Gradually the mystery
segregates, deepening with respect to animals and disappearing with
respect to inanimate things; and at length the slowly changing mysteries
shape themselves into semiabstractions having a strong anthropic cast,
while the remainder of the earth and the things thereof gradually become
real, though they remain under the spell and dominion of the mysterious.
Thus at every stage the primitive believer is a mystic--a fatalist in one
stage, a beast worshiper in another, a thaumaturgist in a third, yet ever
and first of all a mystic. It is also to be borne in mind (and the more
firmly because of a widespread misapprehension) that the primitive
believer, up to the highest stage attained by the North American Indian,
is not a psychotheist, much less a monotheist. His "Great Spirit" is
simply a great mystery, perhaps vaguely anthropomorphic, oftener
zoomorphic, yet not a spirit, which he is unable to conceive save by
reflection of the white man's concept and inquiry; and his departed spirit
is but a shade, much like that of the ancient Greeks, the associate and
often the inferior of animal shades.
While the four stages in development of belief are fundamentally distinct,
they nevertheless overlap in such manner as apparently, and in a measure
really, to coexist and blend. Culture progress is slow. In biotic
development the effect of beneficial modification is felt immediately, and
the modified organs or organisms are stimulated and strengthened
cumulatively, while the unmodified are enfeebled and paralyzed
cumulatively through inactivity and quickly pass toward atrophy and
extinction.
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