THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. 

VOL. XXXVIII. 

MYTH AND SCIENCE

AN ESSAY

BY

TITO VIGNOLI

THIRD EDITION

LONDONKEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO. , 1 PATERNOSTER SQU. 1885

 CONTENTS. 

 ON IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH 1

 ANIMAL SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 48

 HUMAN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION 68

 THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 104

 THE ANIMAL AND HUMAN EXERCISE OF THE INTELLECT ON THE PERCEPTION OF THINGS 116

 INTRINSIC LAW OF THE FACULTY OF APPREHENSION 135

 THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE 155

 ON DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, AND MADNESS--CONCLUSION 241

MYTH AND SCIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. 

Myth, as it is understood by us, and as It will be developed andexplained in this work, cannot be defined in summary terms, since itsmultiform and comprehensive nature embraces and includes all primitiveaction, as well as much which is consecutive and historical in theintelligence and feelings of man, with respect to the immediate and thereflex interpretation of the world, of the Individual, and of thesociety in which our common life is passed. 

We hold that myth is, in its most general and comprehensive nature, thespontaneous and imaginative form in which the human intelligence andhuman emotions conceive and represent themselves and things in general;it is the psychical and physical mode in which man projects himself intoall those phenomena which he is able to apprehend and perceive. [1]

We do not propose to consider in this treatise the myths peculiar to onepeople, nor to one race; we do not seek to estimate the intrinsic valueof myths at the time when they were already developed among variouspeoples, and constituted into an Olympus, or special religion; we do notwish to determine the special and historical cause of theirmanifestations in the life of any one people, since we now refrain fromentering on the field of comparative mythology. It is the scope andobject of our modest researches to trace the strictly primitive originof the human myths as a whole; to reach the ultimate fact, and thecauses of this fact, whence myth, in its necessary and universal form, is evolved and has its origin. 

We must therefore seek to discover whether, in addition to the variouscauses assigned for myth in earlier ages, and still more in modern timesby our great philologists, ethnologists, and philosophers of everyschool--causes which are for the most part extrinsic--there be not areason more deeply seated in our nature, which is first manifested as anecessary and spontaneous function of the intelligence, and which istherefore intrinsic and inevitable. 

In this case myth will appear to us, not as an accident in the life ofprimitive peoples varying in intensity and extent, not as a vagueconception of things due to the erroneous interpretation of words andphrases, nor again as the fanciful creation of ignorant minds; but itwill appear to be a special faculty of the human mind, inspired byemotions which accompany and animate its products. Since this innatefaculty of myth is indigenous and common to all men, it will not only bethe portion of all peoples, but of each individual in every age, inevery race, whatever may be their respective conditions. 

Myth, therefore, will not be resolved by us into a manifestation of anobsolete age, or of peoples still in a barbarous and savage state, noras part of the cycle through which nations and individuals have, respectively passed, or have nearly passed; but it remains to this day, in spite of the prevailing civilisation which has greatly increased andis still increasing, it still persists as a mode of physical andintellectual force in the organic elements which constitute it. 

Nor, let it be observed, do I say that such a mythical faculty persistsas such only among the ignorant masses in town or country, in the formof those very ancient superstitions which have been collected withimmense labour by learned mythologists and ethnologists; on thecontrary, I maintain that the mythical faculty still exists in all men, independently of this survival of old superstitions, to whatever peopleand class they may belong; and it will continue to exist as an innatefunction of the intelligence, if not with respect to the substance, which may alter, at any rate in the mode of its acts and proceedings. 

I fear that this opinion will appear at first sight to be paradoxicaland chimerical, since it is well known that the mythical conception ofthe world and its origin is gradually disappearing among civilizednations, and it is supposed to be altogether extinct among men ofculture and intelligence. Yet I flatter myself, perhaps too rashly, thatby the time he reaches the end of this work, the reader will beconvinced of the truth of my assertion, since it is proved by so manyfacts, and the psychical law from, which it results is so clear. 

It must not, however, be forgotten that, in addition to the mythicalfaculty of our minds, there exists the scientific faculty, the otherfactor of a perfect intellectual life; the latter is most powerful incertain races, and must in time prevail over the former, which in itsobjective form precedes it; yet they are subjectively combined inpractice and are indissolubly united through life. 

Undoubtedly neither the mythical nor the scientific faculty is equal andidentical in all peoples, any more than they are equal and identical inindividuals; but they subsist together, while varying in intensity anddegree, since they are both necessary functions of the intelligence. 

Whether we content ourselves with studying the mental and socialconditions in the lower types of modern peoples, or go back to theearliest times, we find men everywhere and always possessed of the powerof speech, and holding mythical superstitions, it may be of the rudestand most elementary kind; so also do we find men possessed of rationalideas, although they may be very simple and empirical. They have someknowledge of the causes of things, of periods in the phenomena ofnature, which they know how to apply to the habits and necessities oftheir social and individual lives. 

No one, for example, would deny that many mythical superstitions, andfanciful beliefs in invisible powers, existed among the now extinctTasmanians, and are now found among the Andaman islanders, the Fuegians, the Australians, the Cingalese Veddahs, and other rude and unculturedsavages. On the other hand, those who are acquainted with their mode oflife find that savages are not absolutely devoid of intellectualactivity of an empirical kind, since they partly understand the naturalcauses of some phenomena, and are able, in a rational, not an arbitrarymanner, to ascribe to laws and the necessities of things many factsrelating to the individual and to society. They are, therefore, notwithout the scientific as well as the mythical faculty making dueallowance for their intellectual condition; and these primitive andnatural instincts are due to the physical and intellectual organism ofhuman nature. 

In order to pursue this important inquiry into the first and final causeof the origin of myth, it is evidently not enough to make a laboriousand varied collection of myths, and of the primitive superstitions ofall peoples, so as to exhaust the immense field of modern ethnography. Nor is it enough to consider the various normal and abnormal conditionsof psychical phenomena, nor to undertake the comparative study oflanguages, to ascertain how far their speech will reveal the primitivebeliefs of various races, and the obscure metaphorical sayings whichgave birth to many myths. It is also necessary to subject to carefulexamination the simplest elementary acts of the mind, in their physicaland psychical complexity, in order to discover in their spontaneousaction the transcendental fact which inevitably involves the genesis ofthe same myth, the primary source whence it is diffused by subsequentreflex efforts in various times and varying forms. 

In speaking of the transcendental fact, it must not be supposed that Iallude to certain well-known _a priori_ speculations, which are opposedto my temper of mind and to my mode of teaching. I only use the termtranscendental because this is actually the primitive condition of thefact in its inevitable beginning, whatever form the mythicalrepresentation may subsequently take. This fact is not peculiar to anyindividual, people, or race, but it is manifested as an essentialorganism of the human character, which is in all cases universal, permanent, and uniform. 

In order to give a clear explanation of my estimate of the _a priori_idea, which also takes its place as the factor of experimental andpositive teaching, I must observe that for those who belong to thehistorical and evolutionary school, _a priori_, so far as respects anyorganism, habit, and psychological constitution in the whole animalkingdom, in which man is also included, signifies whatever in them isfixed and permanently organized; whatever is perpetuated by theindefinite repetition of habits, organs, and functions, by means of theheredity of ages. The whole history of organisms abounds with positiveand repeated proofs of this fact, which no one can doubt who is notabsolutely ignorant of elementary science. Every day adds to the numberof these proofs, demonstrating one of those truths which become thecommon property of nations. 

_A priori_ is therefore reduced by us to the modification of organs intheir physical and psychical constitution, as it has ultimately takenplace in the organism by the successive evolutions of forms which havegradually become permanent, and are perpetuated by embryogenicreproduction. This reproduction is in its turn the absolute condition ofpsychical and organic facts, which are thus manifested as primitivefacts in the new life of the individual. By this law, the psychicalfacts, whether elementary or complex, as they occur in the individual upto the point of their evolution, have the necessary conditions ofpossibility, and may therefore be termed a _priori_ with respect to thelaws of evolution, and to the hereditary permanence of acts performed inthe former environment of the organism at the time when they appeared. 

This conception of a _priori_ is, it must be admitted, very differentfrom that of transcendental philosophers, who seek to prove either thatan independent artificer has not only produced the various organic formsin their present complexity, and has specially provided the spiritualsubject with its category of thought, independently of all experience;or else they assert the intrinsic existence of such forms in the spirit, from the beginning of time. 

In this way, as we have already said, we must not only collect the factswhich abound in history and ethnology respecting the general teaching ofmyths, but we must also observe introspectively, and by pursuing theexperimental method, the primitive and fundamental psychical facts, soas to discover the a priori conditions of the myth itself. We mustascertain, from a careful psychological examination, the absolutelyprimitive origin of all mythical representations, and how these are intheir turn the actual historical result of the same conditions, as theyexisted prior to their manifestations. 

It must not be supposed that in this primary fact, and in these _apriori_ psychical and organic conditions, we shall find the ulteriorcause of the various and manifold forms, or of the successive evolutionof myths. This would be a grave mistake, equal to that oftranscendentalists, who imagine that the laws which actually exist, andthe order of cosmic and historic phenomena may be determined from theindependent exercise of their own thoughts, although such laws and ordercan only be traced and discovered by experience and the observation offacts. In the _a priori_ conditions of the psychical and organic nature, and in the elementary acts which outwardly result from them, we shallonly trace the origin and necessary source of myth, not the variableforms of its successive evolution. 

The ulterior form, so far as the substance of the myth and its variousmodifications are concerned, is in great part the reflex work of man;its aspect changes in accordance with the attitude and force of thefaculties of individuals, peoples and races, and it depends on an energyto which the _a priori_ conditions, as we have just defined them, do notstrictly apply so far as the determinate form is concerned. 

It is precisely in this ulterior work of the evolution of myth, which inthe elementary fact of its primitive essence had its origin in thepredisposition of mind and body, that we may discern the interchangeablegerm and origin both of myth and science. If, therefore; the rationaleof science cannot be found in the general form of mythicalrepresentations, the matter which serves to exercise the mind; yet themode of its exercise, and of the logical and psychical faculty, and thespontaneous method pursued, are identical: the two mythical andscientific faculties are, in fact, considered in themselves, fused intoone. 

As far as the origin of myth is concerned, the mode of considering itsevolution, and its organic connection with science, we differ from othermythologists as to the sources to which they trace this immenseelaboration of the human intelligence. We may be mistaken, but we are inany case entering on unexplored ways, and if we go astray, the boldnessof an enterprise which we undertake with diffidence pleads forindulgence. 

Omitting to notice the well-known opinions on the origin of myth whichwere current in classic antiquity, in the Græco-Latin world, or inIndia, [2] we restrict our inquiry to modern times subsequent toCreuzer's learned and extensive labours. In a more scientific method, and divested of prejudice, we propose to trace the sources of myth ingeneral, and among various peoples in particular. 

The science of languages, or comparative philology, is the chiefinstrument required in such researches, and much light has been acquiredin our days, which has led to surprising results, at least within thesphere of the special races to which it has been applied. The names ofKuhn, Weber, Sonne, Benfey, Grimm, Schwartz, Hanusch, Maury, Bréal, Pictet, l'Ascoli, De Gubernatis, and many others, are well known fortheir marvellous discoveries in this new and arduous field. They havenot only fused into one ancient and primitive image the various mythsscattered in different forms among the Aryan races, but they haverevealed the original conception, as it existed in the earliest meaningof words before their dispersion. Hence came the multiplicity of myths, developed in brilliant anthropomorphic groups in different theologies, gradually becoming more simple as time went on, then uniting in thevague primitive personification of the winds, the storms, the sun, thedawn; in short, of astral and meteorological phenomena. 

On the other hand, Max Müller, whose theory of original myths ispeculiar to himself, has made use of this philological instrument toprove that the Aryan myths may at any rate be referred to a singlesource, namely to metaphor, or to the double meaning of words, due tothe poverty of primitive languages. He calls this double meaning theinfirmity of speech. 

I do not deny that many conclusions to which some or other of the greatauthorities just mentioned have arrived may be as true as they aresurprising. I also admit that this may be a certain method ofdistinguishing the various mythical representations in their earlybeginnings from their subsequent and complex forms. But in all the factswhich have been ascertained, or which may hereafter be ascertained, fromthe comparative study of the languages of different races, noexplanation is afforded of the fact that into the natural and primitivephenomena of myth, or, as Müller holds, into its various metaphors, manhas so far infused his own life, that they have, like man himself, asubjective and deliberate consciousness and force. It seems to me thatthis problem has not yet been solved by scholars; they have stoppedshort after establishing the primary fact, and are content to affirmthat such is human nature, which projects itself on external things. [3]

This explanation establishes a true and universal fact, but it is notthe explanation of the fact itself; yet it is not, as we shall see, incapable of solution, and it appears to me that the ultimate sourcewhence myths really proceed has not been reached. 

Again, if such an opinion and such a method can give us the key to thepolytheistic origin of the respective Olympuses of classic Greece andRome, it leaves unexplained the numerous and manifold superstitionswhich philology itself proves to have existed prior to the origin ofcosmic myths. These superstitions can by no means be referred to acommon source, to the astral and meteorological myths, some of whichwere prior, while others were subsequent to these superstitions. 

Taking, therefore, the general and more important opinions which are nowcurrent respecting the origin of myth, it may be said that in additionto the systems already mentioned, two others are presented to us withthe weight of authority and knowledge; these, while they do not renouncethe appliances and linguistic analyses of the former, try to unite allthe mythical sources of mankind in general into a single head, whenceall myths, beliefs, superstitions, and religions have their origin. While France and Germany and some other nations have achieveddistinction in this field, England has been especially remarkable forthe nature of her attempts, and the vastness of her achievements inevery direction. We pass over many great minds which were first in thefield in order to dwell on the two men who, as it seems to me, havesummed up the knowledge of others, and have formulated a theory in greatmeasure peculiar to themselves. 

Tylor's well known name will at once suggest itself, and that of HerbertSpencer; the former, in his great work on the "Early History of Mankindand of Civilization, " and other writings, the latter, in the firstvolume of his "Sociology, " and in his earlier works, have respectivelyestablished the doctrine of the universal origin of myths on the basisof ethnography, on the psychological examination of the primary facts ofthe intelligence, and on the conception of the evolution of the generalphenomena of nature. 

It would, indeed, be difficult to excel the great mind, the acutegenius, and the universal learning of Herbert Spencer, who has beentermed the modern Aristotle by a learned writer; and this is high praisewhen we remember how much knowledge is necessary in our times, and inthe present conditions of science, before any one can be deemed worthyof such a comparison. But with due respect to so great a man, and withthe diffidence of one who is only his disciple, I venture to think thatHerbert Spencer's attempt to revive, at any rate in part, Evemero'stheory of the origin of myths will not be successful, and it may proveinjurious to science. First, because all myths cannot be reduced, topersonal or historical facts; and next, because the primitive value ofmany of them is so clear and distinct in their mode of expression thatit is not possible to derive them from any source but the directpersonification of natural phenomena. Nor does it appear to me to bealways and altogether certain that the origin of myths, also caused bythe double personality discerned in the shadow of the body itself, inthe images reflected by liquid substances, in echoes and visions of thenight, can be all ascribed to the worship of the dead. 

The worship of the dead is undoubtedly universal. There is no people, ancient or modern, civilized or savage, by whom it has not beenpractised; the fact is proved by history, philology and ethnography. Butif the worship of the dead is a constant form, manifested everywhere, itflourishes and is interwoven with a multitude of other mythical formsand superstitious beliefs which cannot in any way be reduced to thissingle form of worship, nor be derived from it. This worship isundoubtedly one of the most abundant sources of myth, and Spencer, withhis profound knowledge and keen discernment, was able to discuss thehypothesis as it deserves; whence his book, even from this point ofview, is a masterpiece of analysis, like all those which issue from hispowerful mind. 

Yet even if the truth of this doctrine should be in great measureproved, the question must still be asked how it happens that manvivifies and personifies his own image in duplicate, or else theapparitions of dreams or their reflections, and the echoes of nature, and ultimately the spirits of the dead. 

Tylor developed his theory more distinctly and at greater length, and hebrought to bear upon it great genius, extraordinary knowledge, and asound critical faculty, so that his work must be regarded as one of themost remarkable in the history of human thought. He belongs to theschool of evolution, and his book strongly confirms the truths of thattheory; since from the primitive germs of myth, from the various andmost simple forms of fetishes among all races, he gradually evolvesthese rude images into more, complex and anthropomorphic forms, until heattains the limits of natural and positive science. He admits that thereare in mankind various normal and abnormal sources of myth, but he comesto the ultimate conclusion that they all depend on man's peculiar andspontaneous tendency to _animate_ all things, whence his generalprinciple has taken the name of _animism_. It is unnecessary to say muchin praise of this learned work, since it is known to all, and cannot betoo much studied by those who wish for instruction on such subjects. 

But while assenting to his general principle, which remains as the soleultimate source of all mythical representation, I repeat the usualinquiry; what causes man to animate all the objects which surround him, and what is the cause of this established and universal fact? Themarvellous ethnographic learning of the author, and his profoundanalysis, do not answer this question, and the problem still remainsunsolved. 

