Such terms are, of course, generalisations from many separate experiences. Out of this sense of mystery grow more definite ideas. {83} The dark and solemn forest, the rushing river, the precipitous rock, the lofty cloud-crowned mountain, the winds and storms, all manifest a common power;[1] it lives in the snake or the bull, in the tiger or the bear. This may be conceived in a highly complex and abstract form. Thus the Zuñis of Mexico, we are told, suppose the sun and moon, the stars, the sky, the earth and sea, with all their various changes, and all inanimate objects, as well as plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious and interrelated life. One term includes them all: _hâi_, "being" or "life." With the prefix _â_, "all," the whole field of nature is summed up as _âhâi_, "life" or "the Beings." This comprehensive term includes the objects of sensible experience regarded as personal existences, and supersensual beings who are known as "Finishers or Makers of the paths of life," the most exalted of all being designated "the Holder of the paths of our lives." So in Annam life is regarded as a universal phenomenon. It belongs not only to men and animals and plants, but to stones and stars, to earth, fire, and wind. But it is seen in groups and kinds rather than individuals, and the limits of its forms are not sharply drawn; it can pass through many transformations, and possesses indefinite possibilities of change. {84} Such conceptions have a long history behind them. [1] M. Durkheim has recently applied conceptions of the _mana_ order to the explanation of totemism. The poets of the ancient Vedic hymns beheld everything around them full of energy. The names by which they designated what they saw all denoted action or agency. The swift flow of the stream gained it the title of the "runner"; as it cut away the banks or furrowed its course deep between the rocks, it was the "plougher"; when it nourished the fields it was the "mother"; when it marked off one territory from another it was the "defender" or "protector." So the seers addressed their invocations to the dawn or the sun, to the winds and the fire, to the river or the mountain, to the earth-mother or the sky-father, as living powers, capable of responding to the prayers of their worshippers. Similar energy dwelt in the horse or the cow, the bird of omen and the guardian dog. It was even shared by ritual implements such as the stones by which the sacred soma-juice was squeezed out, or by the products of human handiwork, the war-car, the weapon, the drum, and the peaceful plough.