SUPERNATURALISM, a term that may be used for the attitude of mind in which experience of the unfamiliar or un canny appears to invest it with a distinct character, as if it be longed to a world of its own. On the psychological side it involves the somewhat complex mood known as awe, in which, as W. McDougall shows, various primary feelings such as fear, wonder and submissiveness commingle in no very fixed proportions. On the institutional side it provides raw material alike for magic and for religion. As Hartland puts it, commenting on Marett's use of the term, supernaturalism furnishes the original "theo plasm, god-stuff." Primitive notions of the type of mana (q.v.) refer to this special class of experience in which the subject feels powerfully moved and the object seems powerfully moving, so that both inwardly and outwardly wonders happen, whether for better or for worse. It is certain, on the other hand, that the savage does not spend all his time in wonderland, but distin guishes another world, another level of experience, which as the Polynesians phrase it, is noa, "commonplace"—the routine of every day. Our word "natural" has to-day very similar associa
tions, though as a matter of fact, if Hubert and Mauss are right, the Greek physis, literally "growth," from which our conception of nature is derived, originally meant much the same as mana, namely, the occult force that makes things grow. If it is felt that the word "nature" ought to be reserved for the whole order of the universe, as being rational and intelligible, the more pedantic term "super-normalism" may be substituted ; though it cannot be de nied that psychologically and historically men have been inclined to view the regular course of things, and certain interruptions of it, as sharply contrasted aspects of mind and being.