It is evident from what we have said, that the theory of the origin ofmyth has of late made real and important progress in differentdirections; it has been constituted by fitting methods, and withdispassionate research, laying aside fanciful hypotheses and systemsmore or less prompted by a desire to support or confute principles whichhave no connection with science. We have now in great measure arrived atthe fundamental facts whence myth is derived, although, if I do notdeceive myself, the ultimate fact, and the cause of this fact, have notyet been ascertained; namely, for what reason man personifies allphenomena, first vaguely projecting himself into them, and thenexercising a distinct purpose of anthropomorphism, until in this way hehas gradually modified the world according to his own image. 

If we are able to solve this difficult problem, a fact most important toscience and to the advancement of these special studies must result fromit: the assimilation and concentration of all the sources of myth into asingle act, whether normal or abnormal to humanity. To say that animismis the general principle of myth does not reduce the different sourceswhence it proceeds to a single psychical and organic act, since theyremain distinct and separate in their respective orbits. To attain ourobject, it is necessary that the direct personification of naturalphenomena, as well as the indirect personification of metaphor; theinfusion of life into a man's own shadow, into reflex images and dreams;the belief in the reality of normal illusions, as well as of theabnormal hallucinations of delirium, of madness, and of all forms ofnervous affections; all these things must be resolved into a singlegenerating act which explains and includes them. It must be shown howand why there is found in man the possibility of modifying all thesemythical forms into an image supposed to be external to himself, livingand personal. For if we are enabled to reply scientifically to suchinquiries, we shall not only have concentrated in a single fact all themost diverse normal and abnormal forms of myth peculiar to man, but weshall also have given an ulterior and analytic explanation of this fact. 

I certainly do not presume to declare myself competent to effect somuch, and I am more conscious than my critics how far I fall short of myhigh aim; but the modest attempt, made with the resolution to accept allcriticism offered with courtesy and good faith, does not imply culpablepresumption nor excessive vanity. 

I regret to say that it is not on this point only that my theory of mythdiffers from that of others; I shall not be satisfied if I only succeedin discovering in man the primitive act which issues the generalanimism of things, which becomes the substance of the ulterior myths intheir intellectual and historical evolution. It is evident, at least tothose who do not cling obstinately to old traditions, that man isevolved from the animal kingdom. The comparative anatomy, physiology, and psychology of man and other animals distinctly show their intimateconnection in conformation, tissues, organs, and functions, and aboveall, in consciousness and intelligence. This truth, deduced from simpleobservation and experiment, must lead to the conviction that all issuedfrom the same germ, and had the same genesis. 

For those who do not cherish pedantic and sectarian prejudices, thishypothesis is changed into assurance by modern discoveries; it is shownin the transformations and transitions of paleontological forms; in theembryogenic evolution of so many animals, man included, which, accordingto their various species, reveals the lower types whence they issued; inthe successive forms taken by the foetus; in the powerful andindisputable laws of selection; in the modifications by adaptation ofthe different organisms, and in the effects of isolation. This is theonly rational explanation, confirmed as it is by fresh facts every day, of the multiplicity and variety of organic forms in the lapse of time;unless, indeed, we ascribe such variety to a miracle, even moredifficult to accept than the difficulties of the opposite-theory. 

I admit that evidence for the complete demonstration of this theory issometimes wanting; the gaps between the fossil fauna and flora and thoseof modern times are neither few nor unimportant; but on the other hand, such proofs are accumulating, and the gaps are filled up every day, sothat we may almost assert that in some way or other, by means somewhatdifferent from those on which we now rely, the great rational principleof evolution will be successfully and permanently established. 

It is more than twenty years since, in ways and by study peculiar toourselves, we first devoted ourselves to this theory, and while we gavea conscientious consideration to opposite theories, so as to estimatewith sincerity their importance and value, we could not relinquish ourconviction that every advance in physical, biological, and socialscience served to confirm the theory of evolution. 

It must not be supposed that I make any dogmatic assertion, which mightpossibly be erroneous, when I say that the evidence of facts does notcontradict the assumptions of modern science. Sincere convictions shouldoffend no one, nor do they indicate an a priori conflict with otherbeliefs. Every one is justified in thinking his own thoughts when hespeaks with moderation and supports his peculiar opinions with a certainamount of learning. 

It is not denied, even by those who oppose modern theories respectingthe genesis of organisms, that there are, excluding some psychicalelements, many and important points of resemblance between man andanimals in the exercise of their consciousness, intelligence, andemotions, if indeed they are not identically the same. The comparativepsychology of man and animals plainly shows that the perceptions, bothin their respective organs and in their mode of action, act in the sameway, especially in the higher animals; and the origin, movements, andassociations of the imagination and the emotions are likewise identical. Nor will it be disputed that we find in animals implicit memory, judgment, and reasoning, the inductions and deductions from one specialfact to another, the passions, the physiological language of gestures, expressive of internal emotions, and even, in the case of gregariousanimals, the combined action to effect certain purposes; so that, as faras their higher orders are concerned, animals may be regarded as asimple and undeveloped form of man, while man, by his later psychicaland organic evolution, has become a developed and complex animal. [4]

In my book on the fundamental law of intelligence in the animal kingdom, I attempted to show this great truth, and to formulate a principlecommon to all animals in the exercise of their psychical emotions, bysetting forth the essential elements as they are generally displayed. Ithink I was not far from the truth in establishing a law which seemsindubitable; although, while some men whose opinion is worthy of esteemhave accepted it, other very competent judges have objected to someparts of my theory, but without convincing me of error. I repeat myconclusions here, since they are necessary to the theory of the genesisof myth, which I propose to explain in this work. I hold the completeidentity between man and animals to be established by the adequateconsideration of the faculties, the psychical elements of consciousnessand intelligence, and the mode of their spontaneous exercise; and Ibelieve the superiority of man to consist not so much in new facultiesas in the reflex effect upon themselves of those he possesses in commonwith the animals. The old adage confirms this theory: _Homo duplex_. 

No one now doubts that animals feel, hear, remember, and the like, whileman is able to exercise his will, to feel, to remember, deliberately toconsider all his actions and functions, because he not only possessesthe direct and spontaneous intuition with respect to himself and thingsin general which he has in common with animals, but he has an intuitiveknowledge of that intuition itself, and in this way he multiplies withinhimself the exercise of his whole psychical life. We find the ultimatecause of this return upon himself, and his intuition of things, in hisdeliberate will, which does not only immediately command his body andhis manifold relative functions, but also the complex range of hispsychical acts. This fact, which as I believe has not been observedbefore, is of great importance. It is manifest that the differencebetween man and other animals does not consist in the diversity ordiscrepancy of the elements of the intelligence, but in its reflexaction on itself; an action which certainly has its conditions fixed bythe organic and physiological composition of the brain. 

If it should be said that the traditional opinion of science, as well asthe general sentence of mankind, have always regarded reflection as thebasis of the difference between animals and man, so that there is nonovelty in our principle, the assertion is erroneous. Reflection, as aninward psychical fact, has certainly been observed by psychologists andphilosophers in all civilized times, and instinctively by every one; norcould it be otherwise, since reflection is one of the facts most evidentto human consciousness. But although the fact, or the intrinsic andcharacteristic action of human thought has been observed, and has oftenbeen discussed and analyzed in some of its elements, yet its genesis hasnot been declared, nor has its ultimate cause been discovered. Wepropose to discover this ultimate cause, and we refer it to the exerciseof the will over all the elements and acts which constitute humanintelligence; an intelligence only differing from that of animals bythis inward and deliberate fact, which enables man to consider andexamine all his acts, thus logically doubling their range. Thisintelligence has in animals a simple and direct influence on theirbodies and on the external world, in proportion to their diverse formsand inherited instincts; while in man, owing to his commanding attitude, it falls back upon itself, and gives rise to the inquiring andreflective habit of science. 

We do not, therefore, divide man from other animals, but rather assertthat many proofs and subtle analyses show the identity of theirintelligence in its fundamental elements, while the difference is onlythe result of a reaction of the same intelligence on itself. Such atheory does not in any way interrupt the natural evolution and genesisof the animal kingdom, while the distinctive peculiarity of man is shownin an act which, as I believe, clearly explains the new faculty ofreason acquired by him. 

I must admit that in speaking of the psychical faculty as a force whichpossesses laws peculiar to itself, it has appeared to a learned andcompetent judge that I have conceded a real existence to this faculty, independently of the physiological conditions through which it manifestsitself, which might be called a mythical personality in the constitutionof the world. If I had really made such an assertion, it would be anerror which I am perhaps more ready than others to repudiate, as itwill appear in the present work. I am far from blaming the courteouscritics who allege such objections to my theory, and indeed I amhonoured by their notice. I must blame myself for not having, in mydesire to be brief, sufficiently defined my conception. 

I hold the psychical manifestation to be not only conditioned by theorganism, to speak scientifically, and to be rendered physiologicallypossible by these conditions, but I consider it to be of the same natureas the other so-called forces of the universe; such, for example, as themanifestations of light, of electricity, of magnetism, and the like. When physicists speak of these forces--if the necessities of languageand the brevity of the explanation constrain us to adopt the termforces, as though they were real substances--they certainly do notbelieve, nor wish others to believe, that they are really such. It iswell known that such expressions are used to signify the appearanceunder certain circumstances of some special phenomena which groupthemselves by their mode and power of manifestation into one genericconception as a summary of the whole. They always take place, relativelyto these circumstances, in the same mode and with the same power, sothat they may at once be experimentally distinguished from others whichhave been grouped together in like manner. 

Such manifestations do not imply a real cosmic entity of these forces, as if they were independent of the matter whence they issue; they aresimply determinate and determinate modes of motions, of actions, andreactions in the elements of the world. For if magnetism appears toreveal itself in determinate elements, its modes of manifestation arepeculiar to itself, and its efficacy with respect to other forces isalso peculiar; yet it by no means follows that it possesses asubstantial entity, or, as it were, displays personal activity amongphenomena; it rather indicates that the elements of the world will, under given circumstances, act reciprocally in such a manner that weperceive phenomena which group themselves together and which we callmagnetic or magnetism. And this explanation applies to other cases. 

I therefore, speaking of psychical force in general, used the sameterms; I certainly did not wish to constitute it into a personal andmaterial entity of the universe, but I intended to assert that among themanifestations of the various forces of the world, defined as above, there is also this psychical force, characterized by phenomena and lawspeculiar to itself, and which, as I have shown, is when exercised one ofthe greatest factors of the world. I repeat that if this force varieswith the greater or less perfection of the organisms in which, it ismanifested, yet it possesses a law and fundamental elements by which itis so constituted that the same results will ensue in the simplest asin the most complex form. This is the case with all the other forces ofnature; they may be modified by existing circumstances, and yet theyhave laws and definite elements to distinguish them from all others. These forces, however, while they are distinct in their peculiarmanifestations, and take effect through special qualities, quantities, and rhythmic movements, are all fused together in the infinite andeternal unity which constitutes the life of the universe. Neither herenor in my former work is there any question of that most difficultproblem, the individual personality of man. [5]

Since there is between man and animals a relationship and a psychicalidentity, as well as a genetic continuity of evolution, it is impossibleto deny that there is also in some degree a like continuity in theproducts and acts of the consciousness, the emotions, and theintelligence. This is asserted or admitted even by those who do not liketo hear of the genetic continuity of evolution, nor is there now anyschool of thought which impugns such a truth. If this be true, as itundoubtedly is, and since we are treating of the genesis of myth in itsearliest beginning, we will endeavour, with daring prompted by thetheory of evolution, to discover if the first germ of theserepresentations may not have already existed in the animal kingdombefore it was evolved in man in the fetishtic and anthropomorphic form. This is an arduous but necessary inquiry, to which I am impelled by thedoctrine of evolution, as it is properly understood, as well as by theuniversal logic of nature. 

If I were to consider myth as it has ultimately been developed in man, it would be a strange and absurd attempt to trace out any points ofresemblance with animals, who are altogether devoid of the logicalfaculty which leads to such development. But if, on the contrary, weendeavour to trace the earliest, spontaneous, and direct elements ofmyth as a product of animal emotions and implicit intelligence, suchresearch becomes not only legitimate but necessary; since the instrumentis the same, the effects ought also to be the same. 

We have already said that the fact has been observed and generallyadmitted that the primary origin of myth in its essential elementsconsists in the personification or animation of all extrinsic phenomena, as well as of the dreams, illusions, and hallucinations which areintrinsic. It is agreed that this animation is not the reflex anddeliberate act of man, but that it is the spontaneous and immediate actof the human intelligence in its elementary consciousness and emotions. It must therefore be evident that this vague and continual animation ofthings ought to be found also in animals, especially in those of thehigher types, in whom consciousness, the emotions, and the intelligenceare implicitly identical with those of man. Consequently, that which isat first sight absurd becomes obvious and natural, and the fact is onlystrange and inexplicable to those who have not carefully considered it. 

We must, however, declare that this primary fact is not irreducible, andthat science ought not to be content to stop there, but should endeavourto explain and resolve it into its elements, so as to be able to say wehave reached the point at which the genesis of myth really begins. Thisaim can only be attained by the decomposition by analysis of theprimitive fact. Since intelligence in its essential elements, and in itsinnate and implicit exercise, appears to be the same in man and inanimals, it is necessary to reduce the analysis of animal nature to aprimary psychical fact, in order to see whether by this fact, which isidentical also in man, the generating element of myth is reallyrevealed. 

I propose to show that this research will reveal truths hithertounattained, and explain the general law, not merely of the extrinsicprocess of science and of myth, but also of civilization. 

Starting from this wide basis, we must trace, step by step, the dawn, development, and gradual disappearance of myth. Since it is ourbusiness to consider science as well as myth, and their respectiverelations in the evolution common to both, we must, as briefly aspossible in the present work, pause to consider these two factors of thehuman mind, observing the beginnings, conditions, and modes in which theone arose and gradually disappeared, while the other advanced andtriumphed. We must not only regard the progress and transformation ofreligions, but also of science, as it is revealed in the philosophicsystems of every age, in the partial or complete discoveries of genius, and in the great and stupendous achievements of modern experimentalscience. It would require a long treatise to fill so wide a field, whichwe must restrict to the limits of a few pages. Since our readers are nowgenerally acquainted with the course pursued by human thought, and withthe progress of peoples, but few landmarks or formulas are necessary toenable them to clear away obscurity and estimate facts at their justvalue, so as to understand what civilization and science have to do withthe evolution of myth, and of science itself. 

A great corollary also ensues from studies undertaken with the aid ofsociology, that is, the genesis, form, and gradual evolution of humansocieties. These vary in character, in attitude, in power, form andduration, with the different characters of races, and thus fulfil invarious ways the cycle of myth and science of which they are capable. Itwould indeed be difficult to attain to a clear and adequate conceptionof the universal evolution of myth and science, but for the existence ofa privileged race distinguished for its psychical and organic power, which from its beginning until now, although subject to many partialeclipses, has on the whole maintained its position in the world so as topresent to us the long historical drama of its evolutions. Other races, peoples, or tribes have disappeared in the struggle for existence, orhave remained essentially incapable of further progress even in arelatively inferior degree, so as to afford no aid in following thesuccessive development of myth and science; while the Aryan family, arace to which I believe that the Semitic originally belonged, [6]furnishes the unbroken sequence of events and the stages of such complexevolution. Nor certainly is there any signs of the disappearance of thisrace, since every day its intellectual and territorial achievements, added to the instruments of a powerful material civilization, invigorateits strength and presage its indefinite duration in forms we are notable to foresee, unless indeed fatal astral or telluric catastrophesshould hinder its progress or bring it to an end. 

If we compare this race with itself at different epochs, and in the manydifferent peoples into which it was severed, and if at the same time weconfront it with the types of other peoples at various stages, from therudest to the most civilized, it becomes possible to form a clearconception of the genesis and successive evolution of myth and scienceof which the human race is capable, and in this way we may understandthe general law which governs such evolutions. This study also teachesus that humanity, whether we agree with monogenists or poligenists, isphysically and psychically in all respects the same in its essentialelements; in all peoples without distinction, as ethnography teaches us, the origin and genesis of myth, the implicit exercise of reason and itsdevelopment, are, at all events up to a given point, absolutelyidentical. All start from the same manifestations and mythicalcreations, and these are afterwards developed according to the logicalor scientific canons of thought, which are applied to theirclassification. Both among fetish-worshippers and polytheists there wasa tendency towards monotheism, although sometimes it could only bediscerned in a vague and confused manner. 

If myth is, as I have said, to be considered from another point of view, as the spontaneous effect of the intelligence, and a necessary function, relatively to the primary act from which it begins, it might appear thatmyth would never cease to be, and that humanity, even as it isrepresented by the elect and enduring race, must always remain in thisoriginal illusion; so that every man would have to begin again forhimself in his own peculiar cycle of myth. But history shows that thisis not the case, and that the mythic faculty gradually wanes and becomesweaker, even if it does not altogether cease to exist, a result whichwould not occur if myth were a necessary function of the intelligence. 

I shall presently reply to such an objection; in the meanwhile, regarding the question superficially, I need only say that if the mythicfaculty diminishes in one direction, and with respect to some forms andtheir corresponding substance, it has certainly not ceased to appear inanother, exerting itself, as we shall see, in other forms and othersubstance. The common people, both urban and rural, do for the most partadhere to primitive and very ancient superstitions, as every one mayknow from his own experience, as well as from the writings of well knownauthors of nearly all the civilized nations of Europe. In fact, everyman in the early period of his life constructs a heaven for himself, asthose who study the ways of children are aware, and this has given riseto a new science of infantine psychology, set forth in the writings ofTaine, Darwin, Perez, and others. 

