Note 114 — Chapter II · LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION I.—Animism

Jevons has made a similar remark. With Tylor, he admits that the idea of the soul comes from dreams, and that after it was created, men projected it into things. But, he adds, the fact that nature has been conceived as animated like men does not explain how it became the object of a cult. "The man who believes the bowing tree or the leaping flame to be a living thing like himself, does not therefore believe it to be a supernatural being—rather, so far as it is like himself, it, like himself, is not supernatural" (Introduction to the History of Religions, p. 55).