Excerpt from The Anatomy of Negation Man, as described by Quatrefages, is a religious animal. The early naturalists said the same thing of the elephant; but while this statement, which contains all the elements of a libel, has fallen into disrepute, the former, little by little, has assumed the purple among accepted facts. Man's belief in the supernatural antedates chronology. It was unfathered and without a mother. It was spontaneous, natural, and unassisted by revelation. It sprang into being with the first flight of fancy. The characteristic trait of primitive man seems to have been that of intellectual passivity. He was never astonished: if he noticed anything, it was his own weakness; the power of the elements he accepted as a matter of course. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.