The objects and phenomena obvious to perception are therefore supposed
by primitive man, as well as by animals, to be conscious subjects in
virtue of their constitution, and of the innate character of sensation
and intelligence. So that the universal personification of the things
and phenomena of nature, either vaguely, or in an animal form, is a
fundamental and necessary fact, both in animals and in man; it is a
spontaneous effect of the psychical faculty in its relations to the
world. We think that this truth cannot be controverted, and it will be
still more clearly proved in the course of this work.
Such a fact, considered in its first manifestation and in the laws which
originally govern it in animals, and in man as far as his animal nature
is concerned, assumes a fresh aspect, and is of two-fold force when it
is studied in man after he has begun to reason, that is, when his
original psychical faculty is doubled. The animation and personification
of objects and phenomena by animals are always relative to those of the
external world; that is, animals transfuse and project themselves into
every form which really excites, affects, alarms, allures, or threatens
them; and the spontaneous psychical faculty which such a vivifying
process always produces necessarily remains within the sphere of their
external perceptions and apprehensions. In a word, they live in the
midst of the objective nature, which they animate with consciousness and
will, and their internal power is altogether absorbed in this external
transformation.
In man, in addition to this animation of the things and phenomena of the
external world, another more profound and vivid animation takes place,
the animation not merely of external forms, but of internal
perceptions, ideas, sentiments, and all kinds of emotions. We know that
man has not only the perception of external and internal things, but
also the perception of this perception. Hence the external form, or the
internal sentiment and emotion, may by the dominion of his will over all
the attributes of his intelligence be once more subjected to his
deliberate observation and intuition; by this process the external and
internal world are doubled in their intrinsic ideal, and give birth to
analysis and abstraction, that is, to the specification and
generalization of the things observed.
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