We also propose to show that the scientific faculty, which gathersstrength and is developed from the mythical faculty, is in the firstinstance identical and confounded with it, but that science corrects andcontrols the primitive function, just as reason corrects and explainsthe errors and illusions of the senses; so that the truly rational manissues, like the foetus from its embryonic covering, out of itsprimitive mythical covering into the light of truth. 

Every one must perceive that the study of the origin of myths has animportant bearing on the clear and positive knowledge of mankind. Inmodern times biological science, such as ethnography and anthropology, have not only thrown much light on the genesis of organic bodies, ofanimals and of man, but they have afforded very important aid topsychological research, on account of the close connection betweenpsychology and the general physical laws of the world. The mythicalfaculty in man, and its results, have received much light from thesesciences, since the modifications induced in individuals and in peoplesby many natural causes, organic or climatological, are based upon theirphysiological conditions. In the first chapters of Herbert Spencer'sbook on Sociology, there is a masterly investigation into the changesproduced by climate, with its accidents and organic products, on thepeculiar temperament of different peoples and races, and we must referour readers to his admirable summary. 

We avail ourselves of the aid afforded by all these branches of sciencein order to comprehend the true nature of man, and the place which hereally occupies in the animal creation. Man should be estimated as allother products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to hisabsolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical andorganic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of thesupernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and thelaws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinationsare studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for theirreciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if therebe in the universe a distinction of modes, there is no absoluteseparation of laws and phenomena. 

The various branches of science are only subjective necessities, consequent on the successive and gradual order of our comprehension ofthings; they are classifications of method, with no special reference tothe undivided personality of nature. All are parts of the whole, and soalso the whole is revealed in its several parts. They come to be inthought, as well as in reality, reciprocal conditions of each other; andhe who is able to solve the problem of the world correctly in a simplemovement of an atom, would be able to explain all laws and allphenomena, since every thing may ultimately be reduced to this movement. It is precisely this which has been attained by certain laws, so thatthe study of man must not be dissociated from this conception. It isnecessary to regard him as a product of the forces of nature, with whichhe has certain properties in common. Although man may appear to be aspecial and peculiar subject, yet he is connected with the universalsystem in which he lives by the elements, phenomena, and forces of whichhe consists. 

It must not be supposed, as it is asserted with ever-increasing clamour, that such a method and theory can ever destroy the civilized basis ofsociety, and the morality and dignity with which it should be informed, as if we were again reducing man to the condition of a beast. Such anoutcry is in itself a plain and striking proof that we have not yetemerged from the mythical age of thought, since it is precisely amythical belief which prompts this angry protest against the noble andindependent research after truth. 

It is impossible that the results of positive and rational scienceshould in any way destroy the necessary conditions of civilized life andof the high standard of goodness which should form, elevate, and bringit to perfection. We must, however, remember that it was not rationalscience, nor the ethics of law, which established the _a priori_ rulesof a just and free society, but the necessities of society itself led tothe _a posteriori_ formulation of laws. Theoretic science subsequentlyexplained these laws, and perfected their form and organism, infusinginto them a nobler purpose; but it was the necessities of nature whichfirst dictated the balance, system, and harmony of the alliances andassociations of materials and phenomena as they now exist, whichrendered possible the first nucleus of human society, and which, incourse of time, brought the component parts into definite relations witheach other. It was subsequently the reflex and fitting work of thoughtto raise upon the foundation laid by nature a rational system ofsociety, and then to bring its rules and forms to perfection. 

Hence it follows that it was not man, nor some extrinsic mythical powerwhich arbitrarily dictated the code of private and social life, but thispresented itself to man as a spontaneous result of the world's law, relatively to the conditions possible for social life. For if, as infact is the case, and as the progress of knowledge and, of humancivilization will abundantly show, the true and eternal laws which makesociety possible, and consequently its standard of righteousness, areinnate and genuine results of universal laws, it is impossible forscience to destroy the inevitable order of things, and to reduce mankindto a hideous chaos. 

It must be allowed that great truths, not fully understood by incapablepreachers, who sometimes from ignoble motives foment the turbidinstincts of the ignorant multitude, may bring about, as they have doneof old, grave evils and even crimes in some places and for a short time. But there is no one so foolish or so ignorant of history as to believethat all things happen in the best possible way, and in a logicalsequence. Such evils do not invalidate or destroy the force of ourassertion that social order is derived from and is based upon the orderof nature. Although savage passions, excited by an imperfectunderstanding of the truth, do from time to time cause the overthrow ofgiven societies, and arouse the horror and alarm of pessimist votariesof myth, nature is not thereby overcome; she still triumphs, andrestores the order which has been interrupted, so far as the instinct ofconservatism and the hereditary impulse to that special form ofassociation to which each people are accustomed are opposed to therevolutionary spirit, and in this way the balance which has beendisturbed is re-established. 

When men, having brought their intellectual, and consequently theirmoral sense to perfection, are enabled to understand this natural orderof laws and social facts, divested of extrinsic mythical beliefs, theywill find in it so much reciprocal benefit, and will have such a deepsense of their personal dignity, since they are intellectually their ownartificers, that they will be able to understand how the highest goodhas ensued and will ensue from the sacrifices or achievements made by afew for the benefit of all. We are undoubtedly still a long way fromsuch happy conditions, either socially or as individuals, but every daybrings them nearer, and it is to this end that our civilization plainlytends, in spite of all the complaints, the fears, and sometimes even themalevolence of men. 

As I have already said, the study of the beginnings and of, theanthropological conditions of the various myths is necessary to enableus to understand their psychical phenomena, together with the hiddenlaws of the exercise of thought. The learned and illustrious Ribot hasjustly said that psychology, dissociated from physiology and cognatesciences, is extinct, and that in order to bring it to life it isnecessary to follow the progress and methods of all other contemporarysciences. [7] The genesis of myth, its development, the specification andintegration of its beliefs, as well as the several intrinsic andextrinsic sources whence it proceeds, will assign to it a clearer placeamong the obscure recesses of psychical facts; they will reveal to usthe connection between the facts of consciousness and their antecedents, between the world and our normal and abnormal physiological conditions;they will show what a complex drama is performed by the action andreaction between ourselves and the things within us, and also willdeclare the nature of the laws which govern the various and manifoldcreation of forms, imaginations, and ideas, and the artificial world ofphantasms derived from these. In this way myth will appear to be notmerely due to the direct animation of things, varying in our wakingstate with the nature of the exciting cause; but it also arises from thenormal images and illusions of dreams, and from the morbidhallucinations of madness, both subjectively in the case of the personaffected by them, and objectively for those who observe the extrinsiceffects in gesture and speech, and the whole bearing of the sufferer. 

Every one must admit that all these phenomena, and the beliefs whicharise from them, must tend to make the observation of psychical lifemore easy, just as morbid psychical phenomena often explain the naturalaction of such life under normal conditions. These phenomena, so closelyconnected with physiological disturbances which are beyond the controlof our personal will, will inform us of the biological relations betweenconsciousness and thought on the one side, and our organism on theother. 

The mythical faculty, as we shall see in the following chapters, combined with physiological excitements, both normal and abnormal, generally assumes constant forms in the various and manifold world ofits creation; constant forms which conversely also reveal those of thescientific faculty. In this way the development, composition, andintegration of a myth, into which others are fused by assimilation, maybe said to explain to us the mode in which systems of philosophy areconstituted, and to manifest to us in a fanciful way the underlying modein which human thought is exercised. 

Nor do the effects and importance of these studies end here; they arealso the necessary foundation of true and rational sociology. In fact, the relations of the individual to the world, the manifold conditionscaused by the relations of persons to each other, the constitution ofall social order, and the various modifications of that order; all theseare resolved into the primitive thought, and into the emotional impulsesof mythical prejudices and fancies, and in these they have also theirnatural sanction, and the cardinal point on which they rest and revolve. There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all theserelations, both to the individual and to society at large, are notapparent, and these are based on superstitious and mythical beliefs. Take the Tasmanians, for example, one of the peoples which has recentlybecome extinct, and regarded as one of the most debased in the socialscale, and we have in a small compass a picture of the acts and beliefsto be found in their embryonic association. 

In every society, however rudimentary, these are held to be importantfacts: the birth of individuals, which is their entrance into thesociety itself, and into the possession of its privileges; marriages, funerals, reciprocal obedience between persons and classes, or to thechief; public assemblies, and the existence of powers equal or superiorto living men. 

Among the Tasmanians, the placenta was religiously venerated, and theycarefully buried it, lest it should be injured or devoured by animals. If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive withher. When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certainceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions. Funeral rites were simple: the corpse was either burnt, with howls andsuperstitious functions, or it was placed in the hollow trunk of a treein a sitting position, with the chin supported by the knees, as was thecustom with Peruvian mummies; and the belief in another world promptedthem to place the weapons and utensils used, during life beside thecorpse. Sometimes a wooden lance, with fragments of human bones affixedto it, was placed below the tumulus, as a defence for the dead duringhis long sleep. It appears from these customs, and from others mentionedby Clarke, that they had a vague idea of another life, holding that theshades went up to inhabit the stars, or flew to a distant island wherethey were born again as white men. These beliefs were necessarilyconnected with the rites which they fulfilled when living, and served asa kind of obscure sanction for them. 

Milligan and Nixon tell us that the Tasmanians believed in the existenceof evil and sometimes of avenging spirits, destroyers of the guilty. They supposed that the shades of their friends or enemies returned, andcaused good or evil to befal them; and according to Milligan there werefour kinds of spirits. Purely superstitious rites were used formarriage. Old women and witches were often the arbiters of peace and warbetween the tribes, and they had the right of pardoning. Sorcerersintervened in many social acts, and before beginning their operationsand incantations they revolved the mysterious _Mooyumkarr_, an ovalpiece of wood with a cord, which was certainly connected with phallicsuperstitions. Bonwick asserts that on many private and publicoccasions, the more skilled sorcerers called up spirits with appropriateceremonies and formulas. They were powerful, and produced diseases, andwere able to exert malign influence, and the urine of women, humanblood, and ashes were superstitiously used as remedies against theirspells. 

The Tasmanian who wished to hurt or bewitch any one, procured somethingbelonging to his enemy, and especially his hair; this, was enveloped infat and then exposed to the action of fire, and it was thought that asit melted, the man himself would waste away. They feared lest the evilspirit evoked by the enchantments of an enemy might creep behind them inthe night to steal away the renal fat, an organ with which variousphysiological superstitions were connected. They believed that stones, especially certain kinds of quartz crystals, were means of communicationwith spirits, with the dead, and also with absent persons. A woman oftenwore round her neck the phallus extracted from the body of her deadhusband. The movements of the sun and moon, and some of their phases, had a mythical bearing on various social acts, or on the date of theirassemblies, since the sun was the object of great veneration; and thefull moon, the epoch of assemblies, was celebrated with feasting anddancing. Dances of many different kinds were connected with traditionalmyths, astrological superstitions, and the phallic worship. Some remainsof circular buildings and concentric compartments, discovered by Fieldand others, had reference to their feasts, assemblies, and dances. Amongtheir cosmic myths, Milligan has preserved one relating to the doublestars which perhaps refers to the invention of fire. 

From this cursory view of the conditions of society in its simplestform, and among the most savage peoples, and of the mythical beliefswhich prevailed under such conditions, it clearly appears how myth, dating from the first beginnings of human association, has regarded, invested, sanctioned, and generated all special acts and relations, andthe whole social order, both private and public. The exercise of thoughtin primitive times not only consisted of mythical beliefs andassociations, but this same condition of thought reacted on all thephenomena of nature, and on all social facts. For if, as we have alreadyobserved, more rational empirical notions, and a certain rude form ofscientific faculty made its appearance amid those mythical ideas whichwere still persistent, its various forms were not animated, sustained, and preserved by myth. Hence it is evident that the basis of the genesisof sociology as a whole consists in myth, which sanctions its acts andestablishes their relations to each other. The immense importance ofthese studies, even for the right understanding of the laws andhistorical evolution which guide and govern sociology, is evident fromthis fact. 

It must not be supposed that such a vast and profound incarnation ofmyth in social facts is peculiar to the primitive ages; it persists andis maintained in all the historical phases of civilization, even of thehigher races, although sometimes in a dormant form. Even in our days, any one who considers our modes of society, the organism, customs, ceremonies, and manifold and complex institutions of modern life, willreadily see that religious influences and their rites initiate, sanction, and accompany every individual and social fact, although civiland religious societies are becoming ever more distinct. 

Since, therefore, myth is a constant form of sociology, completelyinvests it, and accompanies and animates its transmutations down to ourdays, everyone must recognize the necessity of this study in order tounderstand and explain the true history of thought and of sociology. 

The energy, the power, the physical and intellectual worth of a peopleare revealed as a whole in its mythical products, whether in the qualityand greatness of their beliefs, in the greater or less definiteness oftheir system, or in their development into more rational notions; andfrom the complex whole we can estimate the worth of their civilization. So that, where other extrinsic testimony is wanting, the study of theseprimitive creations will reveal to us their psychological worth. This isthe origin of the comparative psychology of peoples, a most fruitfulscience, which not only teaches us to rank the various families ofpeoples according to their relative value, but it is of great use inmaking man acquainted with himself, and with psychology in general. 

In fact, modern psychology can only advance by means of observation andexperiment, which constitute it one of the natural sciences; and this isabundantly proved by the modern English schools, and the experimentalschool in Germany. Yet observation of the states of consciousness takenalone is defective, unless it is enlarged by the comparative examinationof a greater number of subjects; nor must ethnical peculiarities bepassed over, and it is precisely these which are included in thecomparative psychology of peoples. The large amount of results, theirinfinite variety, and at the same time a certain uniformity in theirmodes of beginning, of their development, and of their place in theuniverse, give a splendid illustration of the innate exercise of humanthought; the likenesses as well as the contrasts are instructive as toits real nature. 

The comparative psychology of peoples, studied from this point of view, certainly does not include the whole of psychological science, whichrequires other instruments and other modes of experience, but it is agreat help as a foundation. We believe that the study of myth, whichthrows so much light on comparative psychology, is likewise of use forthe special psychology of man, since this can only arise from individualand ethnical observation, and from experiment, dissociated from everyhindrance, and from metaphysical prejudice. And if by our humble essaywe can throw any light on this noble science, we shall be abundantlyrewarded. 

CHAPTER II. 

ANIMAL SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

All animals communicate with each other and with the external worldthrough their senses, and by means of their perception, both internaland external, they possess knowledge and apprehension of one another. Inthe vast organic series of the animal kingdom, some are better providedthan others with methods, instruments, and apparatus fit for effectingsuch communication. The senses of relation are not found in the samedegree in all animals, nor when such senses are the same in number arethey endowed with equal intensity, acuteness, and precision. But thefundamental fact remains the same in all cases; they communicate withthemselves and with the external world through their senses. 

We must now inquire what value the external object of perception, considered in itself, has for the animal, what character it has andassumes with respect to his inner sense in the act of perception orapprehension. Man, and especially man in our days, after so many agesof reflection, and through the influence of contemporary science, is sofar removed from the primitive and simple exercise of his psychicallife, that he finds it difficult to picture to himself the ancient andspontaneous conditions under which his senses communicated with theworld and with himself. And therefore, without further consideration, hethinks and believes that in primeval times everything took place in thesame way as it does at present, and, which is a still greater error, asit takes place in the lower animals. 

This identification of the complex machinery of human perception withthat of animals must not be regarded as an absurd paradox, since, as wehave shown in an earlier work, they were originally and in themselvesthe same. [8] By pursuing an easy mode of observation, divested ofprejudice, we may revert to that primeval state of human nature, and mayalso comprehend with truth and certainty the condition of animals. Forthe animal nature has not ceased to exist in man, and it may bediscerned by those who care to look for it; and careful study, with theconstant aid of observation and experiment, will reveal to us the hiddenlife of sensation and intelligence in the lower animals. 

There is a continual self-consciousness in all animals; it isinseparable from all their internal and external acts, from every fact, passion, and emotion; and this is clear and obvious. This fundamentaland persistent self-consciousness--persistent in dreams, and even in thecalmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation--is theconsciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercisinghis will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousnessof an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consistsin sensation of greater or less intensity, but always of sensation. Consequently, such a consciousness signifies for the animal a constantapprehension of an active faculty exercised intrinsically in himself, and it makes his life into a mobile drama, of which he is implicitlyconscious, of acts and emotions, of impulses, desires, and suspicions. 

This inward form of emotional life and psychical and organic action, into which the whole value of personal existence is resolved, may besaid to invest and modify all the animal's active relations to theexternal world, which it vivifies and modifies according to its ownimage. The subsequent act of doubling the faculties which takes place inman does not occur in the animal; a process which modifies through theintellect the spontaneous and primitive act. Consequently, the activeand inward sense which is peculiar to the animal is renewed in him bythe external things and phenomena of nature which stimulate and excitehim. 

