MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY. 805 



beast ; all are great beings endowed with wonderful attributes. Let us^_ 

 call this stage zootheism, when men worship beasts. All the phe- 

 nomena of nature are the doings of these animal gods, all the facts of 

 nature, all the phenomena of the known universe, all the institutions 

 of humanity known to the philosophers of this stage, are accounted for 

 in the mythologic history of these zo5morphic gods. 



In the third stage a wide gulf is placed between man and the lower 

 animals. The animal gods are dethroned, and the powers and phe- 

 nomena of nature are personified and deified. Let us call this stage 

 physitheism. The gods are strictly anthropomorphic, having the form 

 as well as the mental, moral, and social attributes of men. Thus we 

 have a god of the sun, a god of the moon, a god of the air, a god of 

 dawn, and a deity of the night. 



In the fourth stage, mental, moral, and social characteristics are 

 personified and deified. Thus we have a god of war, a god of love, a 

 god of revelry, a god of plenty, and like personages who preside over 

 the institutions and occupations of mankind. Let us call this psycho- 

 theism. With the mental, moral, and social characteristics in these 

 gods are associated the powers of nature ; and they differ from nature- 

 gods chiefly in that they have more distinct psychic characteristics. 



Psychotheism, by the processes of mental integration, develops 

 in one direction into monotheism, and in the other into pantheism. 

 When the powers of nature are held predominant in the minds of the 

 philosophers through whose cogitations this evolution of theism is 

 carried on, pantheism, as the highest form of psychotheism, is the 

 final result ; but when the moral qualities are held in highest regard 

 in the minds of the men in whom this process of evolution is carried 

 on, monotheism, or a god whose essential characteristics are moral 

 qualities, is the final product. The monotheistic god is not nature, 

 but presides over and operates through nature. Psychotheism has 

 long been recognized. All of the earlier literature of mankind treats 

 largely of these gods, for it is an interesting fact that in the history 

 of any civilized people, the evolution of psychotheism is approximately 

 synchronous with the invention of an alphabet. In the earliest writ- 

 ings of the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Greeks, this stage is 

 discovered, and Osiris, Indra, and Zeus are characteristic representa- 

 tives. As psychotheism and written language appear together in the 

 evolution of culture, this stage of theism is consciously or uncon- 

 sciously a part of the theme of all written history. 



The paleontologist, in studying the rocks of the hill and the cliffs 

 of the mountain, discovers, in inanimate stones, the life-forms of the 

 ancient earth. The geologist, in the study of the structure of valleys 

 and mountains, discovers groups of facts that lead him to a knowledge 

 of more ancient mountains and valleys and seas, of geographic features 

 long ago buried, and followed by a new land with new mountains and 

 valleys, and new seas. The philologist, in studying the earliest writ- 



