We can hope to understand folklore, myth, early religion, and savage beliefs only when we understand that these are the first, faint foreshadowings of philosophic truth created for the benefit of primitive minds by better informed ones. The savage was taught to think in terms of what he could easily visualize; consequently, he was taught to see the invisible in the visible, to feel the presence of spirits (that is, shadowy human or animal forms) as lurking in trees in order to explain their growth and life, as escaping from dead bodies in order to explain that the dead man continued to survive, or gigantically sized and placed in the sky in order to explain the processes and movements of Nature. How else could the intelligent leader teach these ungrown minds the truths that the mind of a man did not die with his body, or that mind was forever producing thoughts of the universe? Thus, these primitive "superstitions" are semi-symbolical and they rest on a philosophical foundation.
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 1 : Origin, Purpose of Religions > # 261
