ch. vii.] ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND COSMISM. 177 



gation, " 0, Physics, beware of Metaphysics ! " The term, 

 as thus defined, as well as the term " theology," belongs to 

 the general vocabulary of modern philosophy ; and in using 

 the two, we in nowise tacitly commit ourselves to the un- 

 tenable hypothesis of the " Three Stages," while at the same 

 time we are thereby enabled the better to sum up the facts 

 which seemed to Comte to justify his generalization. 



Premising this, we may proceed to gather our illustrations 

 of the deanthropomorphizing process. And first let us note 

 that theology, metaphysics, and science all have their com- 

 mon starting-point in mythology. It is worthy of remark 

 that at about the same time when Comte first announced his 

 theory of the primeval origin of philosophy in fetishism, the 

 greatest of modern scholars, Jacob Grimm, was beginning 

 those profound iuductive researches which ended in demon- 

 strating the fetishistic origin of myths. The myths of anti- 

 quity and of modern savagery constitute philosophy in its 

 most primitive form, and embody whatever wisdom fetishism 

 has to offer as the result of its meditations upon the life of 

 man and the life of nature. Primitive men, like modern 

 savages, had no systematic theology ; they possessed no sym- 

 bolic conception of God as an infinite unity ; they were astray 

 amid an endless multitude of unexplained and apparently 

 unconnected phenomena, and could therefore form no gene- 

 ralized or abstract notions of divinity. But they were 

 "oppressed with, a sensus numinis, a feeling that invisible, 

 powerful agencies were at work around them, who, as they 

 willed, could help or hurt them." They naturally took it for 

 granted that all kinds of activity must resemble the one 

 kind with which they were directly acquainted — their own 

 volition. Seeing activity, life and motion everywhere, it was 

 impossible to avoid the inference that intelligent volition 

 must be everywhere. Even after centuries of philosophizing, 

 we can hardly refrain from imagining an anthropomorphic 

 effort, oi nisus, as constituting the necessary link between 



vol. I. N 



