Animism

Webster's Dictionary

(1): (n.) The doctrine, taught by Stahl, that the soul is the proper principle of life and development in the body.

(2): (n.) The belief that inanimate objects and the phenomena of nature are endowed with personal life or a living soul; also, in an extended sense, the belief in the existence of soul or spirit apart from matter.

The Nuttall Encyclopedia

A belief that there is a psychical body within the physical body of a living being, correspondent with it in attributes, and that when the connection between them is dissolved by death the former lives on in a ghostly form; in other words, a belief of a ghost-soul existing conjointly with and subsisting apart from the body, its physical counterpart.