animistn.adj.

1807 tr. J.-A.-C. Chaptal Chem. Arts & Manufactures I. i. 47 The former [sc. G. E. Stahl] became the founder of the sect of the Animists.

1819 W. Lawrence Lect. Physiol., Anat., & Nat. Hist. Man 77 A tribe of animists..maintained that the soul is the only cause of life.

1844 J. Bostock Elem. Syst. Physiol. (ed. 4) ix. §3, 513 The hypothesis of the animists..was zealously defended by the Stahlians..and has been received in our times..with certain modifications.

1864 R. F. Burton Mission to Gelele II. 157 Those rewards and punishments by which, according to the Semitic animist, the balance of good and evil in this life is to be struck.

1990 R. French in A. Cunningham & R. French Med. Enlightenment 18th Cent. iv. 103 The ‘animists’ used mathematics to demonstrate the need of a soul to power the machine of the body.

2005 H. Steinke Irritating Experim. ii. v. 198 Although Platner went somewhat further..in his attribution of all movement to the soul, he was an animist of the newer generation who rejected Stahl's notion of the wise and conscious soul.

1866 Fortn. Rev. 15 Aug. 84 The Animist may or may not be an idolater.

1960 A. I. Hallowell in S. Diamond Culture in Hist. 24 The Ojibwa are not animists in the sense that they dogmatically attribute living souls to inanimate objects such as stones.

1975 tr. U. Bianchi Hist. Relig. iii. xi. 85 Animists believe that spirits people all nature, especially wild nature.

1997 G. Harvey Listening People, Speaking Earth x. 170 Animists assert that it is possible to ‘speak with’ and ‘listen to’ trees and hedgehogs, flowers and trout, robins and snakes, rocks and rain.

2006 P. A. Kramer Blood of Govt. 460 The term ‘non-Christian’ was sometimes applied only to animists and sometimes encompassed Muslims as well.

1933 H. Driesch Psychical Res. ii. §3, 134 Many of those who call themselves animists introduce notions, without noticing that they do so, which appreciably transcend the framework of the concept of the living personal soul.

1954 E. A. Nida Customs & Culture vi. 144 It might be said that all men at heart are ‘animists’ in the sense that they are fearful of the supernatural and would like to master the techniques for controlling it.

1979 F. Dyson Disturbing the Universe xxiii. 249 Jacques Monod..calls us ‘animists’, believers in spirits.

2006 A. O. Roberts Sacred Ordinary 91/2 There is something of the animist in all of us, I think.

1868 tr. C. Bernard in N. Amer. Rev. Oct. 414 The ancient animist and vitalist physiologists clearly perceived this double aspect of vital phenomena.

1892 Times 19 Oct. 13/4 The animist school headed by Stahl..felt that the facts of life..were not to be entirely explained by the play of mechanical or chemical forces.

1916 Man 16 143 Somewhat vague animist beliefs play a part in the everyday life of the Sakai.

1974 N.Y. Times 20 June 11/1 The Archbishop recalled that the Moslem dynasty of the Almoravides, while ruling Morocco and Spain in the 11th century, ‘destroyed the animist empire of Ghana under the pretext of a hole war.’

2005 Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 4 Feb. (Friday Suppl.) 20/4 Mali is predominantly Muslim with the exception of the Dogon who remain largely animist.