PRIMITIVE ANIMISM. 



that men feared and attempted to propitiate the 

 spirits that conducted the operations of nature, al- 

 though Animism can hardly yet be called a religion. 

 It is not until some subordination is introduced into 

 the spiritual chaos, which corresponded to the mater- 

 ial chaos in the thought of early man, that real 

 religion is evolved. But as the underlying simil- 

 arity in the operations of nature came to be per- 

 ceived, the numberless spirits aggregated into gods, 

 and a god of fire presiding over the whole depart- 

 ment, took the place of individual fire-spirits acting 

 every time a fire burned. Thus Animism passes 

 into Polytheism, and, as the consciousness of the 

 uniformity of nature grows, into Monotheism, unless 

 the derivative law of causation so obscures the 

 personal volition from which it sprang as to make 

 personal agency seem impossible, when there takes 

 place a direct transition into Pantheism. 



§ 7. Animism is also the origin of philosophy, 

 for the volitional theory of causation is also a theory 

 of the ultimate truth about the world. 



§ 8. It is also the origin of science, for the spirits 

 are also the efficient causes of phenomena, and the 

 physical changes of the world are explained by their 

 volitions. Thus while religion was rapidly differ- 

 entiated from philosophy and science by the growth 

 of an emotional factor, passing through fear and 

 propitiation into worship, philosophy and science 

 remained united much longer. The theories of the 

 physical and of the metaphysical, the working 

 theories of the actual appearances of the environ- 

 ment, and of its ultimate nature, remained identical 

 or closely connected. It is only in comparatively 

 recent times that the independent growth of the 

 physical sciences, the accumulation of facts, the 



