Still less is there anything unscientific, or anti-scientific, in this infantile anthropomorphism.  The child observes that many phaenomena are the consequences of affections of itself; it soon has excellent reasons for the belief that many other phaenomena are consequences of the affections of other beings, more or less like itself.  And having thus good evidence for believing that many of the most interesting occurrences about it are explicable on the hypothesis that they are the work of intelligences like itself—­having discovered a vera causa for many phaenomena—­why should the child limit the application of so fruitful an hypothesis?  The dog has a sort of intelligence, so has the cat; why should not the doll and the picture-book also have a share, proportioned to their likeness to intelligent things?

The only limit which does arise is exactly that which, as a matter of science, should arise; that is to say, the anthropomorphic interpretation is applied only to those phaenomena which, in their general nature, or their apparent capriciousness, resemble those which the child observes to be caused by itself, or by beings like itself.  All the rest are regarded as things which explain themselves, or are inexplicable.

It is only at a later stage of intellectual development that the intelligence of man awakes to the apparent conflict between the anthropomorphic, and what I may call the physical,[22] aspect of nature, and either endeavours to extend the anthropomorphic view over the whole of nature—­which is the tendency of theology; or to give the same exclusive predominance to the physical view—­which is the tendency of science; or adopts a middle course, and taking from the anthropomorphic view its tendency to personify, and from the physical view its tendency to exclude volition and affection, ends in what M. Comte calls the “metaphysical” state—­“metaphysical,” in M. Comte’s writings, being a general term of abuse for anything he does not like.

What is true of the individual is, mutatis mutandis, true of the intellectual development of the species.  It is absurd to say of men in a state of primitive savagery, that all their conceptions are in a theological state.  Nine-tenths of them are eminently realistic, and as “positive” as ignorance and narrowness can make them.  It no more occurs to a savage than it does to a child, to ask the why of the daily and ordinary occurrences which form the greater part of his mental life.  But in regard to the more striking, or out-of-the-way, events, which force him to speculate, he is highly anthropomorphic; and, as compared with a child, his anthropomorphism is complicated by the intense impression which the death of his own kind makes upon him, as indeed it well may.  The warrior, full of ferocious energy, perhaps the despotic chief of his tribe, is suddenly struck down.  A child may insult the man a moment before so awful; a fly rests, undisturbed, on the lips from which undisputed