ignorant of truth, devoid of experience, regard as the arbiters of their
fate, as the dispensers of good and evil, animals, stones, unformed
inanimate substances, which the effort of their heated imaginations
transform into gods, whom they invest with intelligence, whom they
clothe with desires, to whom they give volition.

Another disposition which serves to deceive the savage man, which will
equally deceive those whom reason shall not enlighten on these subjects,
is his attachment to omens; or the fortuitous concurrence of certain
effects, with causes which have not produced them; the co-existence of
these effects with certain causes, which have not the slightest
connection with them, has frequently led astray very intelligent beings;
nations who considered themselves very enlightened; who have either been
disinclined or unable to disentangle the one from the other: thus the
savage attributes bounty or the will to render him service, to any
object whether animate or inanimate, such as a stone of a certain form,
a rock, a mountain, a tree, a serpent, an owl, &c. if every time he
encounters these objects in a certain position, it should so happen that
he is more than ordinarily successful in hunting, that he should take an
unusual quantity of fish, that he should be victorious in war, or that
he should compass any enterprize whatever that he may at that moment
undertake: the same savage will be quite as gratuitous in attaching
malice, wickedness, the determination to injure him, to either the same
object in a different position, or any others in a given posture, which
way have met his eyes on those days when he shall have suffered some
grievous accident, have been very unsuccessful in his undertakings,
unfortunate in the chace, disappointed in his draught of fish: incapable
of reasoning he connects these effects with causes, that reflection
would convince him have nothing in common with each other; that are
entirely due to physical causes, to necessary circumstances, over which