all European nations, as well as among savages in other parts of the
world.

The objects and phenomena obvious to perception are therefore supposed
by primitive man, as well as by animals, to be conscious subjects in
virtue of their constitution, and of the innate character of sensation
and intelligence. So that the universal personification of the things
and phenomena of nature, either vaguely, or in an animal form, is a
fundamental and necessary fact, both in animals and in man; it is a
spontaneous effect of the psychical faculty in its relations to the
world. We think that this truth cannot be controverted, and it will be
still more clearly proved in the course of this work.

Such a fact, considered in its first manifestation and in the laws which
originally govern it in animals, and in man as far as his animal nature
is concerned, assumes a fresh aspect, and is of two-fold force when it
is studied in man after he has begun to reason, that is, when his
original psychical faculty is doubled. The animation and personification
of objects and phenomena by animals are always relative to those of the
external world; that is, animals transfuse and project themselves into
every form which really excites, affects, alarms, allures, or threatens
them; and the spontaneous psychical faculty which such a vivifying
process always produces necessarily remains within the sphere of their
external perceptions and apprehensions. In a word, they live in the
midst of the objective nature, which they animate with consciousness and
will, and their internal power is altogether absorbed in this external
transformation.

In man, in addition to this animation of the things and phenomena of the
external world, another more profound and vivid animation takes place,