ch. vii.] ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND COSMISM. 17U 



that the fetishistic hypothesis was the only possible one, — 

 that these powers must have been supposed to effect their 

 purposes by means of volition. As we have seen, all inter- 

 pretation of phenomena is an interpretation in terms of like- 

 ness and unlikeness. We know an object only as this thing 

 or that thing, only as classifiable with this or that other 

 object; and the extent of our knowledge may be measured 

 by the accuracy and exhaustiveness of our classification. To 

 adopt a familiar expression of Plato, we are ever carrying 

 on a process of dichotomy ; or, in the more precise language 

 of modern psychology, we are continually segregating similar 

 objects and similar relations of objects into groups, apart from 

 those which they do not resemble. If we fail to detect the 

 resemblances which really exist, or if we have imagined 

 resemblances which do not exist, our interpretation is so far 

 inaccurate and untrustworthy, but not therefore necessarily 

 useless. Some theory is needful as a basis for further 

 observation. Wrong classification is the indispensable pre- 

 lude to right classification. The mind cannot go alone till 

 it has for awhile groped and stumbled. Xature, the hoary 

 Sphinx, sternly propounds a riddle ; and many a luckless 

 guesser gets devoured before an Oidipous arrives with the 

 true solution. 



In the primitive hypothesis, therefore, the forces of nature 

 must have been likened to human volition, because there was 

 nothing else with which to compare them. Man felt within 

 himself a source of power, and did not yet surmise that power 

 could have any other source than one like that which he 

 knew. Seeing activity everywhere manifested, and knowing 

 no activity but will, he identified the one with the other; 

 and thus the same mighty power of imagination which now, 

 restrained and guided by scientific methods, leads us to dis- 

 coveries and inventions, then wildly ran riot in mythologic 

 fictions whereby to explain the phenomena of nature. 



The advance from this primeval fetishism through poly- 



N 2 



