REASONS FOK ADOPTING THIS VIEW. 55 



in Geology ; it is thus in Biology ; it is thus in Philology. 

 Here we find this characteristic repeated. Nicknaming, 

 the inheritance of nicknames, and, to some extent, the 

 misinterpretation of nicknames, go among us still ; and 

 were surnames absent, language imperfect, and knowledge 

 as rudimentary as of old, it is tolerably manifest that re 

 sults would arise like those we have contemplated. 



A further characteristic of a true cause is that it ac 

 counts not only for the particular group of phenomena to 

 be interpreted, but also for other groups. The cause here 

 alleged does this. It equally well explains the worship 

 of animals, of plants, of mountains, of winds, of celestial 

 bodies, and even of appearances too vague to be consid 

 ered entities. It gives us an intelligible genesis of feti- 

 chistic conceptions in general. It furnishes us with a 

 reason for the practice, otherwise so unaccountable, of 

 moulding the words applied to inanimate objects in such 

 ways as to imply masculine and feminine genders. It 

 shows us how there naturally arose the worship of com 

 pound animals, and of monsters half man half brute. And 

 it shows us why the worship of purely anthropomorphic 

 deities came later, when language had so far developed 

 that it could preserve in tradition the distinction between 

 proper names and nicknames. 



A further verification of this view is, that it conforms 

 to the general law of evolution : showing us how, out of 

 one simple, vague, aboriginal form of belief, there have 

 arisen, by continuous differentiations, the many hetero 

 geneous forms of belief which have existed and do exist. 

 The desire to propitiate the other self of the dead ances 

 tor, displayed among savage tribes, dominantly manifested 

 by the early historic races, by the Peruvians and Mexi 

 cans, by the Chinese at the present time, and to a consid 

 erable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do 



