NORMALISM. A term invented by Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids. He explains it in his Cosmic Law in Ancient Thought (1917). " If one glances over the tables of con tents to the best and latest treatises on the early religious beliefs of the four or five countries where early records have been found—such as de Groot on China, Hopkins on India, Jastrow on Mesopotamia, or Breasted on Egypt— one sees that they are mainly, if not quite exclusively, concerned with Animistic ideas or with the applications of such ideas. In the course of my ten years' lectures on Comparative Religion I came across quite a number of early religious beliefs and practices which by no stretch of ingenuity could be brought under Animism. They were not explained in the books, and could not be explained, by the theory of a detachable soul. I found myself forced to the conclusion that we must seek for at least one additional hypothesis. as far-reaching as Animism, and altogether different from it, before we could explain all the facts. I say at least one,' for it seemed at first
that more than one would be required. But though the number of non-Animistic beliefs was very great, it was found possible to arrange them in more or less over lapping groups; and behind all the groups can be dis cerned, I venture to think, one single underlying prin ciple. That principle is the belief in a certain rule, order, law. We must invent a name for it—a name that does not imply or suggest a law-giver, and that does not suffer from the disadvantage of being still in common use, and liable therefore to have vague and modern con notations wrapt up in it. Such a word is Normalism, with its convenient adjective Normalistic." Professor Rhys-Davids thinks that to this term we can attach a specific, scientifically exact, meaning.