belief in a "soul" does
originate in this way are now so plentiful that exact references are
needless. Examination of primitive religious beliefs all over the world
yield the one result, without there being any evidence to the contrary.

Primitive philosophy does not stop here. Man dreams of things as well as
of persons, and a general extension of the belief in a ghost or double
is made until it covers almost everything. As Tylor says, "the doctrine
of souls is worked out with remarkable breadth and consistency. The
souls of animals are recognised by a natural extension from the theory
of human souls; the souls of trees and plants follow in some vague
partial way; and the souls of inanimate objects expand the category to
the extremest boundary." The reasoning of the primitive mind is thus,
given its limitations and unsound premises, uncompromisingly logical.
One can trace the processes of reasoning more easily than is the case
with modern man because it is less disturbed by cross-currents of
acquired knowledge and conflicting interests.

I am giving but the barest outline of a vast subject because I am
desirous of keeping the attention of the reader on what I believe to be
the main issue. For that reason I am not discussing whether animism--the
vitalising of inanimate objects--has an independent origin, or whether
it is a mere extension of the ghost theory. Either theory does not
affect my main position, which is that the idea of God is derived from
the ignorance of primitive humanity, and has no other authority than a
misunderstanding of natural facts. On that point the agreement among all
schools of anthropologists is now very general. Personally, however, I
do not believe that men would ever have given a soul to trees or other
natural objects unless they had first given them to living beings, and
had thus familiarised themselves with the conception of a double.

At present, though, we are on the track of the gods. The belief that
every human being, and nearly every object, possesses a soul, ends in
surrounding man with a cloud of spirits against which he has to be
always on his guard. The general situation is well put by Miss Kingsley,
who gives a picture of the West African that may well stand for the
savage world in general.

Everything happens by the action of spirits. The thing he does
himself is done by the spirit within acting on his body, the matter
with which that spirit is associated. Ev