CH. xxn.] GENESIS OF MAN, MORALLY. 349 



actions, inducing that kind of dissatisfaction which, if weak, 

 we call regret, and, if severe, remorse." ^ 



All these varieties of incentive are next reinforced by 

 incentives of a mysterious and supernatural character. When 

 intelligence has progressed to the point where some curiosity 

 is felt concerning the causes of phenomena, — a point barely 

 reached by the lowest contemporary savages, — mythologies 

 begin to be framed. A mythology is a rudimentary cosmic 

 philosophy ;* and let me note, in passing, that an uncivilized 

 race must have attained considerable latent philosophic 

 capacity before it can construct a rich mythology, — instance 

 the luxuriant folk-lore of Greece as contrasted with the scanty 

 mythology of savages. Now, the earliest kind of philosophy 

 is fetishism, by which natural phenomena are attributed to 

 the volitions of countless supernatural agencies. What are 

 these agencies ? Eecent researches have elicited the fact that 

 they are supposed to be the ghosts of the dead ancestors of 

 the tribe. The dead chief, who appears to the savage in 

 dreams, is supposed to rule the winds and floods, and to visit 

 with his wrath those who violate the rules of action estab- 

 lished in the tribe.^ When one of Mr. Darwin's companions, 

 in Tierra del Fuego, shot some birds to preserve as specimens, 

 a Fuegian present exclaimed, " O Mr. Bynoe, rain much, 

 much wind, blow much !" thus indicating his belief that the 

 wasting of food, condemned by tribal rules, would be visited 

 with condign punishment by the tutelar deities of the tribe. 

 " This transfigured form of restraint," says Mr. Spencer, 

 •' differing at first but little from the original form, is capable 

 of immense development." As the fetishistic agencies are 

 generalized into the deities of polytheism, and these in time 

 are summed up in a single anthropomorphic deity, there 

 slowly grows up the theory of a hell in which actions con- 

 demned by the community will be punished. The complex 



^ Darwin, Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 87. 

 • See Myths and Myth-Makers, pp. 76, 237. 



