+228+. It is often by accident that one object or another displays itself as helpful or harmful, just as, in a later and higher form of religious belief, a theophany is often, as to time and place, a matter of accident. Indeed, most manifestations of extrahuman power in the earliest times may be said to come to man incidentally, since he does not generally demand them from the gods or make experiments in order to discover them. But in the nature of the case many things meet him as to which he is obliged to use judgment, and of these a certain number appear to him to be powerful. +229+. These objects are held by him to be in some sort akin to man. This seems to be his view of certain dead things in which a mysterious power is held to reside. When such objects are parts of animals (bones, feathers, claws, tails, feet, fat, etc.), or of vegetables that are used as charms, it may be supposed that they simply retain the power resident in the objects of which they are parts--objects originally living and sacred. In other cases an indwelling supernatural being is assumed, as, for example, in minerals whose shape and color are remarkable. +230+. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by spirits.[429] The Australian sacred object called _churinga_--a thing of mysterious potency--is believed to be the abode of the soul of an ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are found all over the world. +231+. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things (perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in Polynesia and Melanesia it is called _mana_, and other names for it occur elsewhere.[430] +232+. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of men are attributed to it--all great chiefs possess it in an eminent degree;[431] it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);[432] here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.[433] Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing to which it is attached.[434]