living being, spontaneously evolving and
transforming itself, and agreed with Anaximenes that the soul of man is
nothing but air, as is also the soul of the world. From this it follows
that the air must be eternal, imperishable, and endowed with
consciousness. "It knows much; for without reason it would be impossible
for all to be arranged so duly and proportionately as that all should
maintain its fitting measure, winter and summer, night and day, the
rain, the wind, and fair weather; and whatever object we consider will
be found to have been ordered in the best and most beautiful manner
possible." "But that which has knowledge is that which men call air; it
is it that regulates and governs all, and hence it is the use of air to
pervade all, and to dispose all, and to be in all, for there is nothing
that has not part in it."

[Sidenote: Difficulty of rising above fetichism.]

[Sidenote: Astronomy and chemistry have passed beyond the fetich stage.]

The early cultivator of philosophy emerges with difficulty from
fetichism. The harmony observed among the parts of the world is easily
explained on the hypothesis of a spiritual principle residing in things,
and arranging them by its intelligent volition. It is not at once that
he rises to the conception that all this beauty and harmony are due to
the operation of law. We are so prone to judge of the process of
external things from the modes of our own personal experience, our acts
being determined by the exercise of our wills, that it is with
difficulty we disentangle ourselves from such notions in the explanation
of natural phenomena. Fetichism may be observed in the infancy of many
of the natural sciences. Thus the electrical power of amber was imputed
to a soul residing in that substance, a similar explanation being also
given of the control of the magnet over iron. The movements of the
planetary bodies, Mercury, Venus, Mars, were attributed to an
intelligent principle residing in each, guiding and controlling the
motions, and ordering all things for the best. It was an epoch in the
history of the human mind when astronomy set an example to all other
sciences of shaking off its fetichism, and showing that the intricate
movements of the heavenly bodies are all capable not only of being
explained, but even foretold, if once was admitted the existence of a
simple, yet universal, invariable, and eternal law.

Not without difficulty do men perceive that there is nothing