140 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [vm. 



child ; its tendency to believe in itself as the centre of the uni 

 verse, and its disposition to exercise despotic tyranny over those 

 who could crush it with a finger. 



Still less is there anything unscientific, or anti-scientific, in 

 this infantile anthropomorphism. The child observes that many 

 phenomena are the consequences of affections of itself; it soon 

 has excellent reasons for the belief that many other phenomena 

 are consequences of the affections of other beings, more or less 

 like itself. And having thus good evidence for believing that 

 many of the most interesting occurrences about it are explicable 

 on the hypothesis that they are the work of intelligences like 

 itself having discovered a vera causa for many phenomena 

 why should the child limit the application of so fruitful an hypo 

 thesis ? The dog has a sort of intelligence, so has the cat ; why 

 should not the doll and the picture-book also have a share, 

 proportioned to their likeness to intelligent things ? 



The only limit which does arise is exactly that which, as a 

 matter of science, should arise ; that is to say, the anthropo 

 morphic interpretation is applied only to those phenomena 

 which, in their general nature, or their apparent capriciousness, 

 resemble those which the child observes to be caused by itself, 

 or by beings like itself. All the rest are regarded as things 

 which explain themselves, or are inexplicable. 



It is only at a later stage of intellectual development that the 

 intelligence of man awakes to the apparent conflict between the 

 anthropomorphic, and what I may call the physical, 1 aspect of 

 nature, and either endeavours to extend the anthropomorphic 

 view over the whole of nature which is the tendency of theo 

 logy ; or to give the same exclusive predominance to the physical 

 view which is the tendency of science; or adopts a middle 



1 The word &quot; positive &quot; is in every way objectionable. In one sense it 

 suggests that mental quality which was undoubtedly largely developed in 

 M. Comte, but can best be dispensed with in a philosopher ; in another, it 

 is unfortunate in its application to a system which starts with enormous 

 negations ; in its third, and specially philosophical sense, as implying a 

 system of thought which assumes nothing beyond the content of observed 

 facts, it implies that which never did exist, and never will. 



