650 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
self-moving things and invested with intensified autonomy ; and in the higher stages of primitive culture, they are idealized into mystical potencies actuating the phenomena of the universe in accordance with impulses and motives reflecting those of the primitive mind. In all its aspects, the faith is profound ; it is an ever-present possession, passing even into complete obsession, whereby thought and action are habitually and wholly con- trolled. In every phase of primitive culture, the mysti- cal potencies are deemed chief factors of failure or success in the ceaseless strife for existence ; they are invoked by fasting, propi- tiated by sacrifice, celebrated by feasting, and generally expatiated by individual and collective ceremony and by the marvelously persistent tradition of prescriptorial culture ; and since the suc- cessful men and tribes give more thought to joyous glorification and less to anxious propitiation than their unsuccessful contempo- raries, the beneficent potencies tend to survive and the maleficent mysteries tend to die out of the darksome — yet ever brightening — faith of primitive men. In every stage of primitive faith the controlling mysteries are associated with symbolic £j objects and actions, and both mysteries and symbols are zeal- K 1 ously enshrouded in deeper mystery. So fetishism and shaman- \ ism grow apace, and not only ceremonial objects but places and
persons and forms of utterance become secret or sacred ; esoteric
��observances, impressive insignia, and imposing formalities are established ; and systems of rank or caste grow up as tangible expressions of the intangible subjective structures. Cumulatively strengthened by reaction of symbol on mystery and of mystery again on symbol, the pervading mysticism is intensified above all other motives in the primitive mind ; and the artistic concepts, the industrial devices, the social relations, and the subjects and forms of speech pass under the control of the unreal potencies which shadow all primitive thinkers. Throughout
primitive culture, invocation habitually carries an obverse of incantation, and the normal course of fiducial development is at-
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