236 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



instinctively that religion of some sort is necessary 

 for life, yet on the other are unable to do violence 

 to their intellectual selves by denying the facts that 

 reason and scientific inquiry reveal, or by closing 

 their eyes to them. 



The question, in briefest form, is this: "What 

 room does science leave for God?" 



To the savage, all is spirit. The meanest objects 

 are charged with influence, the commonest actions 

 fraught with spiritual possibilities, the operations of 

 nature one and all are brought about by spiritual 

 powers — but powers multifarious and conflicting. 

 "Nature can have little unity for savages. It is a 

 Walpurgis-nacht procession, a checkered play of 

 light and shadow, a medley of impish and elfish, 

 friendly and inimical powers." ^ 



But with ordered civilization and dispassionate ob- 

 servation a network of material cause and effect in- 

 vaded this spiritual domain. The mysterious in- 

 fluences, for example, believed to be inherent in 

 springs and running rivers became personified, and, 

 anthropomorphized as nymphs or gods, were removed 

 into a seclusion more remote from practical and 

 everyday life than their unpersonified predecessors. 

 Later, they retreated still farther from actuality into 

 a half-believed mythology, and then passed away 

 into the powerlessness of avowed fairy-story or liter- 

 ary symbolism, while the rivers, perceived as the re- 

 sultant of natural forces, were more and more har- 



iW. James, '09, p. 21. 



