was
always with him, as he thought of the huge stones that fell and crushed
him, and the beasts which were so eager to devour him. All things about
him seemed to conspire for his death: the wind, lightning, thunder, rain
and storm, as well as the beasts and falling trees; for in his mind he
did not differentiate animate from inanimate objects. Slowly, through
his groping mind there evolved the thought, due to past experience, that
he could not contend with these things by physical force, but must
subdue them with magic; his magic consisted of the beating of crude
drum-like instruments, dances, and the mumbling of words.

Upon falling asleep he dreams, and awakening, he finds that he is still
in the same place where he had lain the night before. Yet, he is certain
that during the night he had traveled to his favorite wood and killed an
animal whose tender flesh he was still savoring. Since the conception
of a dream was as yet foreign to him, the logical conclusion he arrived
at was that he had both a body and a spirit. If he possessed a body and
a spirit, then all things about him, he reasoned, must likewise possess
a similar spirit. Some spirits, he felt, were friendly; some, hostile to
him. The hostile spirits were to be feared; but that powerful factor,
"hope," had at last entered into his mind, and he hoped to be able to
win them over to the camp of friendly spirits.

In this manner, man passed from the stage of contending against the
spirits to one of placating them. It was believed that certain men
carried more favor with the spirits than others, and these became the
original priests, called the "Shamans."

Another expedient for warding off evil spirits was by means of the
fetish. The primitive fetish was an object containing an active friendly
spirit, which, if worn by the individual, protected him from the evil
spirits. In a short while the manufacture of fetishes became a sacred
profession, and the men who were thought to fashion the best ones became
the professional holy men of the period, the priests.

At first, idols were used to drive away the evil spirits, and then, the
conception changed to one of attracting the good spirits to man. From
the individual fetish man passed to tribal ones, which in their first
form were huge boulders and trees.

As the primitive mind gained cunning, it slyly smeared the surface of
the idol with oily substances, hoping that the spirit, like some wild
beast, would come and