334 



NATURE 



{Feb. 5, 1880 



by the processes of mental integration develops in one direction 

 into monotheism, and in the other into pantheism. When the 

 powers of nature are held predominant in the minds of the 

 philosopher through whose cogitations this evolution of theism is 

 carried on, pantheism, as the highest form of psychotheism, is 

 the final result ; but when the moral qualities are held in highest 

 regard in the minds of the men in whom this process of evolution 

 is carried on, monotheism, or a god whose essential character- 

 istics are moral qualities, is the final product. The mono- 

 theistic god is not nature, but presides over and operates through 

 nature. 



Psychotheism has long been recognised. All of the earlier 

 literature of mankind treats largely of these gods, for it is an 

 interesting fact that in the history of any civilised people the 

 evolution of psychotheism is approximately synchronous with 

 the invention of an alphabet. In the earliest writings of the 

 Hebrews, the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and the Greeks, this 

 stage is discover, d, and Jehovah, Osiris, Indra, and Zeus are 

 characteristic representatives. As psychotheism and written 

 language appear together in the evolution of culture, this stage 

 of theism is, consciously or unconsciously, a part of the theme 

 of all written history. 



The palaeontologist, in studying the rocks of the hill and the 

 cliffs of the mountain, discovers in inanimate stones the life 

 forms of the ancient earth. The geologist, in the study of the 

 structure of valleys and mountains, discovers groups of facts 

 that lead him to a knowledge of more ancient mountains 

 and valleys and seas, of geographic features long ago 

 buried, and followed by a new land w ith new mountains and 

 valleys and new seas. The philologist, in studying the earliest 

 writings of a people, not only discovers the thoughts purposely 

 recorded in those writings, but is able to go back in the history 

 of the people many generations, and discover vt ith even greater 

 certainty the thoughts of the more ancient people who made the 

 words. 



Thus the writings of the Greeks, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, 

 and the Hebrews, that give an account of their psychic gods, 

 also contain a description of an earlier theism unconsciously 

 recorded by the writers themselves. Psycotheism prevailed 

 when the sentences were coined, physitheism when the words 

 were coined. So the philologist discovers physitheism in all 

 ancient literature. But the verity of that stage of philosophy 

 does not rest alone upon the evidence derived from the study of 

 fossil philosophies through the science of philology. In the 

 folk-lore of every civilised people having a psychotheic philo- 

 sophy, an earlier philosophy, with nature gods, is discovered. 



The different stages of philosophy which I have attempted to 

 characterise have never been found in purity. We always 

 observe different methods of explanation existing side by side, 

 and the type of a philosophy is determined by the prevailing 

 characteristics of its explanations of phenomena. Fragments of 

 earlier are always found side by side with the greater body of the 

 later philosophy. Man has never clothed himself in new 

 garments of wisdom, but has for ever been patching the old, and 

 the old and the new are blended in the same pattern, and thus 

 we have atavism in philosophy. So in the study of any philo- 

 sophy which has reached the psychotheic age, patches of the 

 earlier philosophy are always seen. Ancient nature gods are 

 found to be living and associating with the supreme psychic 

 deities. 



Thus in anthropological science there are three ways by which 

 to go back in the history of any civilised people and learn of its 

 barbaric physitheism. But of the verity of the stage we have 

 further evidence. When Christianity was carried north from 

 Central Europe, the champions of the new philosophy, and its 

 consequent religion, discovered, among those who dwelt by the 

 glaciers of the north, a barbaric philosophy which they have pre- 

 served to history in the Eddas and Sagas, and Norse literature 

 is full of a philosophy in a transition state, from physitheism to 

 psychotheism ; and mark ! the people discovered in this transition 

 state were inventing an alphabet — they were carving Runes. 



Then a pure physitheism was discovered in the Aztec barbarism 

 of Mexico, and elsewhere on the globe many people were found 

 in that stage of culture to which this philosophy properly belongs. 

 Thus the existence of physitheism as a stage of philos phy is 

 abundantly attested. Comparative mythologists are agreed in 

 recognising these two stages. They might not agree to throw all 

 of the higher and later philosophies into one group, as I have 

 done, but all recognise the plane of demarcation between the 

 higher and lower groups as I have drawn it. Scholars, too, have 



come essentially to an agreement that physitheism is earlier and 

 older than psychotheism. 



