ra-causal propensity or agent has a very high utility as a
recourse in perplexity, but its utility is altogether of a non-economic
kind. It is especially a refuge and a fund of comfort where it has
attained the degree of consistency and specialization that belongs to
an anthropomorphic divinity. It has much to commend it even on other
grounds than that of affording the perplexed individual a means of
escape from the difficulty of accounting for phenomena in terms of
causal sequence. It would scarcely be in place here to dwell on the
obvious and well-accepted merits of an anthropomorphic divinity, as seen
from the point of view of the aesthetic, moral, or spiritual interest,
or even as seen from the less remote standpoint of political, military,
or social policy. The question here concerns the less picturesque and
less urgent economic value of the belief in such a preternatural agency,
taken as a habit of thought which affects the industrial serviceability
of the believer. And even within this narrow, economic range, the
inquiry is perforce confined to the immediate bearing of this habit
of thought upon the believer's workmanlike serviceability, rather than
extended to include its remoter economic effects. These remoter effects
are very difficult to trace. The inquiry into them is so encumbered with
current preconceptions as to the degree in which life is enhanced by
spiritual contact with such a divinity, that any attempt to inquire into
their economic value must for the present be fruitless.

The immediate, direct effect of the animistic habit of thought upon the
general frame of mind of the believer goes in the direction of lowering
his effective intelligence in the respect in which intelligence is of
especial consequence for modern industry. The effect follows, in varying
degree, whether the preternatural agent or propensity believed in is
of a higher or a lower cast. This holds true of the barbarian's and
the sporting man's sense of luck and propensity, and likewise of the
somewhat higher developed belief in an anthropomorphic divinity, such as
is commonly possessed by the same class. It must be taken to hold true
also--though with what relative degree of cogency is not easy to say--of
the more adequately developed anthropomorphic cults, such as appeal
to the devout civilized man. The industrial disability entailed by a
popular adherence to one of the higher anthropomorphic cults may be
relatively slight, but it is n