Revision summary
Tylor’s animism is belief in spiritual beings, rooted in ideas of the soul. Dreams, trance and death were his clues for how the soul was inferred. Muller’s naturism treats gods as personified natural forces and names. The two theories differ in starting point: inner soul versus outer nature. Both are intellectualist origin stories from nineteenth-century evolutionism. Later sociology of religion adds ritual, the sacred and group life.
Model answer
Introduction
Nineteenth-century anthropology asked how religion began. E. B. Tylor offered animism. Max Muller offered naturism, sometimes called nature-myth theory. Both are intellectualist origin stories. They remain on the syllabus as concepts to define and to separate, even though later anthropology has criticised them as complete explanations of religion.
Body
Animism
Tylor, in Primitive Culture, defined religion minimally as belief in spiritual beings. Animism is the doctrine that souls and spirits inhabit humans, animals, plants and objects. He thought early humans inferred a soul from dreams, trance and death. The soul of the dead could become a ghost. Spirits could fill the world. Polytheism and later monotheism were, in his evolutionary ladder, developments from this base. Animism is therefore a theory of souls and agencies inside and behind things. Durkheim later attacked the idea that religion is only a mistaken science of spirits, and placed totemism and the sacred at the centre instead. The word animism is still used in a looser way for many indigenous cosmologies, which is not exactly Tylor’s evolutionary scheme.
Naturism and the difference
Max Muller, a scholar of the Vedas, argued that religion grew from the personification of natural phenomena: sun, dawn, storm and fire. Names of powers became gods through a disease of language, as metaphors hardened. Naturism locates the origin in awe before nature’s forces, not in the dream-soul. Vedic hymns to Agni and Ushas were his illustrations.
The difference is clear. Animism starts from the idea of a soul that can exist apart from the body and then populates the world with spirits. Naturism starts from natural objects and events that are named and then worshipped as deities. One is a psychology of the double, the other is a mythology of sky and storm. Both are origin theories that treat early humans as puzzled philosophers. Bronislaw Malinowski, Durkheim and later anthropologists argued that religion is also ritual, group solidarity and practical magic, not only a theory of souls or of weather. A good answer defines, differentiates, and then refuses to let either term exhaust the sociology of religion.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD TYL[Tylor] --> AN[Animism souls and spirits] MUL[Max Muller] --> NAT[Naturism forces of nature] AN --> REL[Origin theories of religion] NAT --> REL CRIT[Durkheim Malinowski] -.-> REL
Conclusion
Animism, for Tylor, is belief in souls and spirits inferred from dreams and death. Naturism, for Muller, is the deification of natural forces through language and myth. They differ in starting point. Neither is a complete sociology of religion, but both remain standard conceptual tools.
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Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q7(a)). View answer →
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Is totemism the same as animism?
No. Totemism links a group to a sacred species or emblem. Tylor’s animism is a general belief in spirits. Durkheim treated totemism as elementary in a different sense.
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Do sociologists still accept these origin stories?
They teach them as history of theory. Contemporary work rarely claims a single origin of all religion in dreams or in the dawn.
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