ted with "scientific" or
"positive." The child does not worship either father or mother, dog or
doll. On the contrary, nothing is more curious than the absolute
irreverence, if I may so say, of a kindly-treated young child; its
tendency to believe in itself as the centre of the universe, and its
disposition to exercise despotic tyranny over those who could crush it
with a finger.

Still less is there anything unscientific, or anti-scientific, in this
infantile anthropomorphism. The child observes that many phaenomena are
the consequences of affections of itself; it soon has excellent reasons
for the belief that many other phaenomena are consequences of the
affections of other beings, more or less like itself. And having thus
good evidence for believing that many of the most interesting
occurrences about it are explicable on the hypothesis that they are the
work of intelligences like itself--having discovered a _vera causa_ for
many phaenomena--why should the child limit the application of so
fruitful an hypothesis? The dog has a sort of intelligence, so has the
cat; why should not the doll and the picture-book also have a share,
proportioned to their likeness to intelligent things?

The only limit which does arise is exactly that which, as a matter of
science, should arise; that is to say, the anthropomorphic
interpretation is applied only to those phaenomena which, in their
general nature, or their apparent capriciousness, resemble those which
the child observes to be caused by itself, or by beings like itself. All
the rest are regarded as things which explain themselves, or are
inexplicable.

It is only at a later stage of intellectual development that the
intelligence of man awakes to the apparent conflict between the
anthropomorphic, and what I may call the physical,[22] aspect of
nature, and either endeavours to extend the anthropomorphic view over
the whole of nature--which is the tendency of theology; or to give the
same exclusive predominance to the physical view--which is the tendency
of science; or adopts a middle course, and taking from the
anthropomorphic view its tendency to personify, and from the physical
view its tendency to exclude volition and affection, ends in what M.
Comte calls the "metaphysical" state--"metaphysical," in M. Comte's
writings, being a general term of abuse for anything he does not like.

What is true of the individual is, _mutatis mutandis_, true of the
intellectual development