might exert. And again it is extremely probable that the third-mentioned
aspect--that which connected religion with the procreative desires and
phenomena of human physiology--really came FIRST. These desires and
physiological phenomena must have loomed large on the primitive mind
long before the changes of the seasons or of the sky had been at all
definitely observed or considered. Thus we find it probable that, in
order to understand the sequence of the actual and historical phases of
religious worship, we must approximately reverse the order above-given
in which they have been STUDIED, and conclude that in general the
Phallic cults came first, the cult of Magic and the propitiation of
earth-divinities and spirits came second, and only last came the belief
in definite God-figures residing in heaven.

At the base of the whole process by which divinities and demons were
created, and rites for their propitiation and placation established, lay
Fear--fear stimulating the imagination to fantastic activity. Primus in
orbe deos fecit Timor. And fear, as we shall see, only became a mental
stimulus at the time of, or after, the evolution of self-consciousness.
Before that time, in the period of SIMPLE consciousness, when the human
mind resembled that of the animals, fear indeed existed, but its nature
was more that of a mechanical protective instinct. There being no figure
or image of SELF in the animal mind, there were correspondingly no
figures or images of beings who might threaten or destroy that self. So
it was that the imaginative power of fear began with Self-consciousness,
and from that imaginative power was unrolled the whole panorama of the
gods and rites and creeds of Religion down the centuries.

The immense force and domination of Fear in the first self-conscious
stages of the human mind is a thing which can hardly be exaggerated, and
which is even difficult for some of us moderns to realize. But naturally
as soon as Man began to think about himself--a frail phantom and waif in
the midst of tremendous forces of whose nature and mode of operation he
was entirely ignorant--he was BESET with terrors; dangers loomed upon
him on all sides. Even to-day it is noticed by doctors that one of the
chief obstacles to the cure of illness among some black or native races
is sheer superstitious terror; and Thanatomania is the recognized word
for a state of mind ("obsession of death") which will often cause a
savage to perish from