s,
and are much impressed by their dream-experiences; and so on. Besides,
the phantasm forms a very convenient half-way house between the seen
and the unseen; and there can be no doubt that the savage often says
breath, shadow, and so forth, when he is trying to think and mean
something immaterial altogether.

But animism would seem sometimes to be used by Dr. Tylor in a wider
sense, namely, as "a doctrine of universal vitality." In dealing with
the myths of the ruder peoples, as, for example, those about the sun,
moon, and stars, he shows how "a general animation of nature" is implied.
The primitive man reads himself into these things, which, according
to our science, are without life or personality. He thinks that they
have a different kind of body, but the same kind of feelings and motives.
But this is not necessarily to think that they are capable of giving
off a phantasm, as a man does when his soul temporarily leaves him,
or when after death his soul becomes a ghost. There need be nothing
ghost-like about the sun, whether it is imagined as a shining orb,
or as a shining being of human shape to whom the orb belongs. There
is not anything in the least phantasmal about the Greek god Apollo.
I think, then, that we had better distinguish this wider sense of
animism by a different name, calling it "animatism," since that will
serve at once to disconnect and to connect the two conceptions.

I am not sure, however, how far we ought to press this "doctrine of
universal vitality." Does a savage, for instance, when he is hammering
at a piece of flint think of it as other than a "thing," any more than
we should? I doubt it. He may say "Confound you!" if it suddenly snaps
in two, just as we might do. But though the language may seem to imply
a "you," he would mean, I believe, to impute to the flint just as much,
or as little, of personality as we should mean to do when using similar
language. In other words, I believe that, within the world of his
ordinary work-a-day experience, he recognizes both things and persons;
without giving a thought, in either case, to the hidden principles
that make them be what they are, and act as they do.

When, on the other hand, the thing, or the person, falls within the
world of supernormal experience, when they strike the imagination as
wonderful and wonder-working, then there is much more reason why he
should seek to account to himself for the mystery in, or behind, the
strange appearance.