actuates man and animals alike is projected on the objects or phenomena
perceived, and they see them transformed into living, deliberating
subjects. In this way the world and all which it contains appears to be
a congeries of beings, actuated by will and consciousness, and powerful
for good or evil, and in practice they seek to modify, to encourage, or
to avoid such influence. The ultimate effect of this action, assumed to
be intentional in all and each of these subjects, will be their
personification, either vaguely or definitely, but always as a power
active for good or ill.

If we trace back the memories of historic and civilized peoples into the
twilight of their origin, at a time when they were still barbarous, and
little removed from their primitive savage conditions, we shall find,
the further we go back, the more vivid, general, and multiform will the
mythological interpretation and conception of the world and its various
phenomena appear to be; everything was personified by these primitive
peoples in a way common to the animal and human consciousness alike.

Of this the testimony remaining in the most ancient verses of the first
Veda is a sufficient proof. At the epoch of their composition the human
race had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet we
find that psychical human life was transfused and projected into
everything: man personified each phenomenon and force of nature in
accordance with his own image.

For example, fire in general was personified and identified with
humanity in _Agni_; even the shape taken by the flames, all which was
required to light the fire, the whole process of the sacrifice, even the
doors of the altar-railing, the prayer and oblation to the god.[9]