478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rushed to some distance from it, and betrayed a consternation 

 which was particularly laughable in so large and ferocious-looking 

 a creature. Only after cautious approaches and much hesitation 

 was he induced again to lay hold of the stick. This behavior 

 Showed very clearly that the stick, while displaying none but the 

 properties he was familiar with, was not regarded by him as an 

 active agent, but that when it suddenly inflicted a pain in a way 

 never before experienced from an inanimate object, he was led for 

 the moment to class it with animate objects, and to regard it as 

 capable of again doing him injury. Similarly, in the mind of the 

 primitive man, knowing scarcely more of natural causation than 

 a dog, the anomalous behavior of an object previously classed as 

 inanimate suggests animation. The idea of voluntary action is 

 made nascent, and there arises a tendency to regard the object 

 with alarm, lest it should act in some other unexpected and per- 

 haps mischievous way. The vague notion of animation thus 

 aroused will obviously become a more definite notion as fast as 

 the development of the ghost theory furnishes a specific agency 

 to which the anomalous behavior can be ascribed." 



This conduct of the dog, which every one must have observed 

 under similar circumstances, corresponds to that of the savage 

 who worshiped an anchor which had been cast ashore, and on 

 which he had hurt himself when he first came in contact with it. 

 Superstitious fear of this sort prevails most among men of the 

 lowest order of intelligence, or in that stage of society in which 

 human beings are psychically least removed from beasts. In pro- 

 portion as they rise in the scale of existence and unfold their 

 mental faculties, the more they free themselves from the tyranny 

 of the supernatural. The terror of the dog hurt by the stick was 

 out of all proportion to the pain inflicted, and arose solely from 

 the fact that it was produced by a mysterious cause ; it was fear 

 intensified by the intervention of a ghostly element, and thus 

 working upon the imagination it assumed the nature of religious 

 awe. The case is analogous to that of a big, burly, brutal savage 

 trembling before a rude stock or stone, or a Neapolitan bandit 

 cowering before an image of the Virgin or kissing devoutly the 

 feet of a crucifix. 



The other illustration given by Herbert Spencer is that of a 

 retriever, who, associating the fetching of game with the pleasure 

 of the person to whom she brought it, would often fetch various 

 objects and lay them at her master's feet; and "this had become 

 in her mind an act of propitiation." 



Still more interesting and instructive are Mr. Romanes's ex- 

 periments with a Skye terrier. This dog, which was exceedingly 

 intelligent and therefore an excellent subject for psychological 

 study, " used to play with dry bones, by tossing them in the air, 



