Herbert Spencer objects against this explanation that the hypothesis upon which it rests is contradicted by the facts. It is held, he says, that there is a time when men do not realize the differences which separate the animate from the inanimate. Now, as one advances in the animal scale, he sees the ability to make this distinction develop. The superior animals do not confound an object which moves of itself and whose movements are adapted to certain ends, with those which are mechanically moved from without. "Amusing herself with a mouse she has caught, the cat, if it remains long stationary, touches it with her paw to make it run. Obviously the thought is that a living thing disturbed will try to escape."[103] Even the primitive men could not have an intelligence inferior to that of the animals which preceded them in evolution; then it cannot be for lack of discernment that they passed from the cult of ancestors to the cult of things. According to Spencer, who upon this point, but upon this point only, differs from Tylor, this passage was certainly due to a confusion, but to one of a different sort. It was, in a large part at least, the result of numerous errors due to language. In many inferior societies it is a very common custom to give to each individual, either at his birth or later, the name of some animal, plant, star or natural object. But as a consequence of the extreme imprecision of his language, it is very difficult for a primitive to distinguish a metaphor from the reality. He soon lost sight of the fact that these names were only figures, and taking them literally, he ended by believing that an ancestor named "Tiger" or "Lion" was really a tiger or a lion. Then the cult of which the ancestor was the object up to that time, was changed over to the animal with which he was thereafter confounded; and as the same substitution went on for the plants, the stars and all the natural phenomena, the religion of nature took the place of the old religion of the dead. Besides this fundamental confusion, Spencer signalizes others which aided the action of the first from time to time. For example, the animals which frequent the surroundings of the tombs or houses of men have been taken for their reincarnated souls, and adored under this title;[104] or again, the mountain which tradition made the cradle of the race was finally taken for the ancestor of the race; it was thought that men were descended from it because their ancestors appeared coming from it, and it was consequently treated as an ancestor itself.[105] But according to the statement of Spencer, these accessory causes had only a secondary influence; that which principally determined the institution of naturism was "the literal interpretation of metaphorical names."[106]