lised man feels
over other animals, expresses a dichotomy which is in no way recognised
by the Indian.... It is therefore most important to realise how
comparatively small really is the difference between men in a state of
savagery and other animals, and how completely even such difference as
exists escapes the notice of savage men... It is not, therefore, too
much to say that, according to the view of the Indians, other animals
differ from men only in bodily form and in their various degrees of
strength; in spirit they do not differ at all."(2) The Indian's notion
of the life of plants and stones is on the same level of unreason, as we
moderns reckon reason. He believes in the spirits of rocks and stones,
undeterred by the absence of motion in these objects. "Not only many
rocks, but also many waterfalls, streams, and indeed material objects of
every sort, are supposed each to consist of a body and a spirit, as does
man."(3) It is not our business to ask here how men came by the belief
in universal animation. That belief is gradually withdrawn, distinctions
are gradually introduced, as civilisation and knowledge advance. It is
enough for us if the failure to draw a hard and fast line between man
and beasts, stones and plants, be practically universal among
savages, and if it gradually disappears before the fuller knowledge of
civilisation. The report which Mr. Im Thurn brings from the Indians of
Guiana is confirmed by what Schoolcraft says of the Algonkin races of
the northern part of the continent. "The belief of the narrators and
listeners in every wild and improbable thing told helps wonderfully in
the original stories, in joining all parts together. The Indian believes
that the whole visible and invisible creation is animated.... To make
the matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest as
well as highest class in the chain of creation are alike endowed with
reasoning powers and faculties. As a natural conclusion they endow
birds, beasts and all other animals with souls."(4) As an example of the
ease with which the savage recognises consciousness and voluntary
motion even in stones, may be cited Kohl's account of the beliefs of the
Objibeways.(5) Nearly every Indian has discovered, he says, an object
in which he places special confidence, and to which he sacrifices more
zealously than to the Great Spirit. The "hope" of Otamigan (a companion
of the traveller) was a rock, which once advanced to meet him