LECTURE VIII. 229 



notice of thunder ; tlie simple minded, in ignorance of the 

 cause, fears it ; the heathen imagines a thunder-god ; the 

 Christian, also, believes that God speaks in thunder; whilst 

 the intelligent man produces himself thunder and lightning 

 when provided with the proper apparatus. This is the usual 

 march of religious ideas ; and I know of no sufficient reason 

 for endowing the human race with religiousness as an exclusive 

 quahty. 



E. Wagner vindicated this religious quality, and even 

 thought that there was an organ of faith in man. The germ, 

 at least, of a belief in some mysterious, higher power exists, 

 also, in animals. The dog is evidently afraid of spectres, quite 

 as much as the Breton or the Basque ; every out-of-the-way 

 phenomenon not explained to it by its nose, renders even the 

 most courageous dog a coward. I knew a grove which the 

 peasants firmly believe to be haunted by a fiery spectre, 

 and prove it by the alleged fact that dogs which have passed 

 the night in it will not re-enter it. It is the fear of the 

 apparently supernatural which is the germ of religious ideas ; 

 and this fear is developed in a high degree in our domestic 

 animals, the dog and the horse. The germ of these ideas, 

 as well as of others alHed with it, being by man developed 

 into a system, becomes a faith. Mathematics has just as 

 much claim, as this belief in the supernatural, to be considered 

 an exclusive, fundamental quality of man. No animal knows 

 mathematics, geometry; but there are animals which can 

 count, though only up to a few ciphers ; and this is the germ 

 of the whole edifice which man has erected, and by means of 

 which he has measured the celestial spaces. In the same way, 

 the animal has no faith, but it fears something unknown ; and 

 is it not the fear of something unknown — the fear of Grod — 

 from which man has developed his religion ? 



With regard to morahty, or the idea of good and evil, it 

 cannot be maintained that it exists absolutely in man. It 

 always corresponds to the condition of society ; it is, in one 

 word, the result of the social condition. Whilst in the 

 civiHsed world it is a capital crime for the son to kill his 

 old decrepit father, there are Indian tribes where such an 



