e lightning god; and finally we reach that primitive stage
of philosophizing in which the lightning is explained as a red bird
dropping from its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the
belief that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of
a drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case of
survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition it is held
that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned himself; and thus we
pass to the fetichistic interpretation of drowning as the seizing of the
unfortunate person by the water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry
at being deprived of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge
against the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him.

The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of drowning as
the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are parts of that primitive
philosophy of nature in which all forces objectively existing are
conceived as identical with the force subjectively known as volition.
It is this philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr.
Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism," which
we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous exemplifications.
When we have properly characterized some of the processes which the
untrained mind habitually goes through, we shall have incidentally
arrived at a fair solution of the genesis of mythology.

Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or uncultivated mind
reaches all manner of apparently fanciful conclusions through reckless
reasoning from analogy. It is through the operation of certain laws of
ideal association that all human thinking, that of the highest as well
as that of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law of
gravitation, as well as the invention of such a superstition as the
Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of association of ideas. The
difference between the scientific and the mythologic inference consists
solely in the number of checks which in the former case combine to
prevent any other than the true conclusion from being framed into a
proposition to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences
have taught the modern that there are many associations of ideas which
do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the
world of phenomena; and he has learned accordingly to apply to his newly
framed notions the rigid test of verification.