PERSONIFIED

So the origins of supernatural beliefs are within every developing child. All of these ideas are not new. The philosopher David Hume wrote about mind design and supernatural beliefs and identifi ed the same aspects of mind design more than two hundred years ago. Hume recognized the same childlike reasoning in adults when trying to make sense of the world. Adults too see a world of things that seem alive with human qualities. There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We fi nd human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and refl ection, ascribe malice and good-will to everything, that hurts or pleases us. Hence . . . trees, mountains and streams are personifi ed, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion.45