A famous passage in Vico's work _Della Metafisica Poetica_ may here be paraphrased, in order to make the conditions under which we must imagine myths to have arisen more intelligible:[9] "Poetry, which was the first form of wisdom, began with a system of thought, not reasoned or abstract, as ours is now, but felt and imagined, as was natural in the case of those primitive human beings who had developed no reasoning faculties, but were all made up of senses in the highest physical perfection, and of the most vigorous imaginations. In their total ignorance of causes they wondered at everything; and their poetry was all divine, because they ascribed to gods the objects of their wonder, and thought that beings like themselves, but greater, could alone have caused them. Thus they were like children whom we notice taking into their hands inanimate things, and playing and talking with them as though they were living persons. When thunder terrified them, they attributed their own nature to the phenomenon; and being apt to express their most violent passions by howls and roarings, they conceived heaven as a vast body, which gave notice of its anger by lightnings and thunderings. The whole of nature, in like manner, they imagined to be a vast animated body, capable of feeling and passion." Vico then proceeds to point out how difficult it is for us, who, through long centuries, have removed ourselves as far as possible from the life of the instincts, senses, and imagination, whose language has become full of abstract terms, whose conception of the universe has been formed by science, whose thought is critical and reflective, and who have been educated in a rational theology, to comprehend the attitude of primitive humanity in its personifying stage of thought.