Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

472 The Olympians [ch.
Broadly speaking this remains true, but, in the light of modern
psychology and sociology, it needs some restatement. For the
individual human soul we must substitute that thing at once
more primitive and perhaps therefore more complex—the group-
soul. The god is projected, not by the thinking or the feeling of
one man, but by such part of his thinking and feeling as he has
in common with other men, such emotions and ideas as are
represented by his customs and enshrined in his language
' l ' It seems,' again says Prof. Tylor , as though the conception of a human
soul when once attained to by man served as a type or model on which he
framed not only his ideas of other souls of lower grade, but also his ideas of
spiritual beings in general, from the tiniest elf that sports in the long grass
up to the heavenly Creator and Ruler of the world, the Great Spirit.'
Profoundly true if only the words italicized 'when once
'
attained to by man be carefully borne in mind. A more intimate
knowledge of savage thinking has brought to light a stage of
thinking more primitive, more inchoate, than animism, a stage
which we may call Animatism, or better I think Zoism 2 , a stage
in which man has not yet got his own individuality clear, but
s intensely conscious of life lived, of power felt, though not yet
f isolated personality. This state of group-thinking or rather
group-living is reflected in totemism and in the vague daimones
that emerge from totemistic thinking 3 .
Until man learns to think of himself sharply as an individual,
that is until the hold of the group is weakened, he will not
sharply individualize his gods. They will be not clear cut
personalities but functional daimones. Now it would seem at
first that a clear cut personality is a higher and better thing
than a vague impersonal daimon or functionary. So he is from
the point of view of art and intellect, but all experience goes to
show that his emotional appeal, save to the very highly educated,
is feebler. The sight of a great discoverer or great thinker will
touch the imagination of a few, but, if you want to move the
great heart of the people to hysteria, to almost frenzy, you must
1 Op. cit. ii. p. 110. The italics are my own.
2 I borrow this term—and welcome it is a substitute for the inelegant form
* Animatism '—from Mr Cook.
3 For the indeterminate stage preceding Animism see especially A. C. Kruijt, Het
Animisme in den Indischen Archipel, 190H, a book I unfortunately know only
through the analysis in the Berne de I'Histoire des Religions, by K. Hertz, 1909,
p. '652. Mr W. McDougall's 'Defence of Animism' (Body and Mind, 1911) appeared
after this section of my book was written, and I have not had leisure to study it with
the needful attention.
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