Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 2, Part 1 Part 16

_Animal Souls._--But apart from considerations of this sort, it is probable that animals must, early in the history of animistic beliefs, have been regarded as possessing souls. Education has brought with it a sense of the great gulf between man and animals; but in the lower stages of culture this distinction is not adequately recognized, if indeed it is recognized at all. The savage attributes to animals the same ideas, the same mental processes as himself, and at the same time vastly greater power and cunning. The dead animal is credited with a knowledge of how its remains are treated and sometimes with a power of taking vengeance on the fortunate hunter. Powers of reasoning are not denied to animals nor even speech; the silence of the brute creation may be put down to their superior cunning. We may a.s.sume that man attributed a soul to the beasts of the field almost as soon as he claimed one for himself. It is therefore not surprising to find that many peoples on the lower planes of culture respect and even worship animals (see TOTEM; ANIMAL WORSHIP); though we need not attribute an animistic origin to all the developments, it is clear that the widespread respect paid to animals as the abode of dead ancestors, and much of the cult of dangerous animals, is traceable to this principle.

With the rise of species, deities and the cult of individual animals, the path towards anthropomorphization and polytheism is opened and the respect paid to animals tends to lose its strict animistic character.

_Plant Souls._--Just as human souls are a.s.signed to animals, so primitive man often credits trees and plants with souls in both human or animal form. All over the world agricultural peoples practise elaborate ceremonies explicable, as Mannhardt has shown, on animistic principles. In Europe the corn spirit sometimes immanent in the crop, sometimes a presiding deity whose life does not depend on that of the growing corn, is conceived in some districts in the form of an ox, hare or c.o.c.k, in others as an old man or woman; in the East Indies and America the rice or maize mother is a corresponding figure; in cla.s.sical Europe and the East we have in Ceres and Demeter, Adonis and Dionysus, and other deities, vegetation G.o.ds whose origin we can readily trace back to the rustic corn spirit. Forest trees, no less than cereals, have their indwelling spirits; the fauns and satyrs of cla.s.sical literature were goat-footed and the tree spirit of the Russian peasantry takes the form of a goat; in Bengal and the East Indies wood-cutters endeavour to propitiate the spirit of the tree which they cut down; and in many parts of the world trees are regarded as the abode of the spirits of the dead. Just as a process of syncretism has given rise to cults of animal G.o.ds, tree spirits tend to become detached from the trees, which are thenceforward only their abodes; and here again animism has begun to pa.s.s into polytheism.

_Object Souls._--We distinguish between animate and inanimate nature, but this cla.s.sification has no meaning for the savage. The river speeding on its course to the sea, the sun and moon, if not the stars also, on their never-ceasing daily round, the lightning, fire, the wind, the sea, all are in motion and therefore animate; but the savage does not stop short here; mountains and lakes, stones and manufactured articles, are for him alike endowed with souls like his own; he deposits in the tomb weapons and food, clothes and implements, broken, it may be, in order to set free their souls; or he attains the same result by burning them, and thus sending them to the Other World for the use of the dead man. Here again, though to a less extent than in tree cults, the theriomorphic aspect recurs; in the north of Europe, in ancient Greece, in China, the water or river spirit is horse or bull-shaped; the water monster in serpent shape is even more widely found, but it is less strictly the spirit of the water. The spirit of syncretism manifests itself in this department of animism too; the immanent spirit of the earlier period becomes the presiding genius or local G.o.d of later times, and with the rise of the doctrine of separable souls we again reach the confines of animism pure and simple.

_Spirits in General._--Side by side with the doctrine of separable souls with which we have so far been concerned, exists the belief in a great host of unattached spirits; these are not immanent souls which have become detached from their abodes, but have every appearance of independent spirits. Thus, animism is in some directions little developed, so far as we can see, among the Australian aborigines; but from those who know them best we learn that they believe in innumerable spirits and bush bogies, which wander, especially at night, and can be held at bay by means of fire; with this belief may be compared the ascription in European folk belief of prophylactic properties to iron. These spirits are at first mainly malevolent; and side by side with them we find the spirits of the dead as hostile beings. At a higher stage the spirits of dead kinsmen are no longer unfriendly, nor yet all non-human spirits; as fetishes (see FETISHISM), naguals (see TOTEM), familiars, G.o.ds or demi-G.o.ds (for which and the general question see DEMONOLOGY), they enter into relations with man. On the other hand there still subsists a belief in innumerable evil spirits, which manifest themselves in the phenomena of possession (_q.v._), lycanthropy (_q.v._), disease, &c. The fear of evil spirits has given rise to ceremonies of expulsion of evils (see EXORCISM), designed to banish them from the community.

