190 TKANSACTIONS OF THE 



The beasts are not gods, but many of the gods are beasts — the 

 ancients of beasts, the prototypes or progenitors of the living 

 animals. The rudiments of physitheism also exist in the worship 

 of the heavenly bodies, the winds, and other natural phenomena 

 personified. 



When animals become beasts of burden they are degraded ; they 

 are discovered to be inferior beings, and the mysteries of animal 

 life are largely dispelled ; and by the development of agriculture 

 man becomes more dependent upon the sun, the seasons, and the 

 weather. The heavenly bodies and meteorologic powers and 

 phenomena grow in importance and become more and more the 

 subject of interest and speculation, until the personifications of 

 natural objects in the heavens and natural phenomena in the seasons 

 and the weather are deified, and the tribal worship presided over 

 by medicine-men and prophets becomes a religion based upon 

 physitheism. The occult lore of the people is composed of stories 

 of the sun, moon, and stars j of thunder, lightning, and the rain- 

 bow: of the storms, clouds, and winds, and of dawn and gloaming. 



There is another important development in the religion of bar- 

 baric peoples. With the establishment of the patriarchy the patri- 

 arch comes gradually to be the great power, and worship of a clan 

 tutelar deity is changed into ancestral worship — the worship of the 

 ancient chiefs or patriarchs; ancestor gods and ancestral worship 

 replace tutelar gods and tutelar worship. Barbarism, then, is prop- 

 erly characterized by domestic ancestor worship and tribal nature 

 worship. 



THE PSYCHIC CHANGE. 



The enlarged plane of human activities already outlined causes 

 an important development in psychic activities. First, percep- 

 tion is enlarged. This is seen in the fact that people at this 

 stage are able to read hieroglyphs; they can perceive meanings 

 in conventional characters. Again, stimulated by the accumu- 

 lation of wealth, arithmetic is developed beyond the counting 

 stage, and man can add a number of units to a number of units, 

 and can subtract numbers from numbers, and divide numbers by 

 numbers. In savagery, men learn to count; in barbarism, men 

 learn arithmetic, and can at once perceive the simpler relations of 

 numbers. The entire field of human thought is greatly enlarged, 

 and with this enlargement there may be observed a nicer discrimi- 