Two kinds of things present themselves to his perception: other animals, of whatever species, and the inanimate objects of the world. As far asthe other animals are concerned, which are obvious to his perception, itis perfectly evident that upon these he will project his whole internallife of consciousness and emotions, and will feel their identity withhimself by his implicit and intuitive judgment. And in fact, themovements, sounds, gestures, and forms of other animals necessarilycause this sense of inward psychical identity, whence arises theimplicit notion of an animated and personal subject. Any one whoobserves, however superficially, the conduct of animals to each otherwhen they first meet, cannot doubt this truth for an instant. 

Although the external form and character of the animal perceived areimportant factors of the implicit notion of an animated personalsubject, this belief is even more due to the animal's inwardconsciousness of himself as a living subject which is reflected in theextrinsic form of the other and is identified with it. The spontaneousand personal psychical effort does not decompose the object perceivedinto its proper elements by means of reflex attention, but it isimmediately projected on those phenomena which assume a form analogousto the sentient subject. 

The fact of this law must never be forgotten in the analysis of animalintelligence and sensation. All those who do not keep clearly in viewthe real and genuine character of the sentient and intelligent facultyin animals are liable to error. 

In addition to the perceptions we have mentioned, animals have aperception of inanimate things, that is, of various bodies and phenomenaof nature. Although the form, motion, and gestures of an analogous andpersonal subject are wanting in these cases, so that they do not causeextrinsically the same implicit idea, neither do they remain, as with acultivated and rational man, things and qualities of independentexistence, disconnected with the life of the animal which perceivesthem, exerting no intentional efficacy, and governed by necessary lawsby means of which they act and exist. 

A cultivated and rational man, by the reflex and calm examination ofthings, can correctly distinguish these two classes of subjects andphenomena, and cannot as a rule be deceived as to their real andrelative value with respect to them and to himself. But when he forgetshis primary intellectual condition, and does not perfectly understandthe permanent condition of animals, he believes that their faculties areidentical, and that things, qualities, and phenomena present the sameappearance to the human and the animal perception. Yet the actual natureof the thing, so far as it is estimated by our perception as an objectdifferent from ourselves and from any other animal, cannot be soapprehended by animals which lack the analytical faculty in theperennial flow of their perceptions; the actual and inanimate thing ispresented to them only by the intrinsic, peculiar, personal, andpsychical quality of the animal itself. 

If form, and characteristic and deliberate action, are wanting to thesubstances and phenomena of inanimate nature, qualities which morereadily arouse in animals the idea of a subject resembling and analogousto themselves, yet there always remains the apprehension of some sort ofform in which--not distinguished from the others by reflex action--theinward faculty of sensation and emotion is repeated and impersonated bythe perceiving animal. Thus every form, every object, every externalphenomenon becomes vivified and animated by the intrinsic consciousnessand personal psychical faculty of the animal itself. Every object, fact, and phenomenon of nature will not merely appear to him as the realobject which it is, but he will necessarily perceive it as a living anddeliberating power, capable of affecting him agreeably or injuriously. 

Every one is aware of the jealous, suspicious nature of animals, andthat they are not only inquisitive about other animals, but about everymaterial object which they see unexpectedly, which moves in an unusualway, or which interferes with or injures them. 

It must have been often observed how they turn against any object whichhas chanced to hurt them, or which has annoyed them by regular andrepeated motions, how they start at the sudden appearance or oscillationof some unlooked-for thing, at an unusual light, a colour, a stone, aplant, at the fluttering of branches, of clothes, or weathercocks, atthe rush of water, at the slightest movement or sound in the twilight, or in the darkness of night. They look about, and consider all thingsand phenomena as subjects actuated by will, and as having an immediateinfluence on their lives, either beneficent or injurious. 

Undoubtedly they do, as a rule, by means of their implicit judgment, distinguish animals as of a different type from other objects, but theytransfuse into everything their own personality and their intrinsicconsciousness. This is the case with the whole animal kingdom, at leastwith those whose internal emotion can be gathered from their externalmovements and gestures. 

An animal is sometimes aware that an enemy which may lie in wait for anddestroy him has approached the neighbourhood of his haunts, or at anyrate may interfere with the freedom of his ordinary life, and hewithdraws as far as he can from this new peril or injury, and seeks todefend himself from the malice of his enemy by special arts. In thiscase, the external subject or thing is what his own objective senseconceives it to be, and his inward perception corresponds to an actualcosmic reality. 

Suppose that instead of this, the neighbourhood of a fierce fire, orviolent rain and hail, or a stormy wind, or some other naturalphenomenon, surprises or injures such creatures; these facts do notaffect them as if they were merely occurrences in accordance with cosmiclaws, for such a simple conception of things is not grasped by them. Such phenomena of nature are regarded by animals as living subjects, actuated by a concrete and deliberate purpose of ill-will towards them. Any one who has observed animals as I have done for many years, both ina wild and domestic state, and under every variety of conditions andcircumstances, will readily admit the fact. 

This truth, which clearly appears from an accurate analysis of facts, and from experiments, can also be demonstrated by the arguments ofreason. Since animals have no conception of the purely cosmic reality ofthe phenomena and laws which constitute nature, it follows that such areality must appear to their inner consciousness in its various effectsas a subject vaguely identical with their own psychical nature. Hencethey regard nature as if she were inspired with the same life, will, andpurpose, as those which they themselves exercise, and of which they havean immediate and intrinsic consciousness. 

It is true that after long experience animals become accustomed toregard as harmless the phenomena, objects, and forces by which they wereat first sympathetically excited and terrified. Of this we haveinnumerable examples both among wild and domestic animals; but althoughsuspicion and anxiety are subdued by habit and experience, yet theseobjects and phenomena are not thereby transformed into pure and simplerealities. In the same way, if they are at first frightened by the sightand companionship of some other species or object, habit and experiencegradually calm their fears and suspicions, and the association orneighbourhood may even become agreeable to them. I have often observedthat different species, both when at liberty and in confinement, areaffected by the most lively surprise and perturbation when some newphenomenon has startled them; they act as if it were really a living andinsidious subject, and then they gradually become calm and quiet, andregard it as some indifferent or beneficent power. 

I must adduce some observations and experiments from the many I havemade on this subject. It may be objected that if animals in theirspontaneous perception personify the object in question, they would givesigns of this fact with respect to all the objects with which they comein contact, and among which they live, and yet they remain indifferentto many of them, which is a proof that they distinguish the animate fromthe inanimate. In fact it cannot be disputed that a vast number of thephenomena and objects of nature are regarded by animals withindifference; they are perceived by them, but it does not appear thatthey suppose these things to be endowed with life. It is, however, necessary in the first place to distinguish two modes and stages in thisanimation of things, one of which we may term static, and the otherdynamic. In the first instance, the sentient subject remains tranquil atthe very moment when he vivifies the phenomenon or the thing perceived;while the act is accomplished with so much animating force, and with animplicit and fugitive consciousness, it exerts no immediate and suddeninfluence on the perceiving animal, and consequently he gives noexternal signs of the personifying character of his perception. In thesecond instance, which we have termed dynamic, that is, when thephenomenon or object has a direct and sudden effect on the animalhimself, he expresses by his movements; gestures, cries, and othersigns, how instantaneously he considers and feels the object in questionto be alive, for he behaves in exactly the same way towards realanimals. 

Animals are accustomed to show such indifference towards numerousobjects that it might be supposed that they have an accurate conceptionof what is inanimate; but this arises from habit, from long experience, and partly also from the hereditary disposition of the organism towardsthis habit. But if the object should act in any unusual way, then theanimating process which, as we have just said, was rendered static byits habitual exercise, again becomes dynamic, and the special andpermanent character of the act is at once revealed. We have experienceof this fact in ourselves, although we are now capable of immediatelydistinguishing between the animate and the inanimate, and man alone has, or can have, a rational conception of what are really cosmic objects orthings. Yet if we suddenly and unexpectedly see some object move in astrange way, which we know from experience to be inanimate, the innateinclination to personify it takes effect, and for a moment we areamazed, as if the phenomenon were produced by deliberate power proper toitself. 

I have kept various kinds of animals for several years, in order toobserve them and try experiments at my convenience. I have suddenlyinserted an unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have keptbirds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight the animal isalways surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious, and often retreats fromit. By degrees his confidence returns, and after keeping out of the wayfor some time, he becomes accustomed to it, and resumes his usualhabits. If then, by a simple arrangement of strings already prepared, Imove the object to and fro, without showing myself, the animal scuttlesabout and is much less easily reconciled to its appearance. I have triedthis experiment with various animals, and the result is almost alwaysthe same. 

In the cage of a very tame thrush, I made a movable bottom to hisfeeding trough, so arranged that by suddenly pulling a cord, the foodwhich it contained could be raised or lowered. When everything remainedstationary in its place the thrush ate with lively readiness, but assoon as I raised the food he nearly always flew off in alarm. When theexperiment had been often repeated, he did not like to come near thefeeding trough, and--which is a still stronger proof that he imaginedthe food itself to be endowed with life--he often refused to approach, or only approached in fear the sopped bread which was placed outside thetrough. I tried the same experiment with other birds, and nearly alwayswith the same result. 

On another occasion I repeatedly waved a white handkerchief before aspirited horse, bringing it close to his eyes; at first he looked at itsuspiciously and shied a little, but without being much discomposed, andI continued the experiment until he became accustomed to its ordinaryappearance. One day I and a friend went out driving with this horse, andI directed a man, while we were passing at a moderate pace, to wave thesame handkerchief, attached to a stick, in such a way that his person onthe other side of the hedge was invisible. The horse was scared andshied violently, and even in the stable he could not see thehandkerchief without trembling, and it was difficult to reconcile him tothe sight of it. I repeated the experiment with slight variations onother horses, and the issue was always more or less the same. 

Again, I placed a scarecrow or bogey in a parti-coloured dress in thespacious kennel of a hound while he was absent from it. When the dogwished to return to his kennel, he drew back at the sight of it, andbarked for a long while. After going backwards and forwards, snuffingsuspiciously, he decided to enter, but he remained on the threshold ofthe kennel, anxiously inspecting the bogey. In a few days, however, hebecame accustomed to it, and was indifferent to its presence. I ought toadd that I had taught him on the first day, by punishment andadmonition, that he must not destroy the bogey. One day when the dog waslying down I violently moved the puppet's arms by a cord, and he jumpedup and ran barking out of the kennel, soon returning to bark as he haddone at first. Finally, he again became accustomed to it, but whenever Irepeated the movement with greater violence, it took a long while forhim to become reconciled to it. 

I put into a room various kinds of wild birds, which had been taken innets after they were full grown. The window, which looked upon a garden, was unglazed, and closed by a wire netting, through which the outer airentered and was constantly renewed. I placed in the middle of the room apot containing a shrub of some size, on which the birds used to perch. Since they had been reared in the open air they were certainlyaccustomed to the wind, and to the way in which it moves trees andbranches, so that they were not alarmed by a phenomenon which theyrecognized from experience. I fastened a cord to the head of the shrubwhich I passed through a hole in the door, making another to lookthrough, and in this way I moved it to and fro as the wind might havedone. One day when there was a high wind which could be heard in theroom, and when the current of air through the window was perceptible, Itried the experiment when the conditions of resemblance were perfect. And yet when the violent movement and oscillation of the shrub wascombined with the noise of the wind, the frightened birds all flutteredabout, and after repeating the movement, and then allowing it tosubside, they kept away from the shrub and did not dare to settle on it. 

At another time, aided by an ingenious young friend, I constructed a toywindmill, of which the vanes were moved by weights. I placed this toy ina cage, so arranged that its motions could be regulated from theoutside, and I put into the cage a sparrow, which had been taken fromthe nest, and which consequently had no experience of the externalworld. Much patience was needed, since the toy required carefuladjustment and was easily thrown out of gear, but I managed it at last. The sparrow pecked at the little mill as soon as he was put into thecage, and he grew up accustomed to its motions. I then took the sparrowout of the cage and put in a finch, which had also been taken from thenest, but was reared far from such a machine, and he was frightened anddid not reconcile himself to it for some time. I exchanged this bird fora goldfinch which had been caught after he was full grown, and his alarmat the little mill was so great that he did not dare to move. 

In a ground floor room which I used as my study, I hung an old sheet, which reached to the ground, on a long spear inserted in a heavy woodendisk; I surmounted it with a ragged hunting cap, and so arranged thesheet as to give it some resemblance to the human form. When my dog camein as usual, he looked suspiciously at the object, snuffing about andgradually approaching to walk round and observe it. At last he wassatisfied, and curled himself up by the skirts of the bogey, where I hadplaced the mat on which he was accustomed to lie when he was with me. One evening when the moon shone doubtfully and there was just lightenough to distinguish the outline of things, I carried the shapelessbogey into the garden near my room, and placed it among some shrubs andbushes. I went back to the house and called my dog, who followed mequietly until he reached the spot from which he could see the bogeydistinctly enough for him to recognize its identity with the one withwhich he was already familiar. As soon as he saw the apparition hestood still, growling furiously; he began to bark, and when I encouragedhim to come on, he turned round and ran back to the house. I shut up thedog in another room, brought back the bogey to its former place, andthrew a strong light upon it before recalling the dog. At the firstsight of the bogey the dog paused suspiciously for an instant, but whenI sat down to the table as usual, he hesitated a little and aftersnuffing at it went back to his couch. 

I have made similar experiments with dogs, rabbits, birds, and otheranimals. I took long wooden poles, and put them inside their cages orhutches in such a way that the animals got to know and feel reconciledto the sight of them. After some days had elapsed, I contrived, whilescreened from sight, to take the poles from their usual place and tomake them touch and annoy the animals with more or less violence, thuscausing them to flutter or scamper about and to shrink away, as if fromthe touch of a living person, although they were unable, as I have said, to see me or my hand. Those which were least agitated sprang forwardwith little leaps and looked about them, doubtful and excited. I mightgo on to describe many other experiments made with the same object, andalways with the same result, but these are enough to show that I went towork cautiously and conscientiously, that the spontaneous and innatepersonification of the objects perceived by animals is clearlyapparent, and also how we may account for their indifference to those towhich they become accustomed. 

Among animals the necessity of finding food is the great and unfailingstimulus towards the exercise of their vital functions; food which may, as we all know, be vegetable, animal, or a combination of both kinds. Itis evident that in the case of carnivorous animals the object whichsatisfies this desire is a living subject, of which it is necessary tobecome possessed by arts, wiles, sometimes by a fierce and cruelconflict. In these cases, animals are in constant communication with ananimal world resembling their own, and the objective reality is for themost part resolved into living subjects, endowed with consciousness andwill. But neither is the vegetable food of herbivorous, frugivorous, andgraminivorous animals regarded by them, as it is by us, as a materialand unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, andleaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary toconquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most partinoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer noresistance. 

Observe the way in which an herbivorous or graminivorous animal becomesexcited and angry when the branch or the ear of corn obstinately adheresto the ground, or offers any other difficulty to his immediate desire ofobtaining food; he acts like one who has to do with a resisting power. Observe how, when they are quietly stripping the bough, picking out thegrains, or eating the grass, they become suspicious, or fly away ifthere should be any unusual movement in the bough, the ears of corn, orthe grass. In one way or another their food is regarded as a subjectendowed with sympathetic and deliberate consciousness. And every onemust have observed that animals at play act towards inanimate objects asif they were conscious and endowed with will. 

Every object of animal perception is therefore felt, or implicitlyassumed, to be a living, conscious, acting subject. This is due to theexternal reflection and projection of the intrinsic and sentientfaculty, and therefore--since an animal has not the duplex faculty ofdeliberate and reflex attention--he cannot attain to the conception ofsimple external reality, of cosmic things and phenomena. Every object, every phenomenon is for him a deliberating power, a living subject, inwhich consciousness and will act as they do in himself. There areundoubtedly in the vast series of beings which compose the order ofnature, and which he is able to perceive, degrees, differences, andvarieties of energy, power, and efficacy with respect to himself and tothe normal exercise of his life. But he transfuses into all, inproportion to the effects which result from them, his own nature, andmodifies them in accordance with the intrinsic form of hisconsciousness, his emotions, and his instincts. 

The external world appears to animals to be a great and mighty movementand congeries of living, conscious, deliberating beings, and the valueof the phenomenon or thing is great in proportion to its effect on theanimal itself. The objective and simple reality, as it appears to man, has no existence for animals; from the nature of their intelligence theycannot attain to any explicit conception of it, so that this reality isresolved and modified into their own image. The eternal and infiniteflux, by which all things come and go in obedience to laws which arepermanent and enduring, appears to animals to be a vast and confuseddramatic company in which the subjects, with or without organic form, are always active, working in and through themselves, with benign ormalignant, pleasing or hurtful influence. It is for this reason, andthis reason only, that their life of consciousness and of relation is sodeeply seated and so readily excited. Nor do animals ever believethemselves to be alone among inanimate things; even when not surroundedby allied or different species, they have the sense of living amid themanifold forms of conscious and deliberating life which the worldcontains. 

This constant and deliberate animation of all the objects and phenomenaof nature is spontaneous and necessary owing to the psychical andorganic constitution of the animal kingdom, and it resolves itself intoa universal personification of the phenomena themselves. In fact, theanimal's intrinsic psychical personality is infused and transformedinto each of them with more or less intensity and vigour; the phenomenaare perceived by each individual just as far as he assimilates them, andhe is constantly assimilating himself to them. His communication withthe external world is in proportion with its internal reflection onhimself, and he understands just as much as his own nature enables himto grasp. 

