Note 134 — Chapter II · LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION I.—Animism

However, according to Spencer, there is a germ of truth in the belief in spirits: this is the idea that "the power which manifests itself inside the consciousness is a different form of power from that manifested outside the consciousness" (Ecclesiastical Institutions, § 659). Spencer understands by this that the notion of force in general is the sentiment of the force which we have extended to the entire universe; this is what animism admits implicitly when it peoples nature with spirits analogous to our own. But even if this hypothesis in regard to the way in which the idea of force is formed were true—and it requires important reservations which we shall make (Bk. III, ch. iii, § 3)—it has nothing religious about it; it belongs to no cult. It thus remains that the system of religious symbols and rites, the classification of things into sacred and profane, all that which is really religious in religion, corresponds to nothing in reality. Also, this germ of truth, of which he speaks, is still more a germ of error, for if it be true that the forces of nature and those of the mind are related, they are profoundly distinct, and one exposes himself to grave misconceptions in identifying them.