multiform will the
mythological interpretation and conception of the world and its various
phenomena appear to be; everything was personified by these primitive
peoples in a way common to the animal and human consciousness alike.

Of this the testimony remaining in the most ancient verses of the first
Veda is a sufficient proof. At the epoch of their composition the human
race had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet we
find that psychical human life was transfused and projected into
everything: man personified each phenomenon and force of nature in
accordance with his own image.

For example, fire in general was personified and identified with
humanity in _Agni_; even the shape taken by the flames, all which was
required to light the fire, the whole process of the sacrifice, even the
doors of the altar-railing, the prayer and oblation to the god.[9]

We also learn from the solemn and ancient songs of the Rig-Veda that all
terrestrial, meteorological, and celestial phenomena were more or less
vaguely personified. These facts recur in all the earliest recollections
of civilized peoples. If we turn from these to observe the savage races
of modern times, and the most barbarous tribes still extant in
continents and isles far removed from culture and science, we shall
again find the same beliefs. The range of absurd personifications,
degenerating into the most trivial and varied forms of fetish worship,
becomes wider, and its influence deeper, in proportion to the rude and
barbarous condition of the tribe or stock in which they appear.

Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized European
nations of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lower
classes, both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion to
the ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who have
really studied the intellectual conditions of all classes in our
time.[10]

In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, and
even at a later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak,
and when it approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions of
animals, such a projection of self and personification of surrounding
objects is evident to all. For this reason a child transforms all which
it seizes or plays with into a person or animal, and when alone with
them it talks, shouts, and laughs, as if such objects could really feel,
act, and obey; in shor