e whisperings and cracklings in the
woods--all argued the presence of life and will. So too with
mountains, avalanches, sun, moon, stars, clouds, caves, fire,
light, dark, life, death. So more especially with the storm which
sweeps across the land, the thunder which shakes the solid
earth, and the lightning which flashes from the one side of
heaven to the other. Such were the phenomena on which his
intellect worked, and in which he discovered all manner of
useful or harmful causal relations. Such were the phenomena
which produced in him emotions of awe and terror, joy and
delight. To all of them he ascribed mental life like unto his own.
Indeed it was only by such a view that he could at all
understand them, or bring himself into living connection with
them.

From these primitive times onward, each century in the history
of civilisation has brought a wider outlook. But the original
tendency to animism has persisted and still persists. It has
behind it an undying impulse. It manifests its vitality, not only
among the uninstructed masses, but in the most select ranks of
scientists and philosophers. And thus it is not too much to say
that the idea of a universal life in nature is as firmly rooted
today as it was in the dawn of man's intellectual development.
The form in which the idea has been presented has changed
with the ages. Mythology succeeded animism, and has in turn
yielded to many curious and vanished theories, polytheistic,
gnostic, pantheistic, and the rest. Now, the belief in distinct
beings behind natural phenomena has virtually disappeared. Not
so the belief in some form of universal life or consciousness--of
which belief representative types will be given directly.

Of the persistence of the mental attitude in the modern child,
Ruskin gives a charming example, in his "Ethics of the Dust."
"One morning after Alice had gone, Dotty was very sad and
restless when she got up; and went about, looking into all the
corners, as if she would find Alice in them, and at last she came
to me, and said, 'Is Alie gone over the great sea?' And I said,
'Yes, she is gone over the great deep sea, but she will come
back again some day.' Then Dotty looked round the room; and I
had just poured some water out into the basin; and Dotty ran to
it, and got up on a chair, and dashed her hand through the water,
again and again; and cried, 'Oh, deep, deep sea! Send little Alice
back to me.'" On this, Ruskin remarks--"The whole heart