Excerpt from Realistic Idealism in Philosophy Itself, Vol. 1 of 2 A due consideration of the earlier phases of the human development, as indeed of all science, may hear profoundly upon the question of a true theory of human nature but it is chiefly in an antiquarian and merely historical point of view that the early hypotheses of mankind about Nature and themselves, and more especially about spiritual and demoniac powers, gods, demigods, angels, spirits, and dev ils, or even the philosophies of the more ancient peoples of whom some record has come down to us, can have much interest or value upon our question of a philosophy of the universe, as it is now presented for the consideration of en lightened minds, otherwise than as the study of the past history of the race may aid in the investigation, not so much by anything they have to teach, by way of throwing new light upon the problem for us, as by assisting in the elimination of errors and misconceptions which still stand in the way. 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.