A careful consideration therefore shows that the conditions of animalknowledge consist in endowing the phenomena and objects of nature withconsciousness and will. I think that this truth will prove a certainguide and beacon in the interpretation of the origin of myth and sciencein man. 

CHAPTER III. 

HUMAN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

In man, as it has been clearly proved, sensations and perceptions occurboth physiologically and psychically just as they do in animals. Ifscience and the rational process of the interpretation of things havetheir origin and are evolved in us by the duplication of our faculties, such a function, which is due to this duplication, is very slowlydeveloped and exercised, and in its origin, as an effort of theintelligence, it does not differ from that of animals. 

It is true that the internal act of the higher faculty of reflection hashardly taken place before man unconsciously enters on a new and vastapprenticeship, which soon distinguishes him from and exalts him abovethe animal kingdom; science has already put forth its first germ. Butthe reasoning and simply animal faculties were so mingled, that for along while they were confounded together in their effects and results, as well as in their natural methods. We must therefore begin byconsidering the nature of this primitive human perception, in somedegree identical with that of animals, so that they may be estimated tobe of equal value, at any rate in their first results and arts. 

The vivid self-consciousness, inseparable at all times from every act, passion, and emotion, actuates man and animals alike; he has thisconsciousness in common with all other animals, and especially withthose superior orders which are nearest to himself. The furtherperception of extrinsic things and phenomena occurs after the samemanner and in accordance with the same physiological and psychical laws. By the intrinsic law of animal nature, as it is adapted to his cosmicenvironment, we see the cause and necessity of the transfusion andprojection of himself into everything which he perceives; whence itfollows that he regards these things as living, conscious, anddeliberating subjects; and this is also the case with man, who animatesand endows with life all which surrounds him and which he perceives. 

In fact, in man's spontaneous and immediate perception and apprehensionof any object or external phenomenon, especially in early life, theinnate effects are instantaneous, and correspond with the realconstitution of the function; analysis and reflex attention necessarilyand slowly succeed to this primitive animal act in the course of humandevelopment. Consequently the true character and value of its effect onthe perception are the same in man and animals. 

If in this psychical and organic fact of perception, man is at firstabsolutely in the conditions of animals, identical effects must beproduced; and this was originally the case, as far as man himself andexternal things were concerned. The powerful self-consciousness whichactuates man and animals alike is projected on the objects or phenomenaperceived, and they see them transformed into living, deliberatingsubjects. In this way the world and all which it contains appears to bea congeries of beings, actuated by will and consciousness, and powerfulfor good or evil, and in practice they seek to modify, to encourage, orto avoid such influence. The ultimate effect of this action, assumed tobe intentional in all and each of these subjects, will be theirpersonification, either vaguely or definitely, but always as a poweractive for good or ill. 

If we trace back the memories of historic and civilized peoples into thetwilight of their origin, at a time when they were still barbarous, andlittle removed from their primitive savage conditions, we shall find, the further we go back, the more vivid, general, and multiform will themythological interpretation and conception of the world and its variousphenomena appear to be; everything was personified by these primitivepeoples in a way common to the animal and human consciousness alike. 

Of this the testimony remaining in the most ancient verses of the firstVeda is a sufficient proof. At the epoch of their composition the humanrace had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet wefind that psychical human life was transfused and projected intoeverything: man personified each phenomenon and force of nature inaccordance with his own image. 

For example, fire in general was personified and identified withhumanity in _Agni_; even the shape taken by the flames, all which wasrequired to light the fire, the whole process of the sacrifice, even thedoors of the altar-railing, the prayer and oblation to the god. [9]

We also learn from the solemn and ancient songs of the Rig-Veda that allterrestrial, meteorological, and celestial phenomena were more or lessvaguely personified. These facts recur in all the earliest recollectionsof civilized peoples. If we turn from these to observe the savage racesof modern times, and the most barbarous tribes still extant incontinents and isles far removed from culture and science, we shallagain find the same beliefs. The range of absurd personifications, degenerating into the most trivial and varied forms of fetish worship, becomes wider, and its influence deeper, in proportion to the rude andbarbarous condition of the tribe or stock in which they appear. 

Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized Europeannations of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lowerclasses, both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion tothe ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who havereally studied the intellectual conditions of all classes in ourtime. [10]

In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, andeven at a later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak, and when it approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions ofanimals, such a projection of self and personification of surroundingobjects is evident to all. For this reason a child transforms all whichit seizes or plays with into a person or animal, and when alone withthem it talks, shouts, and laughs, as if such objects could really feel, act, and obey; in short, as if they were real persons or animals. Sostrong is the childish instinct, or, as I might say, the law of itsbeing to project and transfuse itself into objects, that it is apt tospeak of itself in the third person. A child seldom says, "I will, " or"I am hungry, " but "Louis wants, " "Louis is hungry, " or whatever hisname may be. This phenomenon reappears in the second childhood of oldage, when the power of reflection is weakened, and there is a reversionto the primitive animal condition. The same phenomenon also occurs inidiots, in whom there is a morbid defect of reflective power. 

This fact of the personification of the objects of perception istherefore evident and constant in the primitive man of civilized races, in the barbarous condition of modern savages, in the ignorant multitude, and in children--intellectual conditions which approach most closely tothe condition of animals--and conversely it is plain that it belongs inthe highest degree to the intellectual life of animals, and that myth, into which such a personification and animation of things must beresolved, has its original and innate necessity in animal life. We thinkthat this is a new scientific fact, which throws much light on thehistory of human thought. 

M'Lennan observes, "Some explanation of the phenomena of life a man_must_ feign for himself; and to judge from the universality of it, thesimplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have beenthat natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spiritsprompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess. "[11]This fact, indicated by M'Lennan and by all who have devoted themselvesto anthropological researches with respect to the origin of religions, and of myth in general, is now recognized as certain; but it seems to methat the interpretation and explanation of it are altogether implete. They suppose it to be simply the effect of psychological laws as far asman is concerned, whereas we have shown that it forms, in the ultimatecauses by which it is produced, the very essence of animal perception. They ascribe it to man as a rational hypothesis to explain the primitiveorder of things, whereas it is a spontaneous and primary intuition ofthe animal intelligence. 

Alger, although he is also mistaken as to the true causes of myth ingeneral, expresses himself better when he asserts that the brain of asavage is always dominated by the idea that all objects whatsoever havea soul precisely similar to that of man. The custom of burning andburying various things with the dead body was, he thinks, in many casesprompted by the belief that every such object had its _manes_. [12]

In fact, the innate psychical and organic constitution of theintelligence, both animal and human, is such that it spontaneously andnecessarily projects itself into every object of nature and perception, animating and personifying it by this special law, and not by areflective hypothesis, such as would be the conscious and deliberatesolution of a given problem. Such a solution cannot be made by animals, since as we have shown they are without the faculty of making adeliberate research into any subject; nor can it be effected by theprimitive man, in whom the reasoning faculty with which he is endowed isstill undeveloped. 

The real origin of reflection is not to be found in what may be calledthe mythical creation of nature, which is the necessary result of thespontaneity of the intelligence, both in man and animals; it isdeveloped after long duration of barbarism and ignorance. M'Lennan andothers have shown how the era of reflection and hypothesis begins in theevolution of human intelligence. Sekesa, an intelligent Kaffir, said toArbrousset, [13] "For twelve years I have shepherded my flock. It wasdark, and I sat down upon a rock and asked myself such questions asthese, sad questions, since I was unable to answer them. Who made thestars? What supports them? Do the waters never grow weary of flowingfrom morning to evening, from evening to morning, and where do they findrest? Whence come the clouds, which pass and re-pass, and dissolve inrain? Who sends them? Our diviners certainly do not send rain, sincethey have no means of making it, nor do I see them with my eyes going upto heaven to seek it. I cannot see the wind, and know not what it is. Who guides and causes it to blow, to rage, and overwhelm us? Nor do Iknow how the corn grows. Yesterday there was not a blade of grass in myfield, and to-day it is green; who gave to the earth the wisdom andpower to bring forth?" Again, there is a passage in the Rig-Veda, inwhich it is said, "Where do the fixed stars of heaven which we see bynight go by day?"

It is in this intellectual condition that ignorant and savage man reallybegins the spontaneous yet reflective research into the causes ofthings, and it is in this condition only that he hypotheticallyinterprets the order of phenomena through myths, which have then become_secondary_, and are no longer _primitive_. The true origin of theprimitive myth which animates and personifies the universe is not to befound in this condition; its origin is of much earlier date in thehistory of man, and indeed it has its roots, as we have shown, in animallife. 

Certainly when we compare the two intellectual periods, there is a widedifference between the age in which Sekesa could be perplexed by suchinquiries, and that of more primitive peoples, which still believewithout question in the soul and informing spirit or shade of stones, sticks, weapons, food, water, springs--in short, of every object andphenomenon. This is still the case with the Algonquins, the Fijians, theKarens, the Caribbees, the negroes of Guinea, the New Zealanders, theTongusians, the Greenlanders, the Esthonians, the Australians, thePeruvians, and a host of other savage and barbarous peoples. They notonly animate and personify material objects, but even diseases and theirremedies. 

The incubus, for example, termed _Mara_ in Northern mythology, was thespirit which tormented sleepers. This is the _Mar_ of the Germanproverb: _Dich hat greitten der Mar_. The word is derived from _Mar_, ahorse, and becomes _nightmare_ in English, _Cauchemar_ in French, [Greek: Ephialtês] in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another. Sowith epilepsy, which signifies the act of being seized by any one; itwas, like all nervous diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and thoseafflicted by it were supposed to be possessed. Insanity was regarded inthe same way, as we see in the Bible where Saul's melancholy is said tobe an evil spirit sent from God. A furious madman was supposed to havebeen carried off by a demon, and in Persia the insane were said to beGod's fools. In Tahiti they were called _Eatooa_, that is, possessed bya divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as meninto whom a divinity had entered. In German the _plica polonica_ iscalled _Alpzopf_, or hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that themalign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated byceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of theassaults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to themost absurd sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their _manitu_, inorder to be safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by fearrather than by gratitude. 

Tanner mentions, in his "Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians, "that he once heard a convalescent patient reproved for his imprudence inexposing himself to the air, since his shade had not altogether comeback to abide within him. For this purpose, and in conformity with suchideas, when the sorcerer _Malgaco_ wishes to cure a sick man, he makes ahole in a tomb to let out the spirit, which he then takes in his cap, and constrains it to enter the patient's head. The process of disease issupposed to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil spirit ofsickness. The Greek-word, _prophylakê_ signifies the arrangements ofoutposts. _Agonia_ is the hottest moment of conflict, and _krisis_ thedecisive day of battle, as we see in Polybius, liii. , c. 89. Medicinewas from the earliest times confounded with magic, which is only theprimitive form of the conception of nature. The Aryan rulers in India inancient times believed that the savage races were autochthonic workersof magic who were able to assume any form they pleased. [14] The negropriests of fetish worship believe that they can pronounce on the diseasewithout seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anythingwhich belongs to him. [15] The superstition of the evil eye recurs inVedic India, as well as among many other peoples. In the Rig-Veda thewife is exhorted not to look upon her husband with an evil eye. Therewas the same belief among the ancient Greeks, and it is also found inthe _oculus fascinus_ of the Romans, and the German _böses Auge_. Theearly German _Rito_, or fever, was a spirit (_Alb_) which rode upon thesick man. A passage in the Rig-Veda states that demons assume the formof an owl, cock, wolf, etc. [16] Such was the primitive attitude of thetransfusion of individual psychical life into things, and consequentlyof general metamorphosis. Kuhn identifies the Greek verb [Greek: iaomai]with the Sanscrit _yavayami_, to avert, and in the Rig-Veda this verb isused in connection with _amivä_, disease; so that it was necessary todrive away the demon, as the cause of sickness. A physician, accordingto the meaning of the old Sanscrit word, was the exorciser of disease, the man who fought with its demon. We find the practice of incantationsas a remedy for disease in use among the ancient Greeks, the Romans, andall European nations, as well as among savages in other parts of theworld. 

The objects and phenomena obvious to perception are therefore supposedby primitive man, as well as by animals, to be conscious subjects invirtue of their constitution, and of the innate character of sensationand intelligence. So that the universal personification of the thingsand phenomena of nature, either vaguely, or in an animal form, is afundamental and necessary fact, both in animals and in man; it is aspontaneous effect of the psychical faculty in its relations to theworld. We think that this truth cannot be controverted, and it will bestill more clearly proved in the course of this work. 

Such a fact, considered in its first manifestation and in the laws whichoriginally govern it in animals, and in man as far as his animal natureis concerned, assumes a fresh aspect, and is of two-fold force when itis studied in man after he has begun to reason, that is, when hisoriginal psychical faculty is doubled. The animation and personificationof objects and phenomena by animals are always relative to those of theexternal world; that is, animals transfuse and project themselves intoevery form which really excites, affects, alarms, allures, or threatensthem; and the spontaneous psychical faculty which such a vivifyingprocess always produces necessarily remains within the sphere of theirexternal perceptions and apprehensions. In a word, they live in themidst of the objective nature, which they animate with consciousness andwill, and their internal power is altogether absorbed in this externaltransformation. 

In man, in addition to this animation of the things and phenomena of theexternal world, another more profound and vivid animation takes place, the animation not merely of external forms, but of internalperceptions, ideas, sentiments, and all kinds of emotions. We know thatman has not only the perception of external and internal things, butalso the perception of this perception. Hence the external form, or theinternal sentiment and emotion, may by the dominion of his will over allthe attributes of his intelligence be once more subjected to hisdeliberate observation and intuition; by this process the external andinternal world are doubled in their intrinsic ideal, and give birth toanalysis and abstraction, that is, to the specification andgeneralization of the things observed. 

When this spontaneous faculty of man has been developed within him, hisobservation of the similarities, analogies, differences, and identitieswhich are to be found in all things and phenomena, in sentiments andemotions, necessarily induces him to collect and simplify them inspecial forms, to combine these various intuitions in a homologous type;this type corresponds with an external or internal congeries of similar, identical, or analogous images or ideas, out of which the species andgenera of the intellect are formed. In this way, for instance, arose themental classification of trees, plants, flowers, rivers, springs, animals, and the like, as well as that of love, hatred, sorrow, anger, birth, and death, strength, weakness, rule, and obedience; in short, thegeneric conceptions of all natural phenomena, as well as of psychicalsentiments and emotions. 

Animals, for example, perceive a given plant or tree, as a thingpresented at the moment to their individual consciousness, and byinfusing this consciousness into the object in question, they animateand personify it, especially if its fruits or leaves are attractive, orif it is moved by the wind. We have seen that all things are necessarilypersonified by animals, for if they meet with any material obstacle, they do not ascribe the sudden impediment to the impenetrability ofmatter, or to superior force, but rather to an intentional opposition totheir aim or progress. We often see that animals not only exertmechanical force to break through or destroy the material barriersintended to keep them in confinement, but they act in such a way as toshow rage and fury towards a hostile and malevolent subject. 

To return to our example; if an animal vivifies and animates somespecial plant specially presented to him, he does not go beyond thisvivifying act; when he goes on his way, and no longer perceives theconcrete phenomenon, the animation at the same time disappears andceases. Man, however, by means of the classifying faculty we havenoticed, after repeatedly perceiving various plants similar or analogousto the first, is able by spontaneous reflection, and by the automaticexercise of his intelligence, to refer them to a single type, and inthis way the specific idea of a tree is evolved in his mind and fixed inhis memory. The same thing gradually takes place with respect toflowers, animals, springs, rivers, and the like. These ideal types arenot wholly wanting even among the most barbarous peoples, in the mostconcrete and dissimilar languages, since without them any language wouldbe impossible. 

The same intrinsic and innate necessity which, both in man and animals, automatically effects the animation and personification of consciousnessand will in the case of external objects and phenomena, also impels manto vivify and personify the specific types which he has graduallyformed, and they take an objective place in his memory as the objects ofnature do in the case of animals. In this way man does not, likeanimals, merely vivify the special oak or chestnut tree presented to himin a concrete form at a given moment, but he vivifies in the same waythe psychical type of trees, of flowers, etc. , which has been evolved inhis mind, just as he vivifies the type of suffering, of disease, ofdeath, of healing, or of any other force. 

For this reason the process of necessary and spontaneous personificationis at first two-fold; namely, the personification of individual andexternal objects and phenomena, and that of their specific inward types, whether of the objects themselves or of their sensations and emotions. It must be observed that at this early stage of man's history, specifictypes, or the classification of things, were not ordered and determinedwith scientific precision; they were undefined and confused, runningmore or less into each other, so as to be easily lost, or constantlydiverging more widely. This internal movement of images and undefinedconceptions was a stimulus to active and mobile life, and an abundantsource of vivid or obscure myths, and of the sentiments corresponding tothem. 

These specific primordial types were openly referred to externalphenomena, and were based upon the life of nature, since rational orscientific ideas had not yet made their appearance, or only verysparsely. In any case, the reality of these types and their animationare facts, as all the earliest records attest, whether among civilizedor savage races. 

