The sense of status is also
feebler; on the whole, in peaceable communities. It is to be
remarked that a lively, but slightly specialized, animistic
belief is to be found in most if not all peoples living in the
ante-predatory, savage stage of culture. The primitive savage
takes his animism less seriously than the barbarian or the
degenerate savage. With him it eventuates in fantastic
myth-making, rather than in coercive superstition. The barbarian
culture shows sportsmanship, status, and anthropomorphism. There
is commonly observable a like concomitance of variations in the
same respects in the individual temperament of men in the
civilized communities of today. Those modern representatives of
the predaceous barbarian temper that make up the sporting element
are commonly believers in luck; at least they have a strong sense
of an animistic propensity in things, by force of which they are
given to gambling. So also as regards anthropomorphism in this
class. Such of them as give in their adhesion to some creed
commonly attach themselves to one of the naively and consistently
anthropomorphic creeds; there are relatively few sporting men who
seek spiritual comfort in the less anthropomorphic cults, such as
the Unitarian or the Universalist.
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