ABSTRACT
A c c o k d in g to the view advanced in the previous chapters, the belief that all natural phenomena have life, and that all the many changes in nature are due to a will or wills similar to man’s, does not necessarily imply any belief in the supernatural. The sequences of events which this piece of primitive philosophy seeks to explain are themselves, ex hypothesis uniform, familiar, in a word natural, not super natural; and the explanation itself consists in assimilating the things explained not to anything supernatural or superhuman, but to something essentially characteristic of human nature. The sentiment of the supernatural is not aroused by events which happen as they were expected to happen, but by some mysterious and unaccountable deviation from the ordinary course of nature. It is specifically distinct also from the terror which dangers inspire, or the respect and admiration which the strength of the greater carnivora may have exacted from primitive man ; and it seems psycho logically inadmissible, on the one hand, to derive it from any of these feelings, and, on the other, to confound it either with fear or with gratitude; for though each of these latter two emotions may go with it, neither is indispensable to it.
