The second or anthropomorphic stage of the development of the idea of God arises out of the rhetorical necessity of rendering more vivid, even at the expense of exact truth, the presentation of the conception of the powers of nature as living things. Finding that the bare assertion that they are alive produces little impression, the poet or seer goes a step further, and boldly ascribes to them human form, passions, actions, and character. Myth and metaphor are his instruments. The God has bodily parts, parents, sex, and children. He eats, drinks, is angry or alarmed, loves, fights, weaves, cultivates the ground, fishes, hunts, and dies. With the advance of social organization he is a chief or a king. Sometimes in these metaphors we can trace a special application to the deity's natural functions. Sometimes they are introduced merely for general effect. The results of this process for good and for evil are written large in the pages of human history. It is, on the one hand, the indispensable means by which the high intuitions of the seer are brought home, more or less imperfectly, to the multitude. On the other hand, the true original nature divinity is often lost sight of in a profusion of anthropomorphic fancies, and nothing is left but a magnified man, whose ultimate fate it is to be disavowed by advancing knowledge and enlightenment. It has been said that the primitive man knows no distinction between fancy and reality. In truth, life would be impossible for such a simpleton. However primitive he may be, he cannot hold a fire in his hand by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. The difference between a real dinner and an imaginary one is palpable even to his limited intelligence. The hunter who could not distinguish between the game of his imagination and the reality could never earn a living. He would be fit only for an imbecile asylum. The child is well aware that his mud pies are not fit to eat. The savage woman who pretends to herself that a stone is her lost baby, knows in her heart that this is nothing more than make-believe. Even a dog appreciates the distinction between a real rat and the object which it pleases him to fancy one, and worries accordingly. The seer is conscious that his anthropomorphic language is only metaphorical. Dante felt this when he said:-- Per questo la Scrittura condescende A nostra facultate e piedi e mano Attribuisce a Dio ed altro intende.