ABSTRACT
BESIDES the term taboo, we have in the course of the previous investigations frequently encountered the term mana. It is a well-known fact that in modern science of religion this Melanesian word has been adopted to denote a stage in religious evolution characterized, not by a belief in spirits or ghosts, but by a belief in an impersonal power or influence which, according to a theory now accepted by many anthropologists, has existed even prior to animism. But this so-called pre-animistic theory also includes another primitive notion for which Dr. R. R. Marett, to distinguish it from animism proper, has preferred to use the word animalism. Whereas animism implies the attribution of souls or spirits to the objects and phenomena of nature, the “animatistic “interpretation only implies that they are, in a general way, by the savage endowed with personality and will. This notion, which is at once wider and vaguer than the “belief in spiritual beings,” according to Marett, is particularly characteristic of “primitive or rudimentary religion,” and he has tried to show that numerous traces of such an animatistic or non-animistic conception are still to be found among different uncivilized peoples. 1