_Animism and Religion._--Animism is commonly described as the most primitive form of religion; but properly speaking it is not a religion at all, for religion implies, at any rate, some form of emotion (see RELIGION), and animism is in the first instance an explanation of phenomena rather than an att.i.tude of mind toward the cause of them, a philosophy rather than a religion. The term may, however, be conveniently used to describe the early stage of religion in which man endeavours to set up relations between himself and the unseen powers, conceived as spirits, but differing in many particulars from the G.o.ds of polytheism. As an example of this stage in one of its aspects may be taken the European belief in the corn spirit, which is, however, the object of magical rather than religious rites; Dr. Frazer has thus defined the character of the animistic pantheon, "they are restricted in their operations to definite departments of nature; their names are general, not proper; their attributes are generic rather than individual; in other words, there is an indefinite number of spirits of each cla.s.s, and the individuals of a cla.s.s are much alike; they have no definitely marked individuality; no accepted traditions are current as to their origin, life and character." This stage of religion is well ill.u.s.trated by the Red Indian custom of offering sacrifice to certain rocks, or whirlpools, or to the indwelling spirits connected with them; the rite is only performed in the neighbourhood of the object, it is an incident of a canoe or other voyage, and is not intended to secure any benefits beyond a safe pa.s.sage past the object in question; the spirit to be propitiated has a purely local sphere of influence, and powers of a very limited nature. Animistic in many of their features too are the temporary G.o.ds of fetishism (_q.v._), naguals or familiars, genii and even the dead who receive a cult. With the rise of a belief in departmental G.o.ds comes the age of polytheism; the belief in elemental spirits may still persist, but they fall into the background and receive no cult.

_Animism and the Origin of Religion._--Two animistic theories of the origin of religion have been put forward, the one, often termed the "ghost theory," mainly a.s.sociated with the name of Herbert Spencer, but also maintained by Grant Allen, refers the beginning of religion to the cult of dead human beings; the other, put forward by Dr. E.B.

Tylor, makes the foundation of all religion animistic, but recognizes the non-human character of polytheistic G.o.ds. Although ancestor-worship, or, more broadly, the cult of the dead, has in many cases overshadowed other cults or even extinguished them, we have no warrant, even in these cases, for a.s.serting its priority, but rather the reverse; not only so, but in the majority of cases the pantheon is made up by a mult.i.tude of spirits in human, sometimes in animal form, which bear no signs of ever having been incarnate; sun G.o.ds and moon G.o.ddesses, G.o.ds of fire, wind and water, G.o.ds of the sea, and above all G.o.ds of the sky, show no signs of having been ghost G.o.ds at any period in their history. They may, it is true, be a.s.sociated with ghost G.o.ds, but in Australia it cannot even be a.s.serted that the G.o.ds are spirits at all, much less that they are the spirits of dead men; they are simply magnified magicians, super-men who have never died; we have no ground, therefore, for regarding the cult of the dead as the origin of religion in this area; this conclusion is the more probable, as ancestor-worship and the cult of the dead generally cannot be said to exist in Australia.

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The more general view that polytheistic and other G.o.ds are the elemental and other spirits of the later stages of animistic creeds, is equally inapplicable to Australia, where the belief seems to be neither animistic nor even animatistic in character. But we are hardly justified in arguing from the case of Australia to a general conclusion as to the origin of religious ideas in all other parts of the world. It is perhaps safest to say that the science of religions has no data on which to go, in formulating conclusions as to the original form of the objects of religious emotion; in this connexion it must be remembered that not only is it very difficult to get precise information of the subject of the religious ideas of people of low culture, perhaps for the simple reason that the ideas themselves are far from precise, but also that, as has been pointed out above, the conception of spiritual often approximates very closely to that of material. Where the soul is regarded as no more than a finer sort of matter, it will obviously be far from easy to decide whether the G.o.ds are spiritual or material. Even, therefore, if we can say that at the present day the G.o.ds are entirely spiritual, it is clearly possible to maintain that they have been spiritualized _pari pa.s.su_ with the increasing importance of the animistic view of nature and of the greater prominence of eschatological beliefs. The animistic origin of religion is therefore not proven.

_Animism and Mythology_.--But little need be said on the relation of animism and mythology (_q.v._). While a large part of mythology has an animistic basis, it is possible to believe, _e.g._ in a sky world, peopled by corporeal beings, as well as by spirits of the dead; the latter may even be entirely absent; the mythology of the Australians relates largely to corporeal, non-spiritual beings; stories of transformation, deluge and doom myths, or myths of the origin of death, have not necessarily any animistic basis. At the same time, with the rise of ideas as to a future life and spiritual beings, this field of mythology is immensely widened, though it cannot be said that a rich mythology is necessarily genetically a.s.sociated with or combined with belief in many spiritual beings.

