ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND COSMISM 



phic effort, or nisus^ as constituting the necessary 

 link between cause and effect. Yet in our minds, 

 in so far at least as our overt utterances are con- 

 cerned, fetishism has been very nearly destroyed 

 by the long contemplation of the unvarying uni- 

 formity of the processes of nature. In the mind 

 of the primitive man there were no such checks. 

 The crude inference had its own way unop- 

 posed ; and every action was believed to have 

 its volition behind it. There was a volition for 

 sunrise, and another for sunset ; and for the 

 flood of rain and the lightning there was a mighty 

 conflict of volitions, a genuine ha.ttle of mani^ouSy 

 or superior beings, whenever — in mythic phrase 

 — the great black shaggy ram, lifting audaciously 

 his moist fleece against the sky, was slain and an- 

 nihilated by the golden, poison-tipped, unerring 

 shafts of Bellerophon.^ 



^ Thus, as I have observed in another work, " a myth is 

 an explanation, by the uncivilized mind, of some natural phe- 

 nomenon ; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, — for the 

 ingenuity is v^^asted v^hich strives to detect in myths the rem- 

 nants of a refined primeval science, — but an explanation. 

 Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means 

 of allegory, nor were they such sorry pedants as to talk in rid- 

 dles when plain language would serve their purpose. Their 

 minds, we may be sure, worked like our own, and when they 

 spoke of the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they 

 said, save that where we propound a scientific theorem, they 

 constructed a myth. A thing is said to be explained when it 

 is classified with other things with which we are already 

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