The personification of specific types, which are in general the mostobvious--those, namely, which refer to animals, vegetables, minerals, and meteors, things useful or injurious to man--is the origin of thesubsequent belief in fetishes, genii, demons, and spirits, and these ledto the vivification of the whole of nature, her laws, customs, andforces. Man's personification of himself, his projection of himself as aliving being into external things, was the result of reflection. Infact, the impersonation of the winds took place in very early times, since they most frequently and universally excited the attention andanxiety of man and animals, whether beneficially or otherwise, and bytheir mechanical action, their whistling and other sounds, they readilystruck the mobile fancy of primitive men, and also of savage andignorant peoples in our day. 

Just as the act of respiration is a faint wind which goes on whether insleep or wakefulness, and only ceases with death, so it was with thephenomenon of nature which attracted their attention, and it wasinvested by them with life. Since the winds of nature had already beenanimated and personified by a spontaneous act, so our inmost being wascertainly first considered as material, and impersonated as breath andair. 

This appears from the roots and words of all languages; the Hebrew_nephesh, nshâmâh, ruach_--soul or spirit--are all derived from the ideaof breathing. The Greek word [Greek: anemos], the Latin word _animus_, signify breathing, wind, soul, and spirit. In the Sanscrit _âtman_ wehave the successive meanings which show the evolution of the myth:breathing, vital soul, intelligence, and then the individual, the _ego_. In Polynesia we find the same process of things. _To think_, which inthe Aryan tongues comes from the root _c'i_, and originally meant tocollect, to comprehend, in German, _begreifen_, becomes in thePolynesian language, _to talk in the belly_. It is, therefore, anevident historical fact that man first personified natural phenomena, and then made use of these personifications to personify his inwardacts, his psychical ideas and conceptions. This was the necessaryprocess, since animals were prior to man, temporally and logically, andexternal idols were formed before those which were internal and peculiarto himself. [17]

It is true that man unconsciously, that is, without deliberation, notonly animates external things and their specific types, but he also, byan exercise of memory, animates the psychical image of these specialperceptions. If, for example, the primitive man personifies a stream ofwater which he has seen to issue from a fissure of the rocks, andascribes to it voluntary and intentional motion, he also animates theimage which reappears in his sphere of thought, and conceives it tohave a real existence. He does not merely believe it to be a psychicaland what may be called a photographic repetition of the thing, butrather to have an actual, concrete existence. Thus, among all ancientpeoples, and among many which are still in the condition of savages, the_shadow_ of a man's body is held to be substantial with it, and, as itwere, his inmost essence, and for this reason the spirits of the deadwere in several languages called shades. 

Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the psychicalconditions of primitive men, at a time when the objects of perceptionand the apprehension of things were presented by an effort of memory tothe mind as if they were actual and living things, yet such conditionsare not hypothetical but really existed, as any one may ascertain forhimself who is able to realize that primitive state of the mind, and wehave said enough to show that such was its necessary condition. 

The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especiallythe uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and howat such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, andreply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absentpersons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated. The images ofthese persons and things are as it were present and in agitation withinhim; and these images, in the fervour of emotion and under the stimulusof excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented tothe inward psychical consciousness. 

In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowlydeveloped, the animation and personification effected by his mind andconsciousness were threefold: first, of the objects themselves as theyreally existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in thememory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images. There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are nolonger conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which ispartly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words andof their roots in all languages. The meaning of these, which is now forthe most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material andconcrete fact, or some gesture. This is true of classic tongues, as iswell known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of allsavage and barbarous races. 

_Ia rau_ is used to express _all_ in the Marquesas Isles. _Rau_signifies _leaves_, so that the term implies something as numerous asthe leaves of a tree. _Rau_ is also now used for _sound_, an expressionwhich includes in itself the conception of _all_, but which originallysignified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt assuch in the ancient speech in which it was used in this sense. So againin Tahiti _huru, ten_, originally signified _hairs; rima, five_, was atfirst used for _hand; riri, anger_, literally means, _he shouts_. _Uku_in the Marquesas Isles means, _to lower the head_, and is now used for_to enter a house_. _Rùku_, which had the same original meaning in NewZealand, now expresses the act of diving. The Polynesian word _toro_ atfirst indicated anything in the position of a hand with extendedfingers, whence comes the Tahitian term for an ox, _puaátoro, stretchingpig_, in allusion to the way in which an ox carries his head. _Toó_(Marquesas), to put forward the hand, is now used for _to take_. _Tongo_(Marquesas), to grope with extended arms, leads to _potongo tongo_, darkness. In New Zealand, _wairua_, in Tahiti _varua_, signifies soul orspirit, from _vai_, to remain in a recumbent position, and _rua_, two;that is, _to be in two places_, since they believed that in sickness orin dreams the soul left the body. [18] Throughout Polynesia _moe_ alsosignifies a recumbent position or to sleep, and in Tahiti _moe pipiti_signifies a double sleep or dream, from _moe_, to sleep, and _piti_, two. In New Zealand, _moenaku_ means, to try to grasp something duringsleep; from _naku_, to take in the fingers. 

We can understand something of the mysterious exercise of humanintelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizingand presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving aconcrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We seehow everything assumed a concrete, living form, and can betterunderstand the conditions we have established as necessary in the earlydays of the development of human life. This attitude of the intelligencehas been often stated before, but in an incomplete way; the primitiveand the subsequent myths have been confounded together, and it has beensupposed that myth was of exclusively human origin, whereas it has itsroots lower down in the vast animal kingdom. We hope, therefore, that itwill be granted that we have given the true and full exposition of myth. 

Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the things and phenomena ofnature, of their images and specific types, were the great source whenceissued superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and also, as we shallpresently see, the scientific errors to be found among all the familiesof the human race. 

For the development of myth, which is in itself always a humanpersonification of natural objects and phenomena in some form or other, the first and necessary foundation consists, as we have abundantlyshown, in the conscious and deliberate vivification of objects by theperception and apprehension of animals. And since this is a condition ofanimal perception, it is also the foundation of all human life, and ofthe spontaneous and innate exercise of the intelligence. In fact, man, by a two-fold process, raises above his animal nature a world of images, ideas, and conceptions from the types he has formed of variousphenomena, and his attitude towards this internal world does not differfrom his attitude towards that which is external. He personifies theimages, ideas, and conceptions by transforming them into livingsubjects, just as he had originally personified cosmic objects andphenomena. 

In myths, since they owe their origin to the reflex power which isgradually organized and developed, man carries on this faculty ofpersonification which had already been exerted in him as an animal. Butthe object of myth became two-fold just as the animal nature becameduplex in man, whether as a special image of special conception, or asan intellectual definition of the specific type already formed. Themyths are, therefore, from their very nature, either special, that is, derived from the psychical duplication of a personified image; or theyare specific, and are derived, as we are about to explain, from thepersonification of a type. 

The deliberate intention to be beneficent or malign, useful orinjurious, which is ascribed to any external object, thus transformingit into an intelligent subject, is the first and simplest stage of myth, and the innate form of its genesis. In this case, it is always special, extrinsic, and concrete, and belongs implicitly to the animal kingdom, although more or less vividly in proportion to the mental and physicalevolution of the species. It is for the same reason also proper to man, in whose case it first appears in the indefinite multiplication offetishes, whatever may be the object venerated, and whatever the form, aspect, and character ascribed to it. This constitutes the primordialimpulses, both of religious consciousness and of the spontaneoussolution of the problems of the world among all peoples. 

While the animation of special objects by animals generates actualmyths, yet it only occurs in the acts of momentary and transientperception; they are born and die, they arise and are dissolved in thevery act of production, and they neither have nor can have retrospectiveor future influence on the animal. The world, its laws and phenomena, form for him one universal and persistent myth, so far as he feelshimself constrained to vivify and transform them into subjects actuatedby will. This consequently is the constant and normal condition of hisconscious life with relation to things, and it leads to nothing further;his mental attitude with respect to myth does not vary from his physicalattitude towards the atmosphere, the food and water which nourish andsustain him, and the exercise of his functions are in conformity withit, as though it were his natural and necessary element. 

Man, on the contrary, since he has acquired the power of reflection, which enables him to reconsider past intuitions by an effort of memory, as well as the psychical image which corresponds to them, is not contentwith this normal and fugitive effect of apprehending the personifiedobject presented to him. The psychical image of his actual perception, which he has ascertained from experience to be beneficent or malignant, or which has been interpreted as such by his fancy, recurs to the mindeven when it is absent and remote, and it recurs in the vivid andpersonified form in which it was first perceived. 

Hence come the following psychical facts. On the one side the actualobject which he has assumed to be invested with the faculty of willstill remains to exert the same external influence; on the other, itspersonified image is also present to his mind, so that he can regard itwith the vivid quickness of the fancy, and invest it, by its manifoldrelations to other and various phenomena, with efficacy, force, andmysterious purposes. It follows from this inward action and emotion thatwhile in the case of animals the beneficent or malignant object is onlyinvested with life at the moment of perception, and has no more efficacyafter its disappearance, man on the contrary retains the samepersonified object in his memory, and recalls it at pleasure, so thatits special efficacy persists, and it continues to be the object ofhopes and fears either in the past or in the future. In a word, thenatural myth of animals is transformed by man into a fetish, whetherthis object or its corresponding image in his mind be superstitiouslyregarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible. 

This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishismamong all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and consciouslife to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears, the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhorrence for some given speciesof stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual naturalobject. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts oftalismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms, had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of thefetish, the internal duplication of the external animation andpersonification of objects. 

It is evident that fetishism in its earliest and most primitive form wasalways inspired by special objects, since the external perception ofanimals and of man is special and concrete. But we have seen how ourintelligence, by a spontaneous and innate process, was led to form typesfrom the immense variety of special things and phenomena, and thesetypes are the specific forms of such things as are alike, analogous, oridentical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of the psychicalfaculty, which is not inconsistent with the fundamental process ofanimal intelligence, man animates and personifies these specific types, just as he had animated the special perceptions whence they weregenerated in his mind. [19]

The second form of myth next occurs, if considered as it exists in man, but the third form of myth, if regarded in his solidarity with theanimal kingdom. Instead of investing the special fetish of a givenobject with superstitious fear, he now adores or fears all objects ofthe same species, or which, in the imperfect classification of primitivetimes, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a commonexample, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the firstform of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and ofthe snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He nextsupposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a singlepower, manifesting itself in this shape in various times and places. Inthe same way, according to the natural evolution of this law, theindividual, concrete plant will no longer be the fetish or object ofmyth, but all those of the same species, or which nearly resemble it. Itwill no longer be a given spring, but all springs, no longer oneparticular grove, cave, or mountain, but all groves, caves, andmountains; in a word, the species will be substituted for theindividual, the type for the fact. [20]

In this second stage to which myth spontaneously attained, it must beobserved that all fetishes could not be reduced to a specific or typicalimage, since in nature, and in ages and conditions when the intelligencewas still rude and uncultured, all phenomena or objects could not assumea specific form, but were still regarded as individuals. In this classare the sun, the moon, certain stars and constellations, as well as someother natural phenomena, volcanoes, hot springs, and the like; sincethese were unique within the range of country inhabited by the savagehordes, they could not become specific. Hence, while all other objectsand their respective fetishes followed the natural evolution into aspecific type, and through these into the simplest form of polytheism, the special fetish which referred to unique things or phenomena remainedspecial, although it was modified, as we shall see, so as to harmonizewith the aspect commonly assumed by other typical images. 

It must be observed that we have gradually ascended from the special tothe specific fetish, and to types which are resolved by the intelligenceinto more ideal and less concrete images; precisely because they areideal and less bound to the form they had before, they are incarnated inan anthropomorphic and anthropopathic form. Released from the necessityof regarding them in a vague form, or one different from that of man, the image becomes more human, and that not only as before inconsciousness and purpose, but also in aspect and structure. 

In fact, in this stage man does not merely infuse his spiritual essenceinto these types, but likewise his corporeal form, whence we have thetrue, human image of myth. This may be seen in the various primitiveOlympuses of all historic races as well as among savage peoples, onlyvarying in the splendour of their imagery. They consist in thetransformation of the earlier fetish into an intelligent, corporealperson, and result from the formation and personification of types. 

Beginning with the mysterious conception of some particular spring as amalignant or beneficent fetish which, although personified, stillretains its concrete form, the classifying action of the intelligencegradually constructs, from its points of resemblance to other springs, ageneric type which includes them all. This typical conception, personified in its turn, next represents a unique power, of which allthe individual and accidental springs are only manifestations. Thus itis clear that man, in the personification of this type or specificconception, is no longer bound to the actual form of the special objectwhich first represented it, but he may be said to mould a moreindefinite and plastic substance into which he can with spontaneous orfacile art incarnate his whole person. Hence this substance will assumean anthropomorphic form, and will issue, not in a mysterious being ofextrinsic and indefinite form, but in a person with human features, obvious to human senses. 

It was thus, when the fetish attained to a specific type, that mythicalanthropomorphism was generated, and polytheism, properly so-called; apolytheism which represents in its figures and images the humanizationand personification of specific types. These afterwards diverge intospecifications which vary with the number of phenomena that are unitedin a single idea or conception. The first polytheistic Olympus consistedof natural types, and at a much later period they became moral orabstract, in accordance with the spontaneous evolution of theintelligence itself. 

It was in fact in this way that all the specific myths of the generalphenomena of nature had their origin, and in our Aryan race we can, starting from the Rig-Veda, follow their splendid development amongGræco-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it may also be traced in thememory and historic evolution of other races, and with less distinctnessamong those which are barbarous and savage. [21]

To take some example which may throw light upon our theory of theevolution of myth, let us consider that of _Holda_ in the GermanPantheon, since it is a generic type of the special primitive fetishesof sources, already in process of formation before the dispersion of theAryan tribes. Mannhardt (_Deutsche Mythologie_) has shown what was theprimitive form of the conception of _Holda_ and of the _Nornas_, thatis, of the phenomenal appearances of water; Holda, the _lady of waters_, first watched over the heavenly sources, and then, by a subsequentinterweaving of myths and duplication of images, she kept and guardedthe souls of new-born infants. This early conception by progressivespecification gave birth to those of the _Nornas_, of _Valkuria, Undine, _ and others. The primitive fetish, or fetishes of waters out ofwhich the specific type, afterwards personified, was evolved and formed, were at first so bound to the concrete form of the phenomenon, thatalthough animated, it could not assume a human aspect and form. But whenthe specific type which ideally represented the power manifested in allthe various modes of special phenomena was evolved, then man wasreleased from the concrete and individual forms of the fetish, andreadily moulded it in his own corporeal as well as in his moral image. So Holda, changed from a heavenly to an earthly deity, was transformedinto the goddess of wells and lakes, and assumed a perfectly human andeven artistic form. She loved to bathe at noon-day, and was often seento issue from the water and then plunge anew into the waves, appearingas a very fair and lovely woman. 

Again, we know that in the gradual mythical evolution which found itsclimax in Apollo, the animation of this type, so fruitful in specialinstances, extended even to the form of his arms, his bow and arrows, and to the place of his habitation at Delphos. He was armed, accordingto Schwartz, with the rainbow and with thunderbolts, and Delphos wasesteemed to be the centre and navel of the world. 

These mythical ideas have their special reproduction in the mythology ofthe Finns. (Castren. ) The god _Ukko_ with his great bow of fire sendsforth trees as darts against his enemies; while fighting, he standserect upon a cloud, called the _umbilicus_ of heaven. Thus we see thatthe process of myth is similar, even in different races. 

By the primitive personification of the special fetishes whence he wasevolved, the _Indra_ of Vedic India is shepherd of the herd of heavenlykine. _Vritra_, a three-headed monster in the form of a serpent, stealsaway the herd and hides it in his cave. Indra pursues the robber, entersthe cave with fury, overwhelms the monster with his thunderbolt, andleads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. Thismyth gradually assumed in the Vedic hymns more splendid and artisticforms, and more amazing personifications. The original motive of themyth, as it has been interpreted even by Indian commentators, was thestorm with all its alternations which bursts forth with more terrificviolence in hot climates. The luminous clouds which bring rain are thepurple kine whom a black-demon tries to steal; the fruitfulness of theearth depends on the issue of the contest, and the thunderbolt dispersesthe cloud, which falls on the earth in rain, while _Indra_, that is, theblue sky, appears in his splendour. [22]

It may be clearly seen from these examples how the specific myth wasgradually developed. We have said that in addition to the myth whichreferred to types constructed from special and manifold suggestions, alike or analogous in extrinsic circumstances, others were formed fromdefinite natural objects, in their relations to men and to theiracquaintance with cosmic facts in those very early times. These, however, although definite, assumed anthropomorphic forms, like thosewhich were specific. The cause of this identity of construction is to befound in the influence exerted upon them by the earlier myths. By anecessary equilibrium and spontaneous symmetry of mental creations, these were also modified by the gradual formation of contemporaryimages. In this way the solar myths were elaborated and developed amongthe Aryan peoples and other races; their aspects became much moreanthropomorphic and anthropopathic in proportion as the typical mythsassumed a human form. 

