In the developed, integrated form in which it is
most readily observed in the barbarian of the predatory culture
or in the sporting man of modern communities, the belief
comprises at least two distinguishable elements -- which are to
be taken as two different phases of the same fundamental habit of
thought, or as the same psychological factor in two successive
phases of its evolution. The fact that these two elements are
successive phases of the same general line of growth of belief
does not hinder their coexisting in the habits of thought of any
given individual. The more primitive form (or the more archaic
phase) is an incipient animistic belief, or an animistic sense of
relations and things, that imputes a quasi-personal character to
facts. To the archaic man all the obtrusive and obviously
consequential objects and facts in his environment have a
quasi-personal individuality. They are conceived to be possessed
of volition, or rather of propensities, which enter into the
complex of causes and affect events in an inscrutable manner. The
sporting man's sense of luck and chance, or of fortuitous
necessity, is an inarticulate or inchoate animism. It applies to
objects and situations, often in a very vague way; but it is
usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of
propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or otherwise
disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects
which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of
skill or chance.
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