[f. as prec. + -ISM.]
1. The exercise of the animal faculties; a. in an honorable sense: Animal activity, physical exercise and enjoyment; b. in depreciation: Mere animal enjoyment, sensuality.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 110. Savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all.
1848. Kingsley, Saint’s Trag., Introd. (1878), 6. The ‘healthy animalism’ of the Teutonic mind.
1856. R. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), II. 204. That snug animalism which some men call happiness.
1868. A. K. H. Boyd, Less. Middle Age, 198. A face that expresses pure intellect and feeling, without a vestige of animalism.
2. The doctrine that views men as mere animals.
1857. T. Webb, Intell. Locke, i. 6. The Philosophy of Sensualism was developed … by Helvetius, into an Animalism, which acknowledged no characteristic difference between man and the lower animals.
3. An embodiment of the mere animal propensities; a wholly sensual being. rare.
1868. Tennyson, Lucr., 53. Girls, Hetairai, curious in their art, Hired animalisms.
1875. Farrar, Seekers, III. i. 270. The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms.
