COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



Thus we may safely assert, with Comte, that 

 the earliest attitude assumed by the mind in in- 

 terpreting nature was a fetishistic attitude. That 

 chaos which the oldest traditions and the latest 

 science alike recognize as the primordial state of 

 the material universe must also have character- 

 ized the infancy of the human intellect. Until 

 phenomena had been partially generalized, they 

 could only have been considered the manifesta- 

 tions of arbitrary powers, not only unallied, but 

 even in conflict with each other. And psycho- 

 logy tells us that the fetishistic hypothesis was 

 the only possible one, — that these powers must 

 have been supposed to effect their purposes by 

 means of volition. As we have seen, all inter- 

 pretation of phenomena is an interpretation in 

 terms of likeness and unlikeness. We know an 

 object only as this thing or thdt thing, only as 

 classifiable with this or that other object ; and 

 the extent of our knowledge may be measured 

 by the accuracy and exhaustiveness of our classi- 



acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of which the 

 highest science is capable. We explain the origin, progress, 

 and ending of a thunder-storm, when we classify the pheno- 

 mena presented by it along with other more familiar phenomena 

 of vaporization and condensation. But the primitive man ex- 

 plained the same thing to his own satisfaction when he had 

 classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human 

 volition by constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced 

 by the unerring arrows of a heavenly archer." Myths and 

 Myth^MakerSy p. 21. 



264 



