DYNAMISM (Gr. bvvaµis, power), is the name coined by A. Van Gennep for that attitude of the primitive mind towards the sacred or occult which involves a prevailing sense of its pe culiar power or mana. He is careful not to impute to the savage a theology in which any clear distinction is drawn between the impersonal and the personal aspects of the divine—as contrasted with advanced religion, which, as may be seen in Buddhism and Christianity respectively, may emphasize the one aspect almost to the exclusion of the other—but suggests dynamism as a term that may be used for classifying any phase of primitive religion in which mana, rather than soul or moral personality, receives em phasis as the leading attribute of that which is worshipped.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—A. Van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (1909) ; Rev. Bibliography.—A. Van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage (1909) ; Rev. E. W. Smith and Capt. A. M. Dale, The Ila-speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia (1920) . (See also MANA; ANIMATISM ; ANIMISM.) (R. R. M.)