Full Idea
In the mind of religious men, all nature is the sum of actions of conscious and intentioned beings, an enormous complex of arbitrary acts.
Gist of Idea
In religious thought nature is a complex of arbitrary acts by conscious beings
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111)
Book Reference
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Human, All Too Human', ed/tr. Faber,Marion [Penguin 1994], p.81
A Reaction
This is the beginning of the process, I think, which then sees the gods as dictating through laws, and then the laws themselves doing the dictating, then seeing the laws as inhering in nature - and finally realising there aren't any laws!