nd
men are trained from infancy to welcome certain things, to fear others,
and to accept certain others as meaningless; from time to time strange
things will appear, and these will be treated according to established
principles or will remain mysterious. A germinal conception of natural
law will arise from the observation of periodically occurring phenomena
(such as the rising and setting of the sun, periodic rains, tides) and
familiar facts of everyday life, as, for example, the habits of men and
other animals. Everything outside this sphere will be ascribed to
extrahuman agency--so sickness, death, and sometimes birth.[7]

+8+. The history of religion, which is a part of the history of thought,
necessarily shows, as is observed above, a constant enlargement of the
domain of natural law, and a consequent contraction of the direct action
of the supernatural, though this does not always or generally lessen the
conviction that the Supernatural Power, acting through natural law,
controls all things. In this process, also, the conception of the
attitude of the Supernatural Power is more or less definitely fixed; a
formulation of signs is accomplished, whereby it is known whether the
deity, at particular moments, is pleased or displeased, and whether a
given deity is generally friendly or hostile. This method of determining
the attitude of the deity continued into late stages of social life, and
still exists even in professedly Christian communities.[8]

+9+. As the basis of the religious feeling we must suppose a sense and
conception of an extrahuman Something, the cause of things not otherwise
understood. All things were supposed to have life, and therefore to be
loci of force; man's sense of social relation with this force
constituted his religion. This sense was at first doubtless vague,
ill-defined, or undefined, and in this form it is now found in certain
tribes.[9] Gradually, as the processes of human life and of the external
world become better known, and the vastness of the extrahuman control
becomes evident, the Something is conceived of as great, then as
indefinitely great, and finally, under the guidance of philosophic
thought, as infinite. Thus the sense of the infinite may be said to be
present in man's mind in germinal form at the beginning of truly human
life, though it does not attain full shape, is not formulated, and is
not effective, till the period of philosophic culture is reached.[10]

+10+. As far a