10 CROONIAN LECTURES 



image, to which they gave their own shape and 

 properties. 



Among the wild tribes of America, the Great 

 Spirit is the highest member of a group, a 

 personification of the mightiest of all natural 

 energies ; the sun, God. The living sun itself 

 is not a symbol, but an actual God. The moon 

 is the evil spirit, capricious and changeful. An 

 animal or thing that is worshipped is not a 

 symbol of this or that divine natural power, 

 but becomes altogether a god, a fetish, or spell, 

 or magical charm. 



Even if we look to the origin of our own 

 ideas, we shall find that the belief in the 

 existence of four elements earth, air, fire, 

 water which has lasted down to the infancy 

 and perhaps beyond the maturity of some now 

 alive, is quite sufficient to prove that we once 

 had our ideas of force or fire entirely separable 

 from our ideas of the three different conditions 

 in which ponderable matter may occur. We 

 have all gone through the primitive stage of 

 ideas, in which ponderable matter is entirely 

 separable from force.* 



* In the origin of some of the latest religions, the separa- 

 bility of matter and force is distinctly seen. " In 1792, 



