Now to primitive man, struggling along in a world of which he was so completely ignorant, the one certain thing was that the world was alive. The wind that roared, the thunder that growled, the disease that left him so mysteriously stricken, were all so many living things. The division of these living forces into good and bad followed naturally from this first conception of their nature. And whatever be the stages of that process the main lines admit of no question, nor is there any question as to the nature of the conditions that brought the gods into existence. On any scientific theory of religion the gods represent no more than the personified ignorance and fear of primitive humanity. However much anthropologists may differ as to whether the god always originates from the ghost or not, whether animism is first and the worship of the ghost secondary or not, there is agreement on that point. Whichever theory we care to embrace, the broad fact is generally admitted that the gods are the products of ignorance and fear. Man fears the gods as children and even animals fear the unknown and the dangerous. And as the gods are born of conditions such as those outlined, as man reads his own feelings and passions and desires into nature, so we find that the early gods are frankly, obtrusively, man-like. The gods are copies of their worshippers, faithful reflections of those who fear them. This, indeed, remains true to the end. When the stage is reached that the idea of God as a physical counterpart of man becomes repulsive, it is still unable to shake off this anthropomorphic element. To the modern worshipper God must not possess a body, but he must have love, and intelligence--as though the mental qualities of man are less human than the bodily ones! They are as human as arms or legs. And every reason that will justify the rejection of the conception of the universe being ruled over by a being who is like man in his physical aspects is equally conclusive against believing the universe to be ruled over by a being who resembles man in his mental characteristics. The one belief is a survival of the other; and the one would not now be accepted had not the other been believed in beforehand.