In the composition and mythical animation of the world, whether by special personifications or by those which are typical, and by the sensations corresponding to them, man makes a fanciful classification of phenomena, he observes and studies their beneficial or injurious effects on himself, and in this empirical way is able to estimate their value.  On the other hand, he rises in the social scale by means of his superstitious and religious feelings, which act as a stimulus and symbol, so far as he subjects his animal and perverse instincts to the deliberate precepts which he imagines to be expressed by these myths.

In so far as the empirical observation of things is irrational, and obedience is paid to the fanciful precepts of oracles, it is not the result of an explicit moral law, yet there is on the one side some knowledge of the qualities, habits, and periods of things, and on the other a civil and human order which is gradually formed and developed.  In fact, in the case of the higher historical races it is important to make a more explicit and accurate study of the fetish religion, that is, of the mythical animation of any special phenomenon or thing.  Although the scope of such religion is superstitious veneration, or abject fear, yet it is impossible that it should not induce a more precise and less confused notion of the relative condition of things.  In this way observation becomes more accurate, and the intrinsic use of the thing is often recognized.  By the gradual exercise of such analysis in the case of all or most phenomena, man obtains a clearer knowledge of his environment.

While a juster estimate of the empiric value of special objects is obtained in this manner, the subsequent, though sometimes mistaken classification of their specific types enables the mind to arrange his knowledge of natural things in a more synthetic and orderly way, and by such classification man is always tending towards a more universal unity:  he places the general forms of phenomena in an ideal harmony, which fancifully symbolizes their laws.

In the succeeding chapters we shall see how this process is accomplished, and how it leads up to the explicit exercise of the reason.  A more definite empiric knowledge, and the harmonious classification of specific types with a view to unity, are a proof of a relatively greater improvement, both in civilization and morality.  This is abundantly shown in all those peoples who have attained to an altogether anthropomorphic polytheism, either among the Aryans, prior to their dispersion, in the Vedic period in India, among the Celts, Graeco-Latins, Germans, Slavs, or in the Finnish races, Mongols, Chinese, Assyrians, Egyptians, Mexicans, and Peruvians, as well as among the barbarous peoples of modern times.