40 DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION. 



and ruder test of life, however, is the test of motion. The old 

 English word " wight " comes from a root signifying that which 

 moves. 



Animals consider all things to be alive until convinced by 

 experience that they never, on any occasion, move by themselves. 



Mr. Romanes relates the following experiment. " I one day 

 " attached a fine thread to a dry bone, before giving my dog the 

 " latter to play with, and after he had tossed the bone about for 

 " awhile as usual, I stood a long way off, and slowly began to 

 " draw it away from him. As soon as he perceived that the bone 

 " was really moving on its own account, his whole demeanour 

 " changed, and, rushing under a couch, he waited horror-stricken 

 " to watch the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life." 



It was, at one time, supposed that the planetary orbits were 

 circular, and that the planetary movements were uniform. The 

 great astronomer Kepler discovered, however, that the planets 

 move in elliptic orbits, with a velocity which periodically increases 

 and diminishes, describing equal areas in equal times, (a.d. 1619). 

 These facts, though they are as Newton showed (1686), a 

 necessary consequence of the law of gravitation, seemed so un- 

 accountable to Kepler himself, that he came to the belief that 

 the planets were living animals who moved by their own volition. 



Similarly, it is clear, from the actions of a horse, that he 

 attributes personality to whatever moves, inasmuch as he will shy 

 with terror from a fluttering leaf or from a trundled hoop. This 

 natural mental process of the horse we may call "hippomorphism," 

 just as when man attributes a personality to the forces of nature 

 we may call it anthropomorphism ; and anthropomorphism is the 

 root of the religious sense. 



The truth of this statement is manifest in the facts of Fetichism 

 and of Totemism ; and it can be abundantly proved in religions 

 of a higher order. 



In a recent Peking Gazette, is published a memorial of the 

 military governor of Urumtsi, praying the Emperor to confer a 

 tablet on the deities of a mountain in his district, in recognition of 

 various acts of supernatural interposition. In this mountain there 

 is a large lake of unfathomable depth, upon the waters of which 

 the inhabitants of the whole surrounding country rely for the 

 irrigation of their land. Of recent years, however, it appears the 

 springs had shown signs of exhaustion, and much anxiety had 

 been felt on this account. Last year (1881) a temple dedicated 

 to the divinities of the mountain was erected, and scarcely had it 

 been completed when the water in the lake rose more than a 

 hundred feet, and has ever since afforded an unfailing supply. 

 The assistance of these deities has been invoked with unvarying 

 success on many occasions when locusts threatened to devastate 

 the country, or when snow was urgently needed for the protection 



