Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 183 



to the three stages of mental evolution, and see 

 whether or not it is alike applicable to all. 



We shall find, to begin with, that it is not ap- 

 plicable to the theological state. When man first 

 looked upon the wonders of Nature, his untaught 

 imagination gave birth to weird, fantastic shapes 

 innumerable, peopling the air, the streams, the 

 forest, and the mountain-chasm. Just awakened, 

 as it were, to self-consciousness, and feeling his 

 own life thrilling within him, he ascribed that life 

 to everything around him. He looked upon the 

 wide, dark surface of the " many-sounding sea," 

 and saw there a mighty, restless, earth-upheaving 

 Power, which refinement afterwards personified, 

 and called Poseidon. Gazing above him on the 

 blue expanse which seemed to encompass the 

 " plain of the earth," he came to recognize there 

 a Divinity of light and warmth, a Devas, a pater- 

 nal Zeus. When the bright clouds flitted along 

 the sky, it was Hermes driving the celestial cat- 

 tle to the milking ; when the north-wind arose, 

 cold and blustering, it was Boreas storming in his 

 wrath ; when the stars came out at night, there 

 were countless deities to whom this primitive man 

 made sacred the days of the week. The changes 

 of the seasons, the ceaselessly recurring death 

 and resurrection of Nature, were typified in wild 



