29 Personification

Man projects himself into nature: animism is found everywhere in the world. Primitive peoples almost universally attribute human characteristics to natural phenomena. Storms are conceived of as angry gods, perhaps gods that can be propitiated. This leads to ceremonies which give the feeling of dealing with a recalcitrant nature. At the same time, since nature is made over in man's image, man is able to feel the security of kinship. Nature becomes humanized, she can be dealt with, understood. Events on Earth cease to be pitiless and inexorable; they respond to the will of gods, who also exhibit all the passions from anger to love. So one may make his way through life's dangers by staying on the right side of the gods, propitiating them when they seem displeased, playing one god against another, seeking their help against enemies (who need no personifying) or against illness which is usually conceived as possession by spirits or devils. By janimisrn man escapes his aloneness in an indifferent world.

Allegedly civilized people differ from primitive men in projecting themselves into nature chiefly in the degree to which they believe in their personifications. Children people the dark with terrors, and they build castles in the clouds. Still, the child who sees a dreadful thing in the ink-blot is not much different from the adult who sees a menace in the forces of nature (the "pathetic fallacy") or endless conspiracy in the hearts of men ("paranoia"). There are less dramatic forms of projection. If we interpret the activities of ants, say, in terms of concepts derived from human society, we are misapplying the concepts in a fanciful way. The nature-lover who praises the "industry" of the ants, or complains of the "cruelty" of weasels, the "matriarchy" in a beehive or the "neglect of maternal obligations" of the cuckoo, is either playful or foolish. Strictly, "animism" refers to the primitive belief that rocks, trees, etc., have independent life and soul, but the term currently applies to a more general projection of soul into nature: like man, the world and its parts live, feel, strive.

Striving, motivation, purpose, desire are human traits. It is risky to attribute them to other creatures, however much they may at times seem to behave like people. And it is folly to read a purpose into inanimate configurations. If an observer sees a design in, say, the constellations of stars, this is no evidence that it was designed to be there.

EXAMPLECOMMENT
A novelist writes, "Hans' wife thought of the thing she must tell Hans. Could Hans ever forgive her? The money was so hard earned, so hard saved. And now it was gone, Hans would roar through the old house like a bull. He would glower and stamp, as he did when his temper, that unpredictable temper of his, was fully aroused. He had never yet struck her, but now she trembled and covered her face with her hands as an image, a sort of day-nightmare, passed before her eyes: Hans, his great hand raised about to strike. With an effort she attempted possession of herself. She began to draw the drapes in the big room, against the gathering night. A strong wind had sprung up, the trees lashed against the palings. Black clouds gathered, like the curtain of a tragedy, across the evening gloom." After Hans had forgiven his wife for her extravagance, or whatever it was, the reader should not be surprised to learn that little fleecy clouds whisp across the clean, fresh-washed blue of the morning sky, and little happy lights glisten on the clear puddles in the garden. Only a sentimentalist will suppose that the evening's storm and the morning's clearing "reflect" in real life the passions and joys of people in their houses. Though novelists must be allowed to get their effects where they can find them, even in literature the suggestion invoked by the novelist is a tiresome cliche, and critics complain of its abuse under the label "the pathetic fallacy." But it would never have become a cliche" in literature unless it had its roots somewhere in the feelings of men. No critic would ever complain of the storm in King Lear, and far from complaining of the moors in Return of the Native, critics have said of them that they are the protagonist, for the moors dominate the lives of the characters. The same storm that might seem to reflect her troubled spirit to Hans' wife, might seem a fitting accompaniment to someone starting out on high adventure, full of excitement and imagined triumph.

In our society, animism is not so much a question of belief as one of mood. The effects of nature are not, for us, whipped up by the Moon Goddess or the Furies. But they are still effects.