§ 1 Primitive Beliefs. Ideas of the Poets
The teaching of science as to the analogies between brute bodies and living bodies accords with the conceptions of the philosophers and the fancies of the poets. The ancients held that all bodies in nature were the constituent parts of a universal organism, the macrocosm, which they compared to the human microcosm. They attributed to it a principle of action, the psyche, analogous to the vital principle, and this psyche directed phenomena; and also an intelligent principle, the nous, analogous to the soul, and the nous served for the comprehension of phenomena. This universal life and this universal soul played an important part in their metaphysical systems.
It was the same with the poets. Their tendency has always been to attribute life to Nature, so as to bring her into harmony with our thoughts and feelings. They seek to discover the life or soul hidden in the background of things.
“Hark to the voices. Nothing is silent.
Winds, waves, and flames, trees, reeds, and rocks
All live; all are instinct with soul.”
After making proper allowance for emotional exaggeration, ought we to consider these ideas as the prophetic divination of a truth which science is only just beginning to dimly perceive? By no means. As Renan has said, this universal animism, instead of being a product of refined reflection, is merely a legacy from the most primitive of mental processes, a residue of conceptions belonging to the childhood of humanity. It recalls the time when men conceived of external things only in terms of themselves; when they pictured each object of nature as a living being. Thus, they personified the sky, the earth, the sea, the mountains, the rivers, the fountains, and the fields. They likened to animate voices the murmur of the forest:—
“... The oak chides and the birch
Is whispering....
And the beech murmurs....
The willow’s shiver, soft and faint, sounds like a word.
The pine-tree utters mysterious moans.”
For primitive man, as for the poet of all times, everything is alive, and every sound is due to a being with feelings similar to our own. The sighing of the breeze, the moan of the wave upon the shore, the babbling of the brook, the roaring of the sea, and the pealing of the thunder are nothing less than sad, joyous, or angry living voices.
These impressions were embodied in ancient mythology, the graceful beauty of which does not conceal its inadequacy. Then they passed into philosophy and approached the realm of science. Thales believed that all bodies in nature were animate and living. Origen considered the stars as actual beings. Even Kepler himself attributed to the celestial bodies an internal principle of action, which, it may be said in passing, is contrary to the law of the inertia of matter, which has been wrongly ascribed to him instead of to Galileo. The terrestrial globe was, according to him, a huge animal, sensitive to astral influences, frightened at the approach of the other planets, and manifesting its terror by tempests, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The wonderful flux and reflux of the ocean was its breathing. The earth had its blood, its perspiration, its excretions; it also had its foods, among which was the sea water which it absorbs by numerous channels. It is only fair to add that at the end of his life Kepler retracted these vague dreams, ascribing them to the influence of J. C. Scaliger. He explained that by the soul of the celestial bodies he meant nothing more than their motive force.