We also learn from the solemn and ancient songs of the Rig-Veda that all
terrestrial, meteorological, and celestial phenomena were more or less
vaguely personified. These facts recur in all the earliest recollections
of civilized peoples. If we turn from these to observe the savage races
of modern times, and the most barbarous tribes still extant in
continents and isles far removed from culture and science, we shall
again find the same beliefs. The range of absurd personifications,
degenerating into the most trivial and varied forms of fetish worship,
becomes wider, and its influence deeper, in proportion to the rude and
barbarous condition of the tribe or stock in which they appear.

Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized European
nations of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lower
classes, both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion to
the ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who have
really studied the intellectual conditions of all classes in our
time.[10]

In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, and
even at a later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak,
and when it approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions of
animals, such a projection of self and personification of surrounding
objects is evident to all. For this reason a child transforms all which
it seizes or plays with into a person or animal, and when alone with
them it talks, shouts, and laughs, as if such objects could really feel,
act, and obey; in short, as if they were real persons or animals. So
strong is the childish instinct, or, as I might say, the law of its
being to project and transfuse itself into objects, that it is apt to
speak of itself in the third person. A child seldom says, "I will," or
"I am hungry," but "Louis wants," "Louis is hungry," or whatever his