Note 37 — LECTURE II. The Origin and Contents of Primitive Religions.

“Everything, animate or inanimate, which has an independent being, or can be individualised, possesses a spirit, or, more properly, a shade (idahi, a shadow, or reflection).” Washington Matthews, Ethnog. of the Hidatsa, p. 48. This expresses the general Weltanschauung of the savage mind. Let it be remembered that it is also characteristic of the poetic, or personifying representation of nature, and thus belongs to the highest artistic expressions of the human mind as well as to its feeblest utterances.