[151] In the _B. of Am. Ethn._, XIII. p. 374, F. H. Cushing, describing “Zuñi Creation Myths,” says the dramaturgic tendency is to suppose that Nature can be made to act by men, if “they do first what they wish the elements to do,” according “as these things were done or made to be done by the ancestral gods of creation.” The last clause is, perhaps, an animistic gloss of the Zuñis’, who were, of course, very far from primitive thought. [152] _The Psychological Study of Religion_, p. 165. [153] Cf. S. H. Ray, “People and Language of Lifu,” _J.R.A.I._ (XLVII.), p. 296, who says, a woman whose son or husband was away at war would place a piece of coral to represent him on a mat, move it about with her right hand as he might move in fight, and with her left brush away imaginary evils. This protected him (evidently by exemplary Magic). [154] W. H. R. Rivers, _The Disappearance of Useful Arts_, also _History of Melanesian Society_, II. p. 445; and in Turner’s _Samoa_ (p. 145) we are told that the practice of embalming died out with the family of embalmers. CHAPTER V ANIMISM § 1. WHAT IS ANIMISM? If, when the cohesion of the hunting-pack had weakened, belief in Magic by giving authority to elders became very influential and useful in primitive societies, still greater in subsequent evolution has been the power of Animism. For belief in ghosts led in time to the worship of ancestors, and then especially to the worship of the ancestors of chiefs or heroes, some of whom became gods; and the belief in gods strengthened the authority of chiefs and kings who were descended from them, and helped to maintain the unity of the tribe or nation from generation to generation and from age to age.