Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/636

Rh acquiert par lui, permet d'opposer à la loi civile une barrière juridique au seuil de chaque conscience individuelle" (p. 553). This seems a little inconsistent with what is said earlier (with special reference to the free-will doctrines of Catholicism and the necessitarianism of the Reformers):—"La néssité d'une autorité est la conséquence de la croyance au libre arbitre; la suppression de l'autorité extérieure entraîne comme contre-coup, pour éviter l'anarchie qui menace, la destruction de la croyance au libre arbitre" (p. 132).

This is the first part of a projected work on the origin of mythology and the religious sentiment. Its purpose is to show that "animism"—by which is meant the conception of all things, without distinction of living and not-living, as animated—is "the complex and secondary product of a period already speculative". Man has no primitive impulse to "vitalise" nature. It is in states of consciousness older than animism that religion has its origin. "The animist doctrine"—that is, the doctrine that regards "animism" as the earliest belief of men about natural things—"gives no account of the affective element, which is the true substance of religions, from the simplest beliefs to the most abstract worships". Animism is not the source of the different currents of religious thought, but is their collective result. What may be inferred from observation of children, who do not really confuse the not-living with the living, and of savages, who regard some natural objects as alive but not all, is confirmed by study of the minds of animals. The intellectual currents that have become the source of mythology, as of all human beliefs, "exist already in animality". "The myths of primitive man are only a more advanced and more precise form of their development." Accordingly, the bulk of the present volume is a study of animal psychology, with special reference to the distinction of the living and the not-living and the psychical elements in which religion and mythology, when the level of primitive human intelligence has been attained, may be supposed to have their origin. The higher animals, it is found, as well as man, at first distinguish clearly between that which is alive and that which is not; but, under the influence of the motive of self-preservation, everything living, being a possible source of danger, comes to be attended to more closely than things without life. Thus life comes to be thought of as the only source of motion; and the way is now prepared for the confusion of the not-living with the living. This confusion is not fully established till the myth-making stage; but already in animals the first indications of it may be observed. The cause of the extraordinary development in man of "mythogenesis," as of other faculties, was "an external impulse," "a radical change in the conditions of existence of primitive man". To trace the effects of this change will be the object of the subsequent part of the work.

In the form of an imaginary correspondence between two friends, to which a certain unity is given by a "romance" affecting one of them, the author has written a series of reflections on current topics of philosophy, literary and artistic criticism, &c. A large amount of recent psychological and philosophical work is lightly touched upon, and the whole forms an interesting view of contemporary thought, as well as a contribution to it.

The author's purpose is to establish "that there is no solid philosophy