ANTHROPOiMORPHISM AND COSMISM 



fication. To adopt a familiar expression of Plato, 

 we are ever carrying on a process of dichotomy ; 

 or, in the more precise language of modern psy- 

 chology, we are continually segregating similar 

 objects and similar relations of objects into 

 groups, apart from those which they do not re- 

 semble. If we fail to detect the resemblances 

 which really exist, or if we have imagined re- 

 semblances which do not exist, our interpreta- 

 tion is so far inaccurate and untrustworthy, but 

 not therefore necessarily useless. Some theory 

 is needful as a basis for further observation. 

 Wrong classification is the indispensable pre- 

 lude to right classification. The mind cannot 

 go alone till it has for a while groped and stum- 

 bled. Nature, the hoary Sphinx, sternly pro- 

 pounds a riddle; and many a luckless guesser 

 gets devoured before an Oidipous arrives with 

 the true solution. 



In the primitive hypothesis, therefore, the 

 forces of nature must have been likened to hu-' 

 man volition, because there was nothing else 

 with which to compare them. Man felt within 

 himself a source of power, and did not yet sur- 

 mise that power could have any other source 

 than one like that which he knew. Seeing activ- 

 ity everywhere manifested, and knowing no ac- 

 tivity but will, he identified the one with the 

 other ; and thus the same mighty power of im- 

 agination which now, restrained and guided by 

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