176 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pp. i. 



which (if I may be allowed to invent a rather formidable 

 word in imitation of Coleridge) is best described as a con- 

 tinuous process of dcanthropomorphizalion, or the stripping 

 off of the anthropomorphic attributes with which primeval 

 philosophy clothed the unknown Power which is manifested 

 in phenomena. Or, to be still more accurate, we may de- 

 scribe the process of philosophic evolution as a continuous 

 integration, in thought, of causal agencies ; of which process 

 the gradual deauthropomorphization of these agencies is the 

 necessary symptom and result, — until, as the end of the 

 process, when all causal agencies have become integrated in 

 the conception of a single Causal Agency, the tendency to 

 ascribe anthropomorphic attributes to this Agency has reached 

 its minimum. 



We may now consider this process somewhat more in 

 detail, as it has been concretely exemplified in history. And 

 in doing this it will become apparent that, in spite of its 

 vagueness, its inadequacy, and the fundamental error which 

 vitiates it, the Comtean conception undeniably contained an 

 adumbration of the truth. It recognized the process of dean- 

 thropomorphization as historically displayed, though it did 

 not interpret it psychologically. And in several of its minor 

 statements, we can have no hesitation in admitting Comte's 

 generalization to be thoroughly valid. It is, for example, a 

 historical fact that monotheism was preceded by polytheism, 

 and that polytheism was preceded by fetishism ; as indeed it 

 was a psychological necessity that it should be so. Nor need 

 we have any scruples about grouping these various forms of 

 anthropomorphism under the general title of theology; or 

 about employing the term " metaphysics " to designate that 

 imperfect phase of science in which the necessity for veri- 

 fication is not yet recognized, and in which the limits to 

 philosophic inquiry are as yet undetermined. It was in this 

 sense that the term was defined in our fifth chapter, and it 

 was in this sense that Newton used it in his famous objur- 



