INTRODUCTION 



ing no activity but will, he identified the one 

 with the other." 



Of course this theory is by no means pecu- 

 liar to Fiske. On the contrary, it is no doubt 

 still the most usual one. But it is not Spencer's. 

 While Spencer's just cited essay, taken by itself, 

 may not have impressed Fiske as requiring a 

 special revision of the hypothesis concerning 

 myth-making which he had accepted, the mat- 

 ter would have appeared to him to require more 

 careful reconsideration if he had had before him, 

 at the time when he finally prepared the " Cos- 

 mic Philosophy " for the press, the first vol- 

 ume of Spencer's " Principles of Sociology." ^ 

 In Part I., chapter ix. § 6^, Spencer takes a 

 definite stand against the belief that the tend- 

 ency to regard inanimate things as animate is 

 a primary tendency of primitive man. Spencer 

 is " obliged to diverge at the outset from cer- 

 tain interpretations currently given " of the su- 

 perstitions of the primitive man. " The belief, 

 tacit or avowed, that the primitive man thinks 

 there is life in things which are not living, is 

 clearly an untenable belief. Consciousness of 



^ According to the Preface to the first edition of this vol- 

 ume, only 1 60 pages of the original issue of the volume (in 

 parts, to subscribers) had appeared in 1 874 (viz., in June and 

 November of that year). The whole volume was published 

 at the end of 1876. 



cxiii 



