1885.] Analyses of Boohs. 107 
with the subjective phenomena gathered about him, is studied 
from an objective point of view. . . . Thus the complex is 
studied by resolving it into its simple constituents.” Here we 
find it incidentally remarked that “blue and green are not differ- 
entiated, for the Indian has but one name for the two.” But are 
we thence to infer that his perceptions of colour are not differ- 
entiated ? We civilised men have not names for one-tenth part 
of the colours which we can perceive and distinguish. 
According to Mr. Powell the mythologic philosophy, has four 
sub-stages. In the lowest of these, hecastotheism, everything is 
alive and everything is a god. 
In the second stage, zootheism, animals are gods. “ No line 
of demarcation is drawn between man and beast.” We may 
here remark that this very line of demarcation afterwards drawn 
in the following stage became one of the cardinal errors which 
Evolutionism has to eradicate. 
In the third stage the powers and phenomena of nature are 
personified and deified. Thus there is a sun-god, a moon-god, 
&c. This stage Mr. Powell names physitheism. 
Lastly, mental, moral and social attributes are personified and 
deified. This stage, in the author’s system, is psychot'neism. 
By a process of mental integration it developes in one direction 
into pantheism, and in the other into monotheism, according as 
the intellectual or the moral element predominated in the minds 
of the men by whom the process of evolution was carried on. It 
is a curious fact that the rise of psychotheism appears to have 
been conincident in time with the invention of an alphabet. 
Certain outgrowths of the mythologic philosophy are next con- 
sidered. The first of these, which the author designates 
“ ancientism,” is the belief that “ yesterday was better than to- 
day, and that the ancients are wiser than we.” 
Another of these outgrowths is affirmatisation, — the propa- 
gation of opinions by affirmation. What has been often or 
always said, — what is said by everyone, — must be true. 
Very few people will now uphold “ ancientism.” But it may 
be asked whether its modern substitute “ progress ” is not a mis- 
take equal and opposite. What is new is no more necessarily 
true than what is old. Evolution is often of a retrograde char- 
acter and leans to degeneration. 
In the paper on the mortuary customs of the Indians we find 
that certain tribes have the abominable habit of burying their 
dead under springs, or throwing them into lakes and rivers. An 
African tribe, the Obongo, bury their deceased friends in the bed 
of a stream which is temporarily diverted from its normal course. 
In the essay on sign-language we find it recorded that Prof. 
A. Graham Bell succeeded in causing a terrier to form a number 
of the sounds of our letters, and to utter distinctly the words 
“ How are you, grandmamma ?” We dissent from the author’s 