The primitive myths of the secondary form were at first grouped roundphysical and external phenomena, because these were originally the mostobvious to man. But the specific moral types had their origin byreaction, and by a more strictly intellectual process, and these werepersonified in the same way, although in this second stage they were notso numerous. Yet their appearance and creation were inevitable, sincethe same faculty and classifying process had to be carried out in theintellectual and moral order as in that which was extrinsic and cosmic;since the mind and consciousness and intrinsic faculty of theintelligence are identical. And when once these ultimate types wereformed, the same necessity impelled their animation and personificationin anthropomorphic images. Of this we have abundant instances in all thetraditions of nearly all the peoples of the world. 

CHAPTER IV. 

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM. 

In the preceding chapters we have considered and, as we hope, demonstrated the origin and genesis of myth in general, an origin andgenesis which had their first impulses and causes in the animal kingdomas a whole, since these beginnings were the necessary result of thepsychical exercise of the perception and intelligence. We nextdiscovered in man, as he issued from a simply animal condition andattained the power of reflection, the origin of the special myth orfetish, which was a higher evolution of that which is proper to animals;hence the origin of the specific myth was altogether anthropomorphic, whether physical or moral; and hence came also the development andramification of all mythologies, and of universal polytheism. 

It may be seen from the reality and truth of this theory how muchmistaken those men are who hold, owing to their religious prejudices orto their systems of logic and history, that monotheism was the firstintuition of man, or at any rate of the privileged races. This isaltogether impossible, since such an opinion is opposed to the genuinedevelopment of the intelligence, to its primitive constitution andprogress, and to the essential _solidarity_ of human and animal nature. 

In the case of animals as well as of man the implicit act and psychicalprocess of communication between the world and themselves consist in theindividual and concrete animation of the thing or phenomenon perceived;whence they are resolved into conscious subjects, acting with a givenpurpose; the difference in man's case, due to his power of reflection, consists in the fact that he ascribes to the fetish distinct mentalcharacteristics, regarding it as a subject, actuated by will, andinvested with an external form. Hence it is impossible that man shouldhave had any primitive intuition of a perfectly rational and universal_Idea_, since his intelligence is so constituted that it is slowlydeveloped from the animal condition into a humanity which is mythicallyreflex, and he rises from the single to the specific, from phenomena tothe type which more or less exactly corresponds to them. 

We are convinced that by these researches, we have eradicated theprevious misconception, which cannot be revived or maintained exceptwith the weapons of sophism, and by defying evidence and the very natureof things. 

While man has risen from the individual myth to that which is specific, infusing anthropomorphic life into the whole of nature, and into his ownsensations, emotions, and conceptions, he has pursued an art virtuallythe same as that whence science is generated. The instrument, both withrespect to the formation of myths and to the formulation of science, isin fact identical, and the process also is the same. Science, like myth, observes, analyzes, and classifies observations, and gradually rises toa conception of the specific type, and hence to a unity which becomesever more complete and universal. 

In the composition and mythical animation of the world, whether byspecial personifications or by those which are typical, and by thesensations corresponding to them, man makes a fanciful classification ofphenomena, he observes and studies their beneficial or injurious effectson himself, and in this empirical way is able to estimate their value. On the other hand, he rises in the social scale by means of hissuperstitious and religious feelings, which act as a stimulus andsymbol, so far as he subjects his animal and perverse instincts to thedeliberate precepts which he imagines to be expressed by these myths. 

In so far as the empirical observation of things is irrational, andobedience is paid to the fanciful precepts of oracles, it is not theresult of an explicit moral law, yet there is on the one side someknowledge of the qualities, habits, and periods of things, and on theother a civil and human order which is gradually formed and developed. In fact, in the case of the higher historical races it is important tomake a more explicit and accurate study of the fetish religion, that is, of the mythical animation of any special phenomenon or thing. Althoughthe scope of such religion is superstitious veneration, or abject fear, yet it is impossible that it should not induce a more precise and lessconfused notion of the relative condition of things. In this wayobservation becomes more accurate, and the intrinsic use of the thing isoften recognized. By the gradual exercise of such analysis in the caseof all or most phenomena, man obtains a clearer knowledge of hisenvironment. 

While a juster estimate of the empiric value of special objects isobtained in this manner, the subsequent, though sometimes mistakenclassification of their specific types enables the mind to arrange hisknowledge of natural things in a more synthetic and orderly way, and bysuch classification man is always tending towards a more universalunity: he places the general forms of phenomena in an ideal harmony, which fancifully symbolizes their laws. 

In the succeeding chapters we shall see how this process isaccomplished, and how it leads up to the explicit exercise of thereason. A more definite empiric knowledge, and the harmoniousclassification of specific types with a view to unity, are a proof of arelatively greater improvement, both in civilization and morality. Thisis abundantly shown in all those peoples who have attained to analtogether anthropomorphic polytheism, either among the Aryans, prior totheir dispersion, in the Vedic period in India, among the Celts, Græco-Latins, Germans, Slavs, or in the Finnish races, Mongols, Chinese, Assyrians, Egyptians, Mexicans, and Peruvians, as well as among thebarbarous peoples of modern times. 

The imagination, the faculty which creates and excites phantasms in man, is not, as is erroneously supposed, the primary source of myths, butonly that which in a secondary degree elaborates and perfects theirspontaneous forms; and precisely because it is near akin to thisprimordial mythical faculty, it goes on to organize and classify thesepolytheistic myths. By a moral and necessary development anapproximation is made, if not to truth itself, at any rate to itssymbols; whence reason is afterwards more easily infused into myth onthe one side, and on the other it is resolved into rational ideas andcosmic laws. It was in this way that poets perfected myth in itsinfluence on virtue and civilization, and by them it was directed intothe paths of science and of truth. 

As Dr. Zeller has well said in his lecture on the development ofmonotheism in Greece herself, the great Greek poets were her firstthinkers, her sages, as they were afterwards called. They sang of Zeus, and exalted him as the defender of righteousness, the representative ofmoral order. Archilocus says that Zeus weighs and measures all theactions of good and evil men, as well as those of animals. He is, saidTerpandros somewhat later, the source and ruler of all things. Accordingto Simonides of Amorgos, the principle of all created things rests withhim, and he rules the universe by his will. Thus, as time went on, Zeusbecame, in the general conception, the personification of the world'sgovernment, which was delivered from the fatality of destiny and fromthe promptings of caprice. Destiny which, according to the earlymythical representation, it was impossible to escape, is resolved intothe will of Zeus, and the other gods which were at first supposed to beable to oppose him, become his faithful ministers. Such is the teachingof Solon and of Epicharmos. "Be assured that nothing escapes the eyes ofthe divinity; God watches over us, and to him nothing is impossible. "

This impulse of the imaginative faculty combined with the process ofreason is most plainly seen in the conceptions of the three great poetsof the fifth century, Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles. In the words ofPindar: "All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus: he can draw lightfrom darkness, and can veil the sweet light of day in obscurity. Nohuman action escapes him: happiness is found only in the way which leadsto him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone. "

We find the same order and manner of thought in Æschylus, although heremained faithful to the polytheistic creed, which indeed confirms thetruth of our theory. The moral law was gradually developed and purifiedby this long succession of poets, and it clearly appears from Æschylusand his successors how man reaps that which he has sown: he whose heartand hands are pure lives his life unmolested, while guilt sooner orlater brings its own punishment with it. The Erynnyes rule the fates ofmen, and may be said to sap the vital forces of the guilty; they cleaveto them, excite and stimulate them to madness until death comes. Theancient and mysterious mythical tradition of the strife between the oldgods and the new was astutely used by Æschylus to teach us how theterrible vengeance of the Eumenides gradually gave place to a gentlerand more humane law; just as the primitive despotism of Zeus wasgradually transformed into a providential and moral rule of theuniverse. 

Sophocles attained to a higher degree of perfection in the paths ofgentleness. No ancient poet has spoken more nobly of the Deity, althoughhis language is altogether polytheistic. He shows the highest reverenceto the gods, whose power and laws rule all human life. On them allthings depend, both good and evil, nor could any one violate withimpunity the eternal order of things. No act or thought escapes thegods; they are the source of wisdom and happiness. Man must meeklycomply with their precepts, and must offer up his pains and sorrows toZeus. 

These utterances of the ancient poets never go beyond the range ofpolytheism, yet they show how far intrinsic morality and truth weredeveloped, even by the imaginative and mythical faculty of the humanmind, during the gradual historical evolution of the race. The pluralityof gods appears to be the manifestation of the divine principle; theiraction on the world lost almost all trace of arbitrary power and oftheir former versatility and caprice. The superstition of polytheismremained, but it had an inward tendency to more rational conceptions andprinciples. 

From this brief notice, as well as from the remarks which preceded it, it appears how the evolution of myth, from its beginning and in itshistoric course, led to a more perfect, although empiric acquaintancewith the world, and with the moral principles and civilization ofpeoples. The logical faculty by which the development is graduallyeffected is the same by which from another point of view science becomespossible. 

We have clearly demonstrated the indisputable fact that the absolutecondition of intrinsic animal perception, and consequently of theprimary perception of man, was the animation and vivification of thethings and phenomena perceived. This primary acquaintance with thingsdepended on their spontaneous resolution into active and personalsubjects. Nor could it be otherwise. Although the scientific idea ornotion of objective reality in itself could not be grasped by simpleanimal intelligence, the impression of the thing perceived wasnecessarily that of a subjectivity resembling that of the observer, notindeed in outward form and figure but in intrinsic power, whatever mightbe the extrinsic form and figure of the object or phenomenon. 

The original condition of animals, and of man himself in his primordiallife and consciousness, is and was the intrinsic personification of thethings perceived: from this source the human intellect slowly and withdifficulty attained to science, by virtue of that psychicalreduplication which has been so often mentioned. 

The motive or subject of myth may be external, cosmic, or it may beinternal, intellectual, and moral, but in each case the cause andfaculty at work are the same. Just as the primary condition ofobservation, and consequently the motive principle of science, consistsin the primitive exercise of the intelligence, which leads to empiricaland rational knowledge, so myth and science have a common origin in theimmediate transformation of natural objects and phenomena into livingsubjects, and they flow from the same deep source. The object in view isdifferent, but their constructive faculty is the same, and they are, upto a certain point in their long historic course, evolved in the sameway. Science, therefore, from one point of view, is the gradualexhaustion and dissolution of myth into the objects which arescientifically investigated, and this will appear more clearly in thesequel. 

The series of various phenomena, whether of light, of meteors, of water, of vegetable and animal forms, which were the first subjects of myths, became so interwoven as finally to be represented in an anthropomorphicpersonality, and were thus gradually lost and evaporated in the idealsymbol. As time went on, by the exercise of the intelligence, and by theaid of the observations and collateral experiments naturally connectedwith them, man ended where he had begun; released from myth, he onlyrecognized the facts and laws of the world. This clearly shows, not onlythe formation of myths, but the process of evolution by which they passinto science, in which they find their termination. 

If, however, myth and science have the same origin, and start from acommon fact, a fundamental principle is necessary, and an internal humanact, which is at once the cause and genesis both of myth and science. And although the source is one, myth and science vary in their aspectsand effects, and have different fields of historic activity, so that itis necessary to trace the cause of this diversity in their progress andresults, to enable us to make a scientific definition of the nature ofmyth and science, their respective sources and objects. 

If on the one side we continually see the birth of fresh myths, whichramify into many fertile sources of superstitions, of religions, ofpoetry and æstheticism; on the other side we see almost simultaneously amore or less distinct and lively manifestation of the scientificfaculty, although still in an empirical form. They are like two streamswhich issue from the same source and take a parallel course, sometimesmingling their waters, only to separate anew, and then again to becomeunited as they fall by a wide mouth into the sea. 

In this manner we have ascertained the actual origin of science and ofmyth, and have entered on a field perhaps never before attempted norcontemplated; we have established a firm basis for such researches, and, which is perhaps still more important, have shown the continuity of themythical faculty between man and the animal kingdom. We haveascertained this fact, in its cosmic necessities, both physiological andpsychical, but without considering the faculty on which it depends; wehave still to decompose the elements of which it consists, and toconsider their nature and number. 

This inquiry forms the chief problem we have to solve, and it isprecisely what we have endeavoured to state in this chapter. In thenecessary order of things the fact has its physiological and cosmicconditions in man; it is therefore necessarily internal and psychical, and it is accomplished by the special and intrinsic exercise of theintelligence. We shall be convinced of this truth if we only considerthat science and myth have a common origin. 

It is evident that there are great difficulties in such an inquiry; for, putting aside other extrinsic difficulties, we have to reduce to asingle act or fact the origin of the two vast worlds of myth andscience; it is needful to gauge the inmost psychical faculty of theintelligence, and to discover the continuous yet rapid and delicateprocess of its exercise. 

If we are able to attain our object and to tear away the veil whichconceals this mysterious act, we shall have a noble recompense in thelaborious path on which we have entered, inasmuch as we shall reveal oneof the most important laws of life, of the exercise of reflexintelligence and of the genesis of science. Yet we are very sensible howfar we are from being equal to the enormous difficulties of thisinquiry. 

CHAPTER V. 

THE ANIMAL AND HUMAN EXERCISE OF THE INTELLECT IN THE PERCEPTION OFTHINGS. 

Apprehension is the act, both in animals and in man, by which thespontaneous and immediate animation of things and of phenomena isaccomplished. It is therefore necessary to pause and consider this act, since it is, even in man, the source and foundation of the origin ofmyth, and in it we shall find the causes, elements, and action by whichsuch a genesis is effected. This fact is so evident that the necessityof making such an inquiry might almost be taken for granted, since thetruth can be ascertained in no other way. 

In the case of animal perception, which we have already considered, theexternal perception of an object is composed of three elements: thephenomenon perceived, the living subject with which this phenomenon isanimated, and the vague yet real power involved in the life thus infusedinto it by the animal. Supposing any other animal to be the objectperceived, these three elements are self-evident; since the phenomenonperceived in a given form causes the immediate assumption that it is asubject, actuated by a purpose of offence or defence, and hence followsthe apprehension of a power capable of affecting him, which has in thiscase a real existence. Phenomenon, subject, effective power, follow in arapid and inevitable sequence, and are instantly combined in theintegral image formed of the object apprehended by the senses. 

In fact, an animal which fights with another, which seizes on his foodas a prey, or which is in dread of some enemy or unfamiliar object, recognizes either the species or the individual from its external form, and constitutes it into an animated subject, and ultimately into anactively offensive or defensive power, or into one which satisfies hisappetites. Such a fact, and such elements of the fact, recur in thewhole animal kingdom, even among those which only apprehend externalthings by the sense of touch. As we ascend higher in the scale ofanimals to those who possess other senses and a more elaborate organism, we find the same fact in a more perfect and distinct form. 

Those animals which, since they are without the sense of sight, have noperception of distance, wait until their prey touches their antennæ, mouths, or claws, and yet the same distinct act is accomplished in thesethree specified elements. They would not lie in wait for their prey, unless they had already formed a conception of its possible image, consisting of a form, subject, and effective force, combined in a singleintuition. When this external prey is presented to the senses, thephenomenon, subject, and effective power arise in rapid succession, andare united in one unique consciousness. This truth appears from theanimal's efforts not to let his prey escape destruction. 

From the reciprocal apprehension of animals, these three elements whichconstitute it may be clearly seen. Although such a truth, preciselybecause it is evident, may appear simple to those who seek truth fromthe clouds, or by means of logical or tortuous artifice, yet such arethe characteristics of true science. For the new facts which sheinterprets and classifies appear old as soon as they are understood, although they have never before been explained. 

Although such a fact is manifest in the case of reciprocal animalperceptions, it may appear more difficult to verify it with respect toperceptions which do not refer to other animals, but to naturalphenomena, or to inanimate, unconscious things. We have shown that allanimal perception is possible only so far as they are able to infusetheir own consciousness and psychical power into every object of nature, since they are unable to comprehend the thing or phenomenon except as anobjective reality, without reference to its real cosmic importance. Since this is necessarily the case, the object perceived, even when itis not an animal, is always transformed into a living subject, actingdeliberately. And although this is sometimes done in a vague way, whenthe object in question has not the external form and movements of ananimal, yet it is always regarded as a real power. 

When a well broken horse, for example, goes on his way quietly, perceiving nothing which strongly attracts nor alarms him, the suddenflutter of a cloth, the flaring of a lamp, the rush of water, or someviolent noise will cause him to stop, to plunge and kick, or to boltaway. We have already shown, by experiment, the exciting cause of hisalarm and suspicion. The sudden fluttering of the cloth in the wind wasa phenomenon perceived by the horse, and since he regarded thisphenomenon as an animated subject, and consequently as a real power, itis evident that his fear was caused by the sudden appearance of a livingform, and the direct apprehension of a subject which might possibly behurtful or dangerous. In this way, the circle is completed and combinedin one unique phantasm; a phenomenon, a living subject, and a realpower. 

In this instance, the psychical law is so clear that it can hardly bedisputed. But if we consider any other animal perceptions, we find thatthe law still holds good, as we have already shown in various instances. In all cases the apprehension takes place in the same way, and consistsof the same elements, namely, of a phenomenon, a living subject, and areal power. The exercise of animal apprehension is the rapid, necessary, and perpetual concentration into a single image of the phenomenon, subject, and cause; that is, given the perception of a phenomenon, theanimal endows it, with respect to himself, with consciousness, andconsequently with real power. 

