POWELL. ] OUTGROWTH FROM MYTHOLOGICG PHILOSOPHY, 35 
afirmatization. If the world’s opinions were governed only by the 
principles of mythologie philosophy, affirmatization would become so 
powerful that nothing would be believed but the anciently affirmed. 
Men would come to no new knowledge. Society would stand still listen- 
ing to the wisdom of the fathers. But the power of affirmatization is 
steadily undermined by science. 
And, still again, the institutions of society conform to its philosophy. 
The explanations of things always includes the origin of human institu- 
tions. So the welfare of society is based on philosophy, and the venerable 
sayings which constitute philosophy are thus held as sacred. So ancient- 
ism is developed from accumulated life-experiences ; by the growth of 
story in repeated narration; by the steadily increasing power of affirm- 
atization, and by respect for the authority upon which the institutions 
of society are based; all accumulating as they come down the genera- 
tions. That we do thus inherit effects we know, for has it not been affirmed 
in the Book that “the fathers have eaten grapes, and the children’s teeth 
are set on edge”? Asmen come to believe that the “long ago” was better 
than the “now,” and the dead were better than the living, then philoso- 
phy must necessarily include a theory of degeneracy, which is a part of 
ancientism. 
Theistic Society. Again, the actors in mythologic philosophy are per- 
sonages, and we always find them organized in societies. The social 
organization of mythology is always found to be essentially identical 
with the social organization of the people who entertain the philosophy. 
The gods are husbands and wives, and parents and children, and the 
gods have an organized government. This gives us theistic society, and 
we cannot properly characterize a theism without taking its mythic so- 
ciety into consideration. 
Spiritism.—In the earliest stages of society of which we have practi- 
cal knowledge by acquaintance with the people themselves, a belief in 
the existence of spirits prevails—a shade, an immaterial existence, which 
is the duplicate of the material personage. The genesis of this belief 
is complex. The workings of the human mind during periods of un- 
consciousness lead to opinions that are enforced by many physical phe- 
nomena. 
First, we have the activities of the mind during sleep, when the man 
seems to go out from himself, to converse with his friends, to witness 
strange scenes, and to have many wonderful experiences. Thus the 
man seems to have lived an eventful life, when his body was, in fact, 
quiescent and unconscious. Memories of scenes and activities in former 
days, and the inherited memories of scenes witnessed and actions per- 
formed by ancestors, are blended in strange confusion by broken and 
jnverted sequences. Now and then the dream-scenes are enacted in real 
life, and the infrequent coincidence or apparent verification makes deep 
impression on the mind, while unfulfilled dreams are forgotten. Thus 
the dreams of sleepers are attributed to their immaterial duplicates— 