Perhaps there may be left a " doubting Thomas " who believes 

 that the highest stage of psychotheism — that is, monotheism — 

 was the original basis for the philosophy of the world, and that 

 all other forms are degeneracies from that primitive and perfect 

 state. If there be such a man left, to him what I have to say 

 about philosophy is blasphemy. 



Again, all students of comparative philosophy, or comparative 

 mythology, or comparative religion, as you may please to 

 approach this subject from different points of view, recognise 

 that there is something else : that there are philosophies, or 

 mythologies, or religions, not included in the two great groups. 

 All that something has been vaguely called fetishism. 



I have divided it into two parts — hecastotheism and zootheism. 

 The verity of zootheism as a stage of philosophy rests on 

 abundant evidence. In psychotheism it appears as dcvilism in 

 obedience to a well-known law of comparative theology, viz., 

 that the gods of a lower and superseded stage of culture of [times 

 become the devils of a higher stage. 



So in the very highest stage of psychotheism we find beast 

 devils. In Norse mythology we have Fenris, the wolf, and 

 Jormungander, the serpent. Dragons appear in Greek mytho- 

 logy, the bull is an Egyptian god, a serpent is found in Zenda- 

 vesta ; and was there not a scaly fellow in the Garden of Eden? 

 So common are these beast-demons in the higher myth logies 

 that they are used in every literature as rhetorical figures. So 

 we find, as a figure of speech, the great red dragon with seven 

 heads and ten horns, with tail that with one brush sweeps away 

 a third of the stars of heaven. And wherever we find nature 

 worship we find it accompanied with beast worship. In the 

 study of higher philosophies, having learned that lower philo- 

 sophies often exist side by side with them, we might legitimately 

 conclude that a philosophy based upon animal gods had existed 

 previous to the development of physitheism, and philologic 

 research leads to the same conclusion. 



But we are not left to base this conclusion upon an induction 

 only, for in the examination of savage philosophies we actually 

 discover zootheism in all its proportions. Many of the Indians 

 of North America, and many of South America, and many of 

 the tribes of Africa, are found to be zootheists. Their supreme 

 gods are animals — tigers, bears, wolves, serpents, birds. 1 laving 

 discovered this, with a vast accumulation of evidence, we are 

 enabled to cany philosophy back one stage beyond physitheism, 

 and can confidently assert that all the philosophies of civilisation 

 have come up through these three stages. 



And yet there are fragments of philosophy discovered which 

 are not zootheistic, physitheistic, nor psychotheistic. What are 

 they ? We find running through all three stages of higher 

 philosophy that phenomena are sometimes explained by regard- 

 ing them as the acts of persons who do not belong to any of the 

 classes of gods found in the higher stages. We find fragments 

 of philosophy everywhere which seem to assume that all inani- 

 mate nature is animate ; that mountains and hills, and rivers and 

 springs, that trees and grasses, that stones, and all fragments ot 

 things are endowed with life, and with will, and act for a pur- 

 pose. These fragments of philosophy lead to the discovery of 

 hecastotheism. 



Philology also leads us back to that state when the animate 

 and inanimate were confounded ; for the holophrastic roots into 

 which words are finally resolved show us that all inanimate 

 things were represented in language as actors. 



Such is the evidence on which we predicate the existence of 

 hecastotheism as a veritable stage of philosophy. Unlike the 

 three higher stages, it has no people extant on the face of the 

 globe known to be in this stage of culture. The philosophies of 

 many of the lowest tribes of mankind are yet unknown, and 

 hecastotheism may be discovered, but, at the present time we 

 are not warranted in saying that any tribe entertains this 

 philosophy as its highest w isdom. 



THE NA TURE OF ELECTRICITY * 



(")N surveying the wide sea upon which the numerous and 

 ^ varied practical applications of electricity are launched for 

 the subject of this evening's address, I have been puzzled to 

 steer a course that shall avoid the dazzling shoals of theory on 

 the one hand, and the dry hard rocks of practice on the other. 



1 Abstract of the Inaugural address to the Society of Telegraph Engineers, 

 by Mr. William Henry Preece (President), delivered January 28, 1880. 

 Revised by the Author. 



