This category comprises a large number and range of natural objects and phenomena.

Such a distinction between the inert and the active is still present in the habits of thought of unreflecting persons, and it still profoundly affects the prevalent theory of human life and of natural processes; but it does not pervade our daily life to the extent or with the far-reaching practical consequences that are apparent at earlier stages of culture and belief.
To the mind of the barbarian, the elaboration and utilisation of what is afforded by inert nature is activity on quite a different plane from his dealings with "animate" things and forces.

The line of demarcation may be vague and shifting, but the broad distinction is sufficiently real and cogent to influence the barbarian scheme of life.

To the class of things apprehended as animate, the barbarian fancy imputes an unfolding of activity directed to some end.

It is this teleological unfolding of activity that constitutes any object or phenomenon an "animate" fact.
Wherever the unsophisticated savage or barbarian meets with activity that is at all obtrusive, he construes it in the only terms that are ready to hand--the terms immediately given in his consciousness of his own actions.