same author suggests,
that man first thought he had a spirit himself and as a consequence
held that animals, plants and inanimate objects also contained
spirits. Because the belief that the human body had a spirit can
easily be accounted for, but there seems to be no valid reason why
man should have thought that all other visible objects also contained
spirits, except that at the period when he conceived of the existence
of a soul or spirit he still held them to be possessed of life and
self-conscious volition like himself. But certain beliefs, such as
the universal existence of life, and of its distribution all over
the body and transmission by contact and eating, the common life
of the species, and possibly totemism itself, appear to have been
pre-animistic or prior to any conception of or belief in a soul or
spirit either in man himself or in nature.

59. The tranmission of qualities.

Primitive man thought that the life and all qualities, mental
and physical, were equally distributed over the body as part of
the substance of the flesh. He thus came to think that they could
be transferred from one body or substance to another in two ways:
either by contact of the two bodies or substances, or by the eating
or assimilation of one by the other. The transmission of qualities
by contact could be indicated through simply saying the two names of
the objects in contact together, and transmission by eating through
saying the two names with a gesture of eating. Thus if one ate a piece
of tiger's flesh, one assimilated an equivalent amount of strength,
ferocity, cruelty, yellowness, and any other qualities which might be
attributed to the tiger. Warriors and youths are sometimes forbidden
to eat deer's flesh because it will make them timid, but they are
encouraged to eat the flesh of tigers, bears, and other ferocious
animals, because it will make them brave. The Gonds, if they wish
a child to be a good dancer, cause it to eat the flesh of a kind of
hawk, which hangs gracefully poised over the water, with its wings
continually flapping, on the look-out for its prey. They think that
by eating the flesh the limbs of the child will become supple like
the wings of the bird. If a child is slow in learning to speak,
they give it to eat the leaves of the pipal tree, which rustle
continually in the wind and are hence supposed to have the quality
of making a noise. All qualities, objective and instrumental, were
conceived of in