But the primary idea seems necessarily to have been that the life was equally distributed all over the body.

And since, as will be seen subsequently, the savage was incapable of conceiving the abstract idea of life, he thought of it in a concrete form as part of the substance of the flesh and blood.
And since primitive man had no conception of inanimate matter it followed that when any part of the body was severed from the whole, he did not think of the separate fraction as merely lifeless matter, but as still a part of the body to which it had originally belonged and retaining a share of its life.

For according to his view of the world and of animate nature, which has been explained above, he could not think of it as anything else.

Thus the clippings of hair, nails, teeth, the spittle and any other similar products all in his view remained part of the body from which they had been severed and retained part of its life.

In the case of the elements, earth, fire and water, which he considered as living beings and subsequently worshipped as gods, this view was correct.