334 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



were at first wrong. In all these cases men set out with 

 beliefs which, if not absolutely false, contained but small 

 amounts of truth disguised by immense amounts of error. 



Hence the hypothesis that living beings resulted from 

 special creations, being a primitive hypothesis, is probably 

 an untrue hypothesis. If the interpretations of Nature given 

 by aboriginal men, were erroneous in other directions, they 

 were most likely erroneous in this direction. It would be 

 strange if, while these aboriginal men failed to reach the truth 

 in so many cases where it is comparatively conspicuous, 

 they yet reached the truth in a case where it is compara- 

 tively hidden. 



§ 111. Besides the improbability given to the belief in 

 special creations, by its association with mistaken early 

 beliefs in general ; a further improbability is given to it by 

 its association with a special class of mistaken beliefs. It- 

 belongs to a family of beliefs which have one after another 

 been destroyed by advancing knowledge; and is, indeed, 

 almost the only member of the family that survives .among 

 educated people. 



We all know that the savage thinks of each striking phe- 

 nomenon, or group of phenomena, as caused by some separate 

 personal agent ; that out of this fetishistic conception there 

 grows up a polytheistic conception, in which these minor per- 

 sonalities are variously generalized into deities presiding over 

 different divisions of nature ; and that these are eventually 

 further generalized. This progressive consolidation of causal 

 agencies, may be traced in the creeds of all races ; and is 

 far from complete in the creeds of the most advanced races. 

 The unlettered rustics who till our fields, do not let the con- 

 sciousness of a supreme power wholly absorb the aboriginal 

 conceptions of good and evil spirits, and charms or secret 

 potencies dwelling in particular objects. The earliest mode 

 of thinking changes, only as fast as the constant relations 

 among phenomena are established. Scarcely less 



