COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



starting-point in mythology. It is worthy of 

 remark that at about the same time when Comte 

 first announced his theory of the primeval ori- 

 gin of philosophy in fetishism, the greatest of 

 modern scholars, Jacob Grimm, was beginning 

 those profound inductive researches which ended 

 in demonstrating the fetishistic origin of myths. 

 The myths of antiquity and of modern savagery 

 constitute philosophy in its most primitive form, 

 and embody whatever wisdom fetishism has to 

 offer as the result of its meditations upon the 

 life of man and the life of nature. Primitive 

 men, like modern savages, had no systematic 

 theology ; they possessed no symbolic concep- 

 tion of God as an infinite unity — they were 

 astray amid an endless multitude of unexplained 

 and apparently unconnected phenomena, and 

 could therefore form no generalized or abstract 

 notions of divinity. But they were " oppressed 

 with a sensus numinis, a feeling that invisible, 

 powerful agencies were at work around them, 

 who, as they willed, could help or hurt them." 

 They naturally took it for granted that all kinds 

 of activity must resemble the one kind with 

 which they were directly acquainted — their own 

 volition. Seeing activity, life and motion every- 

 where, it was impossible to avoid the inference 

 that intelligent volition must be everywhere. 

 Even after centuries of philosophizing, we can 

 hardly refrain from imagining an anthropomor- 

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