Animism: Chapter VII. ''Free Spirits''--Their Constitution and Activities
VII
"FREE SPIRITS"--THEIR CONSTITUTION AND ACTIVITIES
THE existence and great numbers of spirits which are, so to speak, "free" in the universe have just been shown and discussed.[1] We have noted, too, how readily enters here all that we are accustomed to call miraculous. Only we have constantly to remember that what we call by that name is to primitive people in full accordance with nature as they understand it. The very conception of miracle implies arrival at the thought of a certain uniformity of nature, invariability of cause and effect outside of which the unexpected may happen - and does. It now remains to consider the constitution and activities of the "free" spirits referred to above. A poetical description, having its origin in Babylonia, may here be quoted and serve as a starting point.
2a. From cuneiform tablet V, lines 18-35, in the Utukki Limnuti series (Cuneiform Texts XVI. plate 2); translation kindly furnished by the Rev. Professor Robert W. Rogers, D.D., LL.D., of Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J.
3. Plato, Phædrus, 238, 241.]
the word "ecstasy" (Greek )[4] sets forth the belief in the temporary departure from the body of its own spirit, sometimes for communion apart from the body with other spirits; and another Greek word, , denotes the entrance into the human organism of a superhuman spirit and the consequent elevation of feeling and surge of emotion. Though the examples thus far cited register the conceptions of peoples advanced in culture, like Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians, they are not the possession exclusively of such; indeed they are survivals from a cruder age. Primitive peoples low in the scale of culture entertain them. Such folk think of the spirits as pervasive and subtle, to whom no doors are closed; as entering with equal facility portals barred with the grosser materials--wood, iron, or stone--or with the living flesh.[5]
While thus in a manner insubstantial and ethereal in constitution, like discarnated human spirits, they have needs, wants, and preferences to which the material may minister. If the gods in the Babylonian epic of the
[4. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, iv. 71-72.
5. Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends, pp. ii ff.]
deluge could smell the savor of the postdiluvian offering and "hover like flies over the sacrifice,"[6] not less susceptible to appeals offered by material substance are the spirits now under consideration. They have the enjoyments and repulsions of the senses - smell, taste, even grosser physical passions,[7] and so are propitiable or susceptible of anger. While free to roam, they have chosen homes and haunts all their own,[8] though they may become localized in objects of nature, as in India,[9] where so often a stone is the seat of deity, and among the Fang and Mpongwe, so that it seems as if nature is lawless and hostile.[10]
As for disposition, since primitive man measures all things by himself, only intensifying the idea of power--through the use of his imagination, where the element of mystery enters--it would be expected that spirits would be good, evil, or neutral except when
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