ency" here carries no further implication as to the nature of the
agency spoken of as preternatural. This is only a farther development of
animistic belief. The preternatural agency is not necessarily conceived
to be a personal agent in the full sense, but it is an agency which
partakes of the attributes of personality to the extent of somewhat
arbitrarily influencing the outcome of any enterprise, and especially
of any contest. The pervading belief in the hamingia or gipta
(gaefa, authna) which lends so much of color to the Icelandic sagas
specifically, and to early Germanic folk-legends, is an illustration of
this sense of an extra-physical propensity in the course of events.

In this expression or form of the belief the propensity is scarcely
personified although to a varying extent an individuality is imputed to
it; and this individuated propensity is sometimes conceived to yield to
circumstances, commonly to circumstances of a spiritual or preternatural
character. A well-known and striking exemplification of the belief--in
a fairly advanced stage of differentiation and involving an
anthropomorphic personification of the preternatural agent appealed
to--is afforded by the wager of battle. Here the preternatural agent was
conceived to act on request as umpire, and to shape the outcome of the
contest in accordance with some stipulated ground of decision, such as
the equity or legality of the respective contestants' claims. The like
sense of an inscrutable but spiritually necessary tendency in events
is still traceable as an obscure element in current popular belief, as
shown, for instance, by the well-accredited maxim, "Thrice is he
armed who knows his quarrel just,"--a maxim which retains much of its
significance for the average unreflecting person even in the civilized
communities of today. The modern reminiscence of the belief in the
hamingia, or in the guidance of an unseen hand, which is traceable in
the acceptance of this maxim is faint and perhaps uncertain; and it
seems in any case to be blended with other psychological moments that
are not clearly of an animistic character.

For the purpose in hand it is unnecessary to look more closely into the
psychological process or the ethnological line of descent by which the
later of these two animistic apprehensions of propensity is derived
from the earlier. This question may be of the gravest importance to
folk-psychology or to the theory of the evolution of creeds a