An examination of the development of philosophy leads to conclusions of considerable import. Our present inquiry can be only an exceedingly rapid one; but anyone wishing to study the subject a little more fully will find it concisely treated in a book called Science and Faith, by Dr. Paul Topinard, late General Secretary of the Anthropological Society of Paris. From Chapter VIII. I cull the following:-- "Animals, in the presence of phenomena which they do not understand, retire confounded. Savage man does the same. But he, at least, hazards the attempt of an explanation by investing the objects or phenomena in question with life and sentiments similar to his own. Later this same savage, discovering or believing to discover in himself a double being, the one corporeal and the other spiritual, transfers the new notions regarding himself to objects without himself, to stones, plants, animals, or stars.... Religions, at first more or less elementary, with their founders and priests, do not appear until later.... For a long time the sorcerer--that is to say, a man less credulous than the rest, and adroit in the sense of knowing how to reap personal advantage from the beliefs of his fellows--stood alone in his class. Sorcerer and medicine man at once, he distributed amulets, drove out spirits from the bodies of the deceased, and caused the rains to fall.... The sacerdotal caste arose, at times recruiting itself from the outside and at times hereditary. More intelligent than the others, more disposed to reflect, the priests were naturally inclined to seek more satisfactory explanations from the phenomena of nature, to distinguish general causes from particular causes, to reduce the number of the spirits, to champion the most important of these, and even to symbolise many of them. The cult of heroes, of personages in the tribe who had rendered it valuable services, and of ancestors, was mingled with the preceding beliefs. Having to speak to simple people, for whom it was necessary to materialise things, they were obliged to recast their ideas and to expound them by the help of fables and myths, which soon essayed to explain in a tangible form the origin of things, the existing phenomena of nature, and often to guide the conduct of men. These were the first attempts of philosophy, already as utilitarian as they were mystical."