178 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. i. 



cause and effect. Yet in our minds, in so far at least as our 

 overt utterances are concerned, fetishism lias been very nearly 

 destroyed by the long contemplation of the unvarying uni- 

 formity of the processes of nature. In the mind of the primi- 

 tive man there were no such checks. The crude inference 

 had its own way unopposed ; and every action was believed 

 to have its volition behind it. There was a volition for sun- 

 rise, and another for sunset ; and for the flood of rain and the 

 lightning there was a mighty conflict of volitions, a genuine 

 battle of manitous, or superior beings, whenever — in mythic 

 phrase — the great black shaggy ram, lifting audaciously his 

 moist fleece against the sky, was slain and annihilated by the 

 golden, poison-tipped, unerring shafts of Bellerophon. 1 



Thus we may safely assert, with Comte, that the earliest 

 attitude assumed by the mind in interpreting nature was a 

 fetishistic attitude. That chaos which the oldest traditions 

 and the latest science alike recognize as the primordial state 

 of the material universe must also have characterized the 

 infancy of the human intellect. Until phenomena had been 

 partially generalized, they could only have been considered 

 the manifestations of arbitrary powers, not only unallied, but 

 even in conflict with each other. And psychology tells us 



1 Thus, as I have observed in another work, " a myth is an explanation, by 

 the uncivilized mind, of some natural phenomenon ; not an allegory, not an 

 esoteric symbol, — for the ingenuity is wasted which strives to detect in myths 

 the remnants of a refined primeval science, — but an explanation. Primitive 

 men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of allegory, nor were 

 they such sorry pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve 

 their purpose. Their minds, we may be sure, worked like our own, and 

 when they spoke of the far-darting sun-god, they meant just what they said, 

 Bave that where we propound a scientific theorem, they constructed a myth. 

 A thing is said to be explained when it is classified with other things with 

 which we are already acquainted. That is the only kind of explanation of 

 which the highest science is capable. We explain the origin, progress, and 

 ending of a thunder-storm, when we classify the phenomena presented by it 

 along with other more familiar phenomena of vaporization and condensation. 

 But the primitive man explained the same thing to his own satisfaction when 

 he had classified it along with the well-known phenomena of human volition, 

 by constructing a theory of a great black dragon pierced by the unerring 

 arrows of a heavenly archer." — Myths and Myth-Makers, p. 2L 



