The more primitive form (or the more archaic phase) is an incipient animistic belief, or an animistic sense of relations and things, that imputes a quasi-personal character to facts.

To the archaic man all the obtrusive and obviously consequential objects and facts in his environment have a quasi-personal individuality.

They are conceived to be possessed of volition, or rather of propensities, which enter into the complex of causes and affect events in an inscrutable manner.

The sporting man's sense of luck and chance, or of fortuitous necessity, is an inarticulate or inchoate animism.

It applies to objects and situations, often in a very vague way; but it is usually so far defined as to imply the possibility of propitiating, or of deceiving and cajoling, or otherwise disturbing the holding of propensities resident in the objects which constitute the apparatus and accessories of any game of skill or chance.