THE QUESTION RESTATED 



process of substituting what may be called dy- 

 namical habits of thought for statical habits. 

 Clearly the formation of a theory of the uni- 

 verse, whether as expressed in the crude my- 

 thologies of the barbarians or in the elaborate 

 systems of modern philosophers, is the estab- 

 lishment of a complex group of subjective rela- 

 tions that are either very imperfectly or much 

 more completely adjusted to objective relations. 

 All men now existing, whether civilized or sav- 

 age, with the exception of idiots and very young 

 children, possess some such theory, however 

 vague and shadowy it may be. • Such general 

 statements as may be made by the most igno- 

 rant boor obviously imply some dim conception 

 of the world and of his relations to it. Even 

 the beliefs that the moon is about the size of 

 a cheese, or that the devil has bewitched his 

 cattle, are parts of a rudimentary kind of cos- 

 mic philosophy. Now among uneducated per- 

 sons, alike in barbarous and in civilized coun- 

 tries, the crude philosophies current universally 

 imply that the general arrangement of things is 

 everywhere and in all ages substantially the 

 same as it is witnessed by them in their imme- 

 diate environment. Their theories are not ad- 

 justed to remote facts in time and space which 

 only a thorough education could have added to 

 their experience. They take what we may call 

 a statical view of things. Hence they suppose 



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