[230]. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by spirits.[429] The Australian sacred object called churinga—a thing of mysterious potency—is believed to be the abode of the soul of an ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are found all over the world.
[231]. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things (perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in Polynesia and Melanesia it is called mana, and other names for it occur elsewhere.[430]
[232]. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of men are attributed to it—all great chiefs possess it in an eminent degree;[431] it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing to which it is attached.[434]
[233]. How widely the conception exists is uncertain; further research may discover it in regions where up to now it has not been recognized. Scarcely a trace of it exists in the higher ancient religions. The Latin genius, the indwelling power of the man, bears a resemblance to it. The Old Testament "spirit of God" is said to "come on" a man or to be "poured out on" him, as if it were a physical thing—it gives courage and strength to the warrior and knowledge to the worshiper;[435] the power or energy is here (in the earlier Hebrew writings) identified with the spirit or animus of the deity, which appears to be thought of as physical.
[234]. Mana is conceived of by the peoples mentioned above not as a vague influence diffused through the world, but as a power resident in certain definite persons or things. It is impersonal in the sense in which any quality, as courage, is impersonal, but it is not itself an object of worship; worship is directed toward the thing that possesses or imparts mana. It may reside in a natural object or in a supernatural being—the object will be used to secure it, the supernatural being will be asked to bestow it. In both cases the act will be religious.
[235]. Mana is itself, strictly speaking, a scientific biological conception, but it necessarily enters into alliance with religion. Belief in it exists along with belief in ghosts, spirits, and gods—it is not a rival of these, but an attachment to them. As a thing desirable, it is one of the good gifts that the great Powers can bestow, and it thus leads to worship. It is found in distinct form, as is pointed out above, only in superior tribes—it has not been discovered in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the human constitution,[436] a larger conception of the gods, and a greater trust in them.[437]
[236]. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of time the accumulated experience of generations builds up a mass of sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling, becomes a sacred place.
[237]. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess their stock of such things—the beliefs concerning sacred objects are held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of 'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what was the exact attitude of primeval man toward all the things that are now regarded as sacred.
[238]. The conception of power resident in certain things to control human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck" systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain themselves in popular belief.[438] Some of these beliefs may be traced back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with animals; the origin of most of them is obscure. They coalesce to some extent with conceptions derived from magic, divination, and taboo. The persistence of such savage dogma into civilized times enables us to understand how natural this dogma was for early forms of society.