Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/214

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ANIMISM.

and impressions out of the course of the mind's normal action, and words that seem spoken to him by a voice from without, messages of mysterious knowledge, of counsel or warning, seem to indicate the intervention of as it were a second superior soul, a familiar demon. And as enthusiasts, seers, sorcerers, are the men whose minds most often show such conditions, so to these classes more than to others the informing and controlling patron-spirits are attached. Second, while the common expected events of daily life pass unnoticed as in the regular course of things, such events as seem to fall out with especial reference to an individual, demand an intervening agent; and thus the decisions, discoveries, and deliverances, which civilized men variously ascribe to their own judgment, to luck, and to special interposition of Providence, are accounted for in the lower culture by the action of the patron-spirit or guardian-genius. Not to crowd examples from all the districts of animism to which this doctrine belongs, let us follow it by a few illustrations from the lower grades of savagery upward. Among the Watchandis of Australia, it is held that when a warrior slays his first man, the spirit of the dead enters the slayer's body and becomes his 'woo-rie' or warning spirit; taking up its abode near his liver, it informs him by a scratching or tickling sensation of the approach of danger.[1] In Tasmania, Dr. Milligan heard a native ascribe his deliverance from an accident to the preserving care of his deceased father's spirit, his guardian angel.[2] That the most important act of the North American Indian's religion is to obtain his individual patron genius or deity, is well known. Among the Esquimaux, the sorcerer qualifies for his profession by getting a 'torngak' or spirit which will henceforth be his familiar demon, and this spirit may be the soul of a deceased parent.[3] In Chili, as to guardian spirits, it has been re-

  1. Oldfield, 'Abor. of Australia,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 240.
  2. Bonwick, 'Tasmanians,' p. 182.
  3. Cranz, 'Grönland,' p. 268; Egede, p. 187.