COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



scientific methods, leads us to discoveries and 

 inventions, then wildly ran riot in mythologic 

 fictions whereby to explain the phenomena of 

 nature.^ 



The advance from this primeval fetishism 

 through polytheism to monotheism was deter- 

 mined by the gradual attainment of physical 

 knowledge, or, in other words, by the detection 

 of certain uniformities in the processes of na- 

 ture. The discovery of natural laws is the se- 

 gregation of phenomena into groups according 

 to their relations of likeness and unlikeness, 

 attended by the disclosure of community of 

 causation for the phenomena constituting each 

 group. After this process has continued for a 

 time, it is perceived that there are different 

 modes of causation. Phenomena, in the pro- 

 duction of which the human will is not impli- 

 cated, are seen to differ from those in which it 

 is concerned, by exhibiting a more conspicuous 

 and readily detected regularity of sequence. 

 Consequently, in considering them, the concep- 

 tion of arbitrary or capricious will is gradually 

 excluded, and is replaced by the conception of 

 a uniform force, whose actions may be foreseen, 

 and whose effects, if harmful, may be avoided. 

 This having occurred in the case of the more 



^ [See Introduction, § 44, for remarks concerning the rela- 

 tion of this view of primitive belief to Spencer's views, and 

 to recent discussion.] 



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