That the groups enumerated have a somewhat arbitrary basis is rendered clear when we perceive a principle running through the whole series, most effective in prehistoric days, but probably reaching, in a vague and partial manner, to the utmost confines of modern religious thought. This principle, which must be briefly outlined, has been well described by Professor Tylor under the name of Animism. The term implies the doctrine of Spiritual Beings or Souls--a deep-lying belief in the two-fold nature of both animate and inanimate objects, as opposed to the teachings of Materialistic philosophy[685]. Animism supplies us, according to Professor Tylor, with “a minimum definition of Religion[686].” The primordial idea, which impelled early man to acts of worship, was, according to this theory, the belief that not only his own fellows, but the beasts, trees, and surrounding objects, natural or artificial, possessed spirits--ethereal images, as it were--of themselves. Hence the dead man must be provided with food, weapons, and other necessaries; not that these material objects themselves, but their corresponding phantasmal shapes, might, when disembodied, accompany the departed warrior or huntsman on his journey to the spirit-world[687]. In the earliest times, when the dead man was thought to be merely asleep, it may have been believed that the actual objects were of service, but at a later period, when it was recognized that the soul had actually left the body, the weapons were burnt, or perchance broken, before being interred. The precise mode of transmission of the simulacral forms to the dead man’s service was left in vague suspense, but the duty was clearly understood. The spirit of the weapon or ornament must be set free; the ghost desired the immaterial wraiths or shadows, not the solid earthly utensils. Mr Grant Allen has ingeniously, and with considerable force, contended that the two faiths may be correlated with the Long-Barrow Period and the Round-Barrow Period respectively. During the former age, when inhumation was in fashion, the life of the grave was considered to be as material and real as life on the earth, and the weapons would serve equally well for both worlds. Among the cremationists of the Bronze Age who imagined the existence of “a realm of incorporeal disembodied spirits,” the ghost was conceived to be immaterial, therefore the weapons were broken or charred with fire[688]. It must further be noted that Mr Grant Allen, along with some other writers, does not altogether accept Professor Tylor’s theory of animism. He does not believe that the ideas involved in animism are demonstrably primitive[689], and, following in the footsteps of Herbert Spencer, he seeks the origin of religion in ancestor-worship and its associated ancestral ghosts. According to this hypothesis, objects were first placed in, or on, the grave, to propitiate the dead. As fear of the corpse gradually diminished, respect became the dominant idea, and