Breaking down the question

The question has two parts. Discuss the concept of animism asks you to explain the theory — most closely associated with E. B. Tylor — that religion originates in the belief in spirits or souls. The second command, differentiate it from naturism, asks you to contrast it with Max Müller's rival theory that religion originates in the awe inspired by the forces of nature.

Both are classical theories of the origin of religion, and the examiner wants their definitions, their proposed source of religious belief, and the crucial differences between them. A concluding note on how Durkheim criticised both adds depth.

Threads to develop:

  • Animism — belief in spirits, Tylor's account of its origin and development.
  • Naturism — the deification of natural forces, Müller's account.
  • The key points of difference between the two.

How to approach it

Open by placing both animism and naturism among the early evolutionary theories of the origin of religion, each seeking the primitive root from which religion grew. Explain animism first: Tylor's argument that reflection on dreams, death and shadows led "primitive" people to infer a soul, a belief later extended to a world peopled by spirits.

Then set out naturism: Müller's view that religion began in the emotion of awe before nature's grandeur, personified and named until natural forces became gods. Draw the contrast along their source of religion — spirit versus nature. Anchor the answer in the note on the types of religious practices, and close with Durkheim's critique.

Model answer

Animism and naturism are two classical, evolutionary theories that sought to explain the origin of religion by identifying its most primitive form. Both belong to the nineteenth-century intellectual effort to trace religion to its earliest root, and although they were later criticised, they remain foundational to the sociology and anthropology of religion.

Animism, developed by E. B. Tylor in his work Primitive Culture, holds that the earliest form of religion is the belief in spiritual beings — souls, spirits and ghosts. Tylor argued that "primitive" humans arrived at the idea of a soul through reflection on two puzzles of experience. The first was the contrast between life and death, waking and sleep: what animates a living body and departs at death? The second was the experience of dreams and visions, in which a person seemed to travel or to meet the dead while the body lay still. To make sense of these, early humans inferred an anima — an immaterial soul that could exist apart from the body. This belief was then extended: not only humans but animals, plants and inanimate objects were thought to possess spirits, and the world came to be seen as populated by souls and supernatural beings that had to be propitiated. From this belief in spirits, Tylor argued, religion evolved through stages — from the worship of spirits, to polytheism, and finally to monotheism. Animism is thus the doctrine that religion begins in the peopling of the world with spiritual agents.

Naturism, associated chiefly with Max Müller, offers a different origin. It holds that religion arose not from the idea of the soul but from the human response to the powers and phenomena of nature. Confronted with the sun, the sky, storms, rivers and the changing seasons — vast, powerful and beyond control — early humans were filled with a sense of awe and wonder. Unable to explain these forces, they personified them, endowing them with will and agency, and eventually deified them as gods. Müller placed particular weight on language, arguing that names given to natural forces gradually came to be treated as the names of divine persons — a process he memorably described as a "disease of language" — so that the sun or the dawn became a deity. Religion, on this view, begins in the emotion of awe before nature.

The two theories differ in several respects. First and most importantly, they locate the source of religion differently: animism finds it in the belief in spirits and souls, naturism in the response to the forces of nature. Second, the psychological root differs — for animism it is reflection on the puzzles of dreams and death, for naturism it is the emotion of awe and wonder before nature's grandeur. Third, the primary objects of early worship differ: spirits and ghosts of the dead in animism, personified natural phenomena in naturism. Fourth, naturism gives a central place to the role of language in generating gods, whereas animism does not.

Both theories were later criticised, most influentially by Émile Durkheim, who argued that they reduce religion to an illusion born of intellectual error or misperception, and that neither could explain the social force and binding authority of religion. Durkheim replaced the search for a psychological origin with the idea that religion arises from the experience of society itself, expressed in the division of the world into the sacred and the profane. Nonetheless, animism and naturism remain the classic starting points for any account of how religion may have begun.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners expect precise attribution — animism to Tylor, naturism to Müller — and a clear statement of the source each proposes: spirits in the one, natural forces in the other. Scripts that blur the two, or that describe animism as the worship of nature, lose the central distinction.

The strongest answers explain why each theory posits its origin — dreams and death for animism, awe and the "disease of language" for naturism — and then set out the differences systematically rather than describing the two in isolation. A closing reference to Durkheim's critique, and to the sacred–profane framework that superseded both, signals wider command of the theories of religion.

A common weakness is to spend the whole answer on animism and treat naturism briefly, when the command differentiate requires balanced coverage and an explicit contrast. Concise, accurately attributed and genuinely comparative, such an answer earns the top band for a ten-marker.