Society and Nature Although apparently simple, all modern manifestations of worship, however primitive, are in reality very complex; for society and its beliefs have, for long ages, been continually acting and reacting upon one another. In the more primitive soci ety existing to-day, the medicine-men are uni versally believed to possess spiritual or magical powers. They are generally the medium be tween the people and the powers of the material universe and of the future world. They thus bear, in a sense, a divine character which be longs to them through the natural logic of their official position. Here we see, in the early stage of its development, one of the powerful factors in the organization of primitive beliefs of the nature worshipers into organized and compli cated mythology. The governing class, consist ing of priests or medicine-men, chiefs and lead ing warriors, early learned to claim descent from their nature gods, about whom they began to invent and relate the stories which we now call myths. The sun became the great ances tor of the Peruvian priests and nobility, of the Mixteca warrior class, as of the ruling body of other great races, the most noted of which was the Egyptian. Once this relationship had been attained the glorification of the sun became the glorification of the ruling powers and the con sequent subjugation of the masses to them. Ritual, ceremony, a highly organized and dis ciplined priesthood and religious society fol lowed; and of this the governing class soon be came the head. Among the Toltecs in Mexico, Quetzalcoatl the wind god became the ruling deity and his superior priests, who were always chosen from the nobility, were believed to be his representatives upon earth and his lineal, blood descendants. The royal family and the nobles also represented themselves as god-born. Very frequently the king was also high priest of the nation and as such he was known as the Quetzalcoatl, or the chief of the gods. The principal races of Chiapas and Yucatan also be lieved themselves to be descended from the wind god, while the Mixtecas and several tribes of Guatemala called themselves of the Sun?' The latter wore upon their breasts and backs the yellow symbol of the sun. In Persia and Egypt the complicated court life cen tred on the belief of the classes and the masses in the divine origin of the priesthood and the nobility and their descent from Re, the sun god. Thus the relation of religious primitive be lief to the rulers of the people developed a com plicated religio-political condition that finally became very complex in its nature. Out of this condition grew the acknowledged relationship of the hierarchy of the gods. This was the birth of the great religious systems of Persia, Babylonia and Egypt, which continued to grow more complex until their ultimate decline and disappearance. This, too, is more or less the path followed by the great religions of antiquity, all of which bear plainly the marks of primitive nature worship. The development of a religious theocracy gave very specified functions to the most prominent of the deities. Thus Thoth, the Egyptian wind god, being the original messen ger god, became the carrier of souls; and the moon goddess, Isis, the mother of medicine and the healing art. Thoth, as the bearer of moist ure and rains and the generator of growth, be came the culture god, the patron of learning and the judge of good and evil in men's lives. All these conventionalized ideas of Thoth and Isis are very far removed from primitive man's conception of the wind and the moon as fac tors in his life. The great changes that took place were due to the peculiar organization of Egyptian society and the antiquity of her civ ilization.
Animism.— Primitive man undoubtedly held beliefs that we can scarcely comprehend to-day. One of these has been termed animism, a des ignation that appears to mean different things to different investigators and writers using it. It has been variously defined as belief in souls, spirits and magic power.
.All recent investigation tends to show that primitive man made practically no distinction to animation or life, between himself and the active elements of nature around him. The sun, moon, stars, winds, clouds, thunder and lightning were beings like himself who had at their command very superior magic power. The
stories of all Indo-Europeans and the American Indians are filled with myths depicting the con tests in magic that took place between their dei ties and nature heroes. The Indian stories es pecially present characters essentially human, so human indeed that they are frequently deceived and duped not only by man himself but also by the lower animals and even at times by inani mate things. These hero characters are neither divinities, nor souls, nor spirits in the modern acceptation of the terms. They are simply the wielders of magic power. Therefore, when cer tain writers on mythology talk glibly about the religious emotion in the presence of nature giv ing birth to animism, they are speaking about the past in terms of to-day, forgetful of two facts. The first of these is that even races as far advanced in civilization as the Indians of southeastern Canada and the United States seem to exhibit no appreciation of the beauties of na ture, as nature itself. The second is, that reli gious emotion is the result of the teachings of organized religion, exercised consciously or un consciously to stir up such feelings. Fear and terror of any object inspired respect in all ages of the past as they do to-day. Out of these primal elemental feelings combined with that of admiration, ancient religious beliefs and sys tems were built up slowly from primitive nature beliefs. The belief in souls and spirits, as things apart from the existence of humanity, came very much later in the religious development of hu manity.
Tranamigration.—Intimately connected with animation is the belief in transmigration. In fact the one presupposes the other; and both seem to belong to certain stages in the social de velopment of all society. The wind was a most powerful agent of destruction, the mysterious beings hidden in the clouds shouted with their thunderous voices and shot forth their darts of fire. Other beings sent forth the rain from the heavens and the mountains. Yet they all re mained invisible as did the spirits that moved the trees and the water; therefore, they must possess the power of rendering themselves in visible, reasoned the nature worshipper. The same mode of reasoning accounted for spirits in everything and endowed the personified ele ments, planets and phases of nature with the magical power of taking upon themselves other bodily forms at will. Out of this idea of trans migration grew the Hindu belief in reincarna tion, which, in the case of Vishnu (q.v.), was carried to an almost unlimited number of bodily changes, each one bringing with it a new exist ence upon earth. Among many fairly civilized races there still exist in the masses at least a belief in spirits that inhabit trees, rocks, lakes, rivers, mountains, hills, clouds, caves and winds; and this belief teaches us how nature worship grew up and long continued to claim the un questioned faith of humanity. The belief that human souls may be transmigrated into the bodies of animals, and vice versa, is still held by many races and peoples, and the ghost or disembodied spirit has but recently retreated from the stronghold of science; and so recent is its departure that a goodly body of so-called scientists are gravely experimenting with and seeking data as to its existence and habits.
Another development of animism and trans migration was the belief in guardian spirits which seems to have been almost universal. Very early in his social development man is found attempting to subject to his will and his uses, by his magic, the various mysterious pow ers of nature. Dances, charms, incantations, amulets, magic potions and other primitive means were made use of to this end. Amulets, believed to be powerful, were carried about on the body for self-protection and the wearer made efforts to get same supernatural being to become his protector. Often this being was supposed to reside in the fetish he carried upon his person. These developed by a complezed society became, in the course of time, household gods, probably through totems. Later society made patron saints to replace the grosser con ceptions of heathenism. But all hail back to nature worship with its belief in transmigrating spirits, which has been father to ghosts, fairies, pigmies and a host of good and of evil-disposed supernatural beings.