of open and visible
activity. These gods, like men, require an abode. In the later stages of
culture this abode is a Paradise on some more or less imaginary
mountain-top, or effectually cut off from men by the magical tempests
of the immeasurable main, or by the supreme and silent heights of
heaven. But this exaltation of ideas took long to reach. At first a
strange rock, a fountain, the recesses of a cavern, or the mysterious
depths of the forest, enshrouded the divinity. In the earlier stages of
savagery it would be almost truer to say that these _were_ very often
the divinity: at least they were often his outward and visible form. Mr.
Im Thurn, who has had exceptional opportunities of observing the
characteristics of the savage mind, and has made exceptionally good use
of those opportunities, in describing the animism of the Indians of
Guiana, says: "Every object in the whole world is a being consisting of
body and spirit, and differs from every other object in no respect
except that of bodily form, and in the greater or less degree of brute
power and brute cunning consequent on the difference of bodily form and
bodily habits." Then, after discussing the lower animals and plants as
each possessed of body and soul, and particularizing several rocks which
are supposed by the Indians to possess spirits like human beings, he
goes on: "It is unnecessary to multiply instances, further than by
saying that almost every rock seen for the first time, and any rock
which is in any way abnormal whenever seen, is believed to consist of
body and spirit. And not only many rocks, but also many waterfalls,
streams, and indeed material bodies of every sort, are supposed to
consist each of a body and a spirit as does man; and that not all
inanimate objects have this dual nature avowedly attributed to them is
probably only due to the chance that, while all such objects may at any
time, in any of the ways above indicated, show signs of the presence of
a spirit within them, this spirit has not yet been noticed in some
cases."[168] From this belief to that in which the rocks and hills and
other inanimate objects are looked upon as having the relation to
spirits, not of body and soul, but of dwelling and dweller, is a step
upward, and perhaps a long one. But it is a natural development, and one
which would inevitably take place as the popular opinion of the power of
certain spirits grew, and these spirits attracted to themselves
superstition