arrived at this notion both by starting from the concept of the person, which was well known to him, and by starting from the immediate experience of his inner life. The evolutionist theory too has had its day and has been superseded by two different points of view, namely by the rise of a current tending to uphold the existence of a pre-animistic magical faith, and, on the other hand, by the emergence of deeper knowledge about the most ancient peoples. In this regard we can now say that such knowledge excludes animism as the most ancient form of religion, because the ethnologically most ancient peoples do not know the cult of the dead, or practice it only to a very limited extent. They venerate, instead, a personal Supreme Being, rarely formed of soul and body, but as a rule conceived as a wholly special and homogeneous person.

With this the historical scale of religions formulated by Tylor falls, because monotheism is by no means the final product of an evolution, but reveals itself at the very dawn of humanity. There remains, nevertheless, to Tylor the merit of having shed light on the value of factual animism with regard to the history of human thought, that is, of having perceived even in natural man the philosopher capable of investigating the causes of things and of forming a conception of the world; of having, moreover, understood that the conception of the world of animists has no purely materialistic background, but rises also to spiritual motives of the kind of that of the soul.

Michele Schulien

2. MEDICINE

In medicine animism, no less than theurgy (v.), constituted the first and most ancient form of etiological interpretation of diseases, which it explained by attributing their cause to the action of invisible animate beings, such as demons or evil spirits or even the souls of the dead. The animistic interpretation is almost always connected with the magical one.

Animistic appears to us the medical conception of the most ancient ages and of civilizations such as the Egyptian, the Assyrian-Babylonian, the Indian, the Iranian, etc., and it is found also in the Talmud (v.). It is normally widespread among all presently existing primitive peoples, even when these possess the concept of the natural causes of diseases. The cure is predominantly exorcistic, based on the principle of frightening the evil spirit that has caused the disease, or of luring it elsewhere with enticements, of deceiving it, and at times of making it suffer so that it may depart.

Adalberto Pazzini