_Animism in Philosophy_.--The term "animism" has been applied to many different philosophical systems. It is used to describe Aristotle's view of the relation of soul and body held also by the Stoics and Scholastics. On the other hand monadology (Leibnitz) has also been termed animistic. The name is most commonly applied to vitalism, a view mainly a.s.sociated with G.E. Stahl and revived by F. Bouillier (1813-1899), which makes life, or life and mind, the directive principle in evolution and growth, holding that all cannot be traced back to chemical and mechanical processes, but that there is a directive force which guides energy without altering its amount.

An entirely different cla.s.s of ideas, also termed animistic, is the belief in the world soul, held by Plato, Sch.e.l.ling and others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Tyler, _Primitive Culture_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_; _Id_. on Burial Customs in _J.A. I_. xv.; Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_; G.A. Wilken, _Het Animisme_; Koch on the animism of S. America in _Internationales Archiv_, xiii., Suppl.; Andrew Lang, _Making of Religion_; Skeat, _Malay Magic_; Sir G. Campbell, "Spirit Basis of Belief and Custom," in _Indian Antiquary_, xxiii. and succeeding volumes; _Folklore_, iii. 289. xi. 162; Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_; _Mind_ (1877), 141, 415 et seq. For animism in philosophy, Stahl, _Theoria_; Bouillier, _Du Principe vital_.

(N.W.T.)

ANIMUCCIA, GIOVANNI, Italian musical composer, was born at Florence in the last years of the 15th century. At the request of St. Filippo Neri he composed a number of _Laudi_, or hymns of praise, to be sung after sermon time, which have given him an accidental prominence in musical history, since their performance in St. Filippo's Oratory eventually gave rise (on the disruption of 16th century schools of composition) to those early forms of "oratorio" that are not traceable to the Gregorian-polyphonic "Pa.s.sions." St. Filippo admired Animuccia so warmly that he declared he had seen the soul of his friend fly upwards towards heaven. In 1555 Animuccia was appointed _maestro di capella_ at St. Peter's, an office which he held until his death in 1571. He was succeeded by Palestrina, who had been his friend and probably his pupil. The ma.n.u.script of many of Animuccia's compositions is still preserved in the Vatican Library. His chief published works were _Madrigali e Motetti a quattro e cinque voci_ (Ven. 1548) and _Il primo Libra di Messe_ (Rom. 1567). From the latter Padre Martini has taken two specimens for his _Saggio di Contrapunto_. A ma.s.s from the _Primo Libra di Messe_ on the _canto fermo_ of the hymn _Conditor alme siderum_ is published in modern notation in the _Anthologie des maitres religieux primitifs_ of the _Chanteurs de Saint Gervais_. It is solemn and n.o.ble in conception, and would be a great work but for a roughness which is more careless than archaic.

PAOLO ANIMUCCIA, a brother of Giovanni, was also celebrated as a composer; he is said by Fetis to have been _maestro di capella_ at S.

Giovanni in Laterano from the middle of January 1550 until 1552, and to have died in 1563.

ANISE (_Pimpinella Anisum_), an umbelliferous plant found in Egypt and the Levant, and cultivated on the continent of Europe for medicinal purposes. The officinal part of the plant is the fruit, which consists of two united carpels, called a cremocarp. It is known by the name of aniseed, and has a strong aromatic taste and a powerful odour.

By distillation the fruit yields the volatile oil of anise, which is useful in the treatment of flatulence and colic in children. It may be given as _Aqua Anisi_, in doses of one or more ounces, or as the _Spiritus Anisi_, in doses of 5-20 minims. The main const.i.tuent of the oil (up to 90%) is anethol, C_{10}H_{12}O or C_{6}H_{4}[1.4](OCH_{3})(CH:CH.CH_{3}.) It also contains methyl chavicol, anisic aldehyde, anisic acid, and a terpene. Most of the oil of commerce, however, of which anethol is also the chief const.i.tuent, comes from _Illicium verum_ (order _Magnoliaceae_, sub-order _Wintereae_), indigenous in N.E. China, the star-anise of _liqueur_ makers. It receives its name from its flavour, and from its fruit spreading out like a star. The anise of the Bible (Matt. xxiii. 23) is _Anethum_ or _Peucedanum graveolens_, _i.e._ dill (_q.v._).