In fact, the faculty of perception cannot be exercised in any other way, nor can it consist of any other elements. In nature, the sensiblequalities of things are all resolved into general and special phenomena, appearances, and extrinsic forms, as far as animal and human intuition, and the character of the subject which perceives and feels them, areconcerned; and they are perceived just so far as we and as animals areable to communicate by means of our senses with the world and withourselves. A phenomenon and an intrinsic form signify, at the moment ofperception, the thing, the object which the conditions of our sensesenable us to perceive, and the intrinsic power of this phenomenonimplies a cause. Natural phenomena and beings are thus reciprocallylinked together as causes and effects, an effect becoming in its turnthe cause of a subsequent fact; that is, when we consider things inthemselves, and not relatively to the animal or man who apprehends them. 

If, therefore, there are in animal consciousness and intelligence threeelements of apprehension, afterwards fused into a single fact, itfollows that the extrinsic relations of beings and forces aresubjectively reciprocal; there is the given form of a phenomenon, and, intrinsically, it consists of an active power, eternally at work, sincethere is no being nor form which stands still and is not reproduced inthe infinite evolution of the universe. 

Since, to the percipient, the extrinsic form, whatever it may be, remains the same as that which was first presented to him, thephenomenon is bounded by his faculty of perception, followed by theimmediate and implicit assumption of a subject, and consequently of apossible and indefinite causality. This internal and psychical processof the animal corresponds with the actual condition of things, as theyappear and really are; a correspondence which is in itself a powerfulconfirmation of the truth. 

Since an animal is devoid of the explicit and reflex process of theintellect, it has not and cannot have any conception of the thing initself, the intrinsic essence of the phenomenon, nor yet of theobjective and cosmic cause; because it animates the phenomenon with itsown personality, which has assumed the external form of this phenomenon, it is conscious of a cause, like itself, transfused into the object inquestion. We have shown that phenomena affect animals in this way, andthat they are conscious of being in a world of living subjects, constantly actuated by the deliberate purpose of influencing them. 

The faculty and elements of apprehension are precisely similar in manand animals, since extrinsic things present the same appearance to bothalike, and the perceptive power acts in the same way. We cannot, indeed, go back to our first beginnings, and it is difficult for those who arenot accustomed to such researches to discover the primitive facts oftheir own being, which have been so much modified by exercise and theintrinsic use of reflection for many ages; yet some certain signsremain, nor would it be now impossible to reproduce them. No one candoubt that man also began to communicate with the world and with himselfby his perception of a phenomenon, of some extrinsic quality or form. From this he directly apprehended the thing and its cause. Nointelligent person can believe that man had any direct intuition of thething in itself, independently of the extrinsic phenomenon by which itwas presented to his perceptions: he could not by the suddenapprehension of all natural objects intuitively grasp the _Idea_. Thiswill be more fully shown in the following chapter. 

In accordance with this statement, man, who still retains his animalnature, has exercised the same faculty of apprehension by the syntheticprocess of the three elements which compose it in the case of animals;he attains therefore to the same results, that is, he animates theobject of perception, and considers it as an efficient cause. Thisidentical faculty of perception in man and animals was onlydifferentiated when the reflex power of man subsequently enabled him toregard objects, as we do now, as inanimate, and subject to the universallaws of nature. 

Even now, after all our scientific attainments, we are not wholly freefrom the former innate illusion; we often act towards things as if welived in the early days of our race, and continue that primitive processof personification in the case of certain objects. 

We have shown what was the origin of the fetish and of myth, and how itarose from the impersonation of all natural objects and phenomena, whichare transformed into living subjects. This shows that the faculty, elements, and results of the apprehension are identical in man andanimals. If man created the fetish which in process of differentiationgenerated all kinds of myths, he, like animals, was directly andimplicitly conscious of the living subject, and in it of an activecause. Although in man the fetish retains its personality in his memory, and becomes the cause of hopes and fears throughout his life, while itseffect on the animal is only transitory, and at the actual moment ofperception; yet this does not invalidate the truth of the principle, norprove that their impulses and genesis are not identical. Thus theanalysis of the faculty of apprehension confirms and explains the proofbefore given of the origin of myths, and explains their causes. 

We have all, however unaccustomed to give account of our acts andfunctions, found ourselves in circumstances which produced themomentary personification of natural objects. The sight of someextraordinary phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one acting witha given purpose, and hence of an actual fetish. A man will sometimesaddress the things which surround him, and act towards them as if theypossessed consciousness and will. Children, who are still withoutexperience and reflection, will often invest external objects withsolidity. 

A child, as soon as it can guide its own motions, will grasp anythingwhich is pliant and yielding as firmly as if it were solid, thusimplicitly judging the thing from its appearance. In the same way, achild confidently relies on any support, however weak and insufficientit may be, arguing as usual from the appearance to the thing itself. Normust it be said that experience is necessary to correct these errors. The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to experience, which onlybecomes possible by means of this faculty. The elements of this facultyunconsciously fulfil and pursue their office in the child, aided by thereflex motions which are cerebro-spinal and peripheral, as they havebeen produced and organized in the species by evolution; but they, aswell as these reflex physiological motions, are prior to the sametemporary experience. [23]

Thus the new-born infant sucks the milk which serves for its nourishmentfrom its mother's breast; it is impossible in this case that such aclass of elements should not be spontaneously developed; the child feelsthe nipple and adapts its mouth and mode of breathing to it, whilepressing the breast with its hands to express the milk. If much in thisoperation might be ascribed to reflex movements, yet in association withthem, supplementing and rendering them possible, there is an implicitperception of the external phenomenon through the sense of touch, and hebecomes conscious of the object, and of its causative power; such powerconsisting in this case of its capacity to satisfy his wants. In short, all animals, man included, in every act of communication with the world, exercise this faculty by means of the three elements which constituteit. If we consider the actions of infants, and still more of all younganimals, this truth will be vividly displayed. 

In common speech, even to this day, all men, both learned and unlearned, speak of inanimate things as if they had consciousness and intelligence. While this mode of expression bears witness to the extremely earlyorigin of the general personification of natural objects, it also showsthat even now our intelligence is not emancipated from such a habit, andour speech unconsciously retains the old custom. Thus we call weathergood and bad, the wind mad (_pazzo_) or furious, the sea treacherous, the waters insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they couldhear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholyand unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We saythat some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable, that well cultivated ground is no longer wild, that in a good season thewhole landscape smiles and leaps for joy. A river is called malevolent, and a lake swallows up men; the earth is thirsty and sucks up moisture, and plants fear the cold. The people of Pistoja say that some olivetrees will not feel a thrashing, that they are afraid of many things, and that they live on, despising the course of years. Again, they saythat olive trees are not afraid of the pruning knife, and that theyrejoice in its use by a skilled hand. Thousands of such expressionsmight be adduced, and we refer our readers to Giuliani's work, "_Linguaggio vivente toscano. _"

Nor do we only ascribe our own feelings to inanimate things, but we alsoinvest them with the forms and members of the human body. We speak ofthe head, shoulder, back, or foot of a mountain, of an arm of the sea, atongue of land, the mouth of a sea-port, of a cave, or crater. So againwe ascribe teeth to mountains, a front (_fronte_, forehead) to a house;there is the eye-brow (_ciglio_) of a ditch, the eye of heaven, a veinof metal, the entrails of a mountain. The Alps are bald or bare, thesoil is wrinkled, objects are sinister or the reverse (_sinistra, destra_), [24] and a mountain is gigantic ox dwarfish. 

In like manner we ascribe our own functions to nature. The river eatsinto the land; the whirlpool swallows all which is thrown into it, andthe wind whistles, howls and moans; the torrent murmurs, the sun is bornand dies, the heavens frown, the fields smile. This habit is alsotransferred to moral questions; and we speak of the heart of thequestion, the leading idea, the body of doctrines, the members of aphilosophic system; we infuse new blood into thought. Truth becomespalpable, a theme is eviscerated, thought is lame, science is childish. History speaks clearly; there is an embryo of knowledge, a vacillatingscience; the infancy, youth, maturity, and death of a theory; moralityis crass, the spirit meagre or acute; the mind adapts itself, logic ismaimed; there is a conflict of ideas, the inspiration of science, truncated thoughts. Again we talk of the head of the mob, of the foot ofthe altar or the throne, of the heart of the riot, of the body of anarmy, of a phalanx, of trampling under foot, duty, decency, and justice. 

From these examples, and indeed we might say from the whole of speech, especially if we go back to the primitive value of words and to theirroots, it appears to what a vast extent man originally projectedhimself, his consciousness, emotions, and purposes into inanimatethings; and how, even under the historical conditions of civilization, he still personifies the world, and ascribes to it the forms of his ownbody and limbs. 

Again, we have plainly shown that man, by the intrinsic reduplication ofhis psychical faculty, spontaneously retains and personifies the inwardphantasm generated by such a projection of special natural objects onhis perception. In the genesis of such fetishes, and also when, by aneffort of will, he recalls them to his mind, this faculty with itsconstituent elements is brought into action. In fact, when the image isrecalled to the mind, it is represented like the external phenomenon;and consequently it involves and generates the thing of which thephenomenon is the external vest, that is, its causative power; and inthis way the objective process of its formation is inwardly reproduced. Since the cosmic reality is thus ideally reproduced, the inwardsubstance of the fetish assumes a really efficacious power, whether inits extrinsic form, or in its intrinsic image, and in this way primitivesuperstitions had their source. 

In the case of savage and primitive man the inward image of the fetishwithout its bodily presence is, owing to the process already described, not merely valid as a real entity, but it becomes a mysteriousapparition in the sphere of fancy, in a way analogous to our belief inthe reality of things seen in a dream or in moments of hallucination. This appears in the history of all peoples past and present, whence itis certain that primitive man not only formed personifications ofexternal objects and of his own emotions, but also of their images, asthey were retained in his memory. In both cases the sequence of thethree elements of apprehension, the phenomenon, subject, and cause, isdue to the same unique faculty; in a word, the inward perception isidentical in its genesis and laws with that which is external. 

These are not the only results which follow from the exercise of thisfaculty. By the spontaneous classifying action of our intelligence werise from the perception of special and individual objects and phenomenato their various types, and hence to an inward and ideal world ofspecific representations, as if these were causative powers, informingthe multitude of analogous and similar phenomena in which they aremanifested. These specific types, which are more strongly present to thefancy in the primitive exercise of the intelligence, also becomepersonified, and they generate what is called polytheism in all itsforms, varying according to the races, times, places, and respectiveconditions of morality and civilization in which they are found. 

The same psychical faculty and the same elements are necessary for thepersonification of such types or idols. The three elements appear intheir proper sequence even in the amorphous phantasms which these typesfirst shadow forth, and which are subsequently perfected and embodied inhuman form. For the consciousness of the external form always exists inthe first vague and nebulous conception of the phantasm which graduallyappears and formulates itself in the vivid imagination; and hencefollows the phenomenal vest, which, as usual, generates thecorresponding subject, informed with a causative power. This processclearly shows, and in fact constitutes, the essence of myth. 

Since the types vary very much, and are indeed unstable from their verynature, constantly becoming formed and again decomposed, the primitivemythologies of all people are in like manner very various, indefinite, and subject to constant change. 

It appears in the Vedic mythology, and also in that of the ancientGreeks and Latins, how often the typical myths of Agni, Varuna, Indra, Asvini, and Maruti; and again, of Zeus, Here, Athene, and the rest, arechanged and reconstituted. This shows how the same human faculty, thesame elements which constitute the perception and primitivepersonification of external phenomena, are those also of the specificand intrinsic phenomena. Just as man, in the primitive conditions of hisexistence, by the psychical and physiological law of his perception, which he has in common with animals, transformed the world and itsphenomena into subjects endowed with conscious life; so by his psychicalfaculty of reduplication he personified the mental images of these samesubjects as fetishes and myths; and subsequently invested them with moredistinctly human forms, and also with specific types of humanity. Thesame faculty and conditions of animal perception afterwards become thetrue and only causes of the superstitions, mythologies, and religions ofmankind. The law of continuity is unbroken, and this is a certainconfirmation of the truth. 

This faculty, inward function, and process of mythical and symbolicfacts led in course of time to the evolution and beginning of knowledge, which is first empirical and then rational. Therefore, we must repeat, the extrinsic and intrinsic perception, the specification of types, andtheir modification into a unity which was always becoming morecomprehensive, are the conditions and method of science itself, which isonly developed by means of this faculty. Hence the elements andintrinsic logical form of science are identical with those through whichmythical representations and the inward life of the human intelligenceare developed. [25]

Besides, as we have before remarked, the empirical knowledge of thingsbegins and is perfected in the superstitions of fetishes and myths. Ideas are modified and become purer as they converge into types, and theprinciple and method at once become more rational. Either in the facultyof perception and in its elements, or in the inward classification ofspecific forms, or again in the more perfect empirical knowledge ofphenomena, the progress of myth and science go on together, and they arenot only developed in a parallel direction, but the form becomes thecovering, involucre, matrix, or, as I might say, the _cotyledons_, bymeans of which the latter is developed and nourished. Even in morerational science this faculty, and these elements, necessarily recur, since in every human conception we find the material aspect, or itsmental image, the thing and its cause, and, as we shall see, somemythical personality is insensibly identified with it. 

The act which produces myth is therefore the same from which scienceproceeds, so that their original source is identical. The same processwhich constitutes the fetish and myth also constitutes science in itsconditions and form, and here we find the unique fact which generatesthem both; science, like myth, would be impossible without apprehension, without the individuation of ideas, and the classification andspecification of types. 

Before going further I must briefly recapitulate the order of ideas andfacts which we have observed, so that the process may be as strictlylogical as it is practical. Since, in the elements of apprehension, perception is absolutely identical in man and animals, its primitiveeffects in animating natural phenomena are the same. But man, by meansof his reduplicative faculty, retains a mental image of the personifiedsubject which is only transitory in the case of animals, and it thusbecomes an inward fetish, by the same law, and consisting of the sameelements as that which is only extrinsic. These phantasms are, moreover, personified by the classifying process of types, they are transformedinto human images, and arranged in a hierarchy, and to this the variousreligions and mythologies of the world owe their origin. Since such aprocess is also the condition and form of knowledge, the source of mythand science is fundamentally the same, for they are generated by thesame psychical fact. It is in this way that the progress of humanintelligence was developed in the course of ages; its attitude varies invarious races, but the impulses, the faculty, and its elements areidentical. I do not think that this unique fact in which myth andscience have their source has been observed before; still less has anyone defined the limits of human intelligence, and recognized in thesimple acts of animals the formal and absolute conditions of humanscience, and the origin of myth. 

If I am not deluded by a prejudice in favour of my own researches, thistheory is a contribution to truth. It is confirmed by the solidaritywhich it establishes between the acts and laws of the psychical humanfaculty, and that of animals which necessarily preceded it. No sciencecan be constituted without such solidarity; this great truth was feltand, after their manner, demonstrated by scholastic philosophers, or, asit was afterwards scientifically expressed by the genius of Leibnitz:_Natura non facit saltum!_

CHAPTER VI. 

THE INTRINSIC LAW OF THE FACULTY OF APPREHENSION. 

We have now carefully considered the acts and dynamic activity of humanthought. We have seen in what animal and human perception consists, andhow it acts; how the subjects developed in our imagination are graduallyunited in specific forms or types, and are arranged in a system, whencefollow the first symbolic representations of science. But our task isnot yet accomplished, since much more is needed to display all that thisfact involves, so that we may fully understand the inward evolution ofmyth and science in history and in our race, and not merely in theindividual man. 

The faculty and its effects, which could primarily be reduced to thisunique and indivisible fact, do not exclusively belong to primordialages, but go on through all time, our own included, while assumingdivers forms and fresh aspects as the faculty of the intellect becomesmore developed. It is an indisputable truth that the influence of mython thought and fancy, a survival from prehistoric ages, still prevailsamong the common people both in town and country, among those who areuncultivated, and even in the higher classes conventionally called goodsociety. 

It is more difficult to trace the occasional existence of the sameinfluence among those who think rationally and investigate the laws ofthe universe while acquainted with the earlier mythical process; andyet, as we shall show, the greatest and most able men are not unfetteredby it. Myth has hitherto been regarded as a secondary and fancifulproduct of the psychical human faculty, due to extrinsic impulses, rather than as the primitive and intrinsic necessity of theintelligence--a necessity which has its roots in animal intelligenceitself; and the unique fact which generates both myth and science hasnot been ascertained. If this fact and law had been discovered before, we should have more readily understood religions, philosophic systems, and the successive forms of science, and pure reason would have mademore rapid progress. Our theory, besides giving a rational explanationof the different forms assumed by thought in the course of its historicevolution, will, I hope, also account for many psychological phenomenawhich have hitherto been imperfectly understood, such as dreams, hallucinations, the aberrations of insanity, and the like. The primitivefact and its effects reappear in these conditions, and this influence ispersistent and enters into all our acts, conscious or unconscious, voluntary or involuntary. 

It follows from the innate necessity of the perception that objects andtheir extrinsic and intrinsic causes are resolved into living subjects, and are classified in a hierarchy of specific types, which are acceptedby the primitive and ignorant mind as the universal mythical forms. [26]But the necessities of human speech, which is however involved inmythical