y spring, with headlong haste
Calls them the workmanship of power divine.
For he who, justly, deems the Immortals live
Safe, and at ease, yet fluctuates in his mind
How things are swayed; how, chiefly, those discerned
In heaven sublime--to SUPERSTITION back
Lapses, and fears a tyrant host, and then
Conceives, dull reasoner, they can all things do,
While yet himself nor knows what may be done,
Nor what may never, nature powers defined
Stamping on all, and bounds that none can pass:
Hence wide, and wider errs he as he walks.[41]

[Footnote 41: Lucretius, "De Natura Rerum," book vi. vs. 50-70.]

In order to rid men of all superstitious fear, and, consequently, of all
religion, Epicurus endeavors to show that "nature" alone is adequate to
the production of all things, and there is no need to drag in a "divine
power" to explain the phenomena of the world.

This theory has been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the
brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious
phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development
of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been
the first to discover the great law of the three successive stages or
phases of human evolution. That law is thus enounced. Both in the
individual mind, and in the history of humanity, thought, in dealing
with its problems, passes, of necessity, through, first, a
_Theological_, second, a _Metaphysical_, and finally reaches a third, or
_Positive_ stage.

In attempting an explanation of the universe, human thought, in its
earliest stages of development, resorts to the idea of living personal
agents enshrined in and moving every object, whether organic or
inorganic, natural or artificial. In an advanced stage, it conceives a
number of personal beings distinct from, and superior to nature, which
preside over the different provinces of nature--the sea, the air, the
winds, the rivers, the heavenly bodies, and assume the guardianship of
individuals, tribes, and nations. As a further, and still higher stage,
it asserts the unity of the Supreme Power which moves and vitalizes the
universe, and guides and governs in the affairs of men and nations. The
_Theological_ stage is thus subdivided into three epochs, and
represented as commencing in _Fetichism_, then advancing to
_Polytheism_, and, finally, consummating in _Monotheism_.

The next stage, th