FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL ANTHROPOMORPHIC. 



6i 



ants of the grossest anthropomorphisms of primi- 

 tive savages, who naively and uncritically ascribed 

 whatsoever they felt, and whatsoever seemed natural 

 to them to the woi^ld outside them. And grotesque 

 as was the savage's method of explanation, grossly 

 erroneous as was the ascription to nature of these 

 primitive fancies, it was at all events better than 

 their subsequent treatment at the hands of science. 

 They were not rejected outright, but reduced Into 

 unmeaning skeletons of explanations by the cutting 

 away of such portions as seemed too obviously 

 false to be any longer retained ; they were not 

 burled In merciful oblivion, but permitted to linger 

 on in a maimed and impotent condition, starved, and 

 stripped of the sensuous analogies that suggested 

 their self-evidence. And by this brutal process of 

 mutilation, all the advantages of the primitive view 

 have been lost, without countervailing gain, and 

 without extirpating the original taint of our know- 

 ledge : It is as though we should attempt to change 

 an Ethiopian's skin by flaying him, and then dis- 

 cover that even his bones were not as the bones of 

 a white man. Our categories have too often be- 

 come mere symbols, words to which no definite fact 

 can be found to correspond. 



Thus the animistic conception of a cause as a 

 personal will (chap. i. § 5, 6), was Intelligible though 

 false ; but what possible meaning can be attached to 

 the conception of Cause as Identity ? 



So long, again, as a frankly material view was 

 taken of Substance, and nothing was accounted 

 substance that could not be touched, seen, tasted, 

 and smelt, we were at least secured against the 

 hypostaslzing of ** second substances," safe from the 

 confusions of Ideas with real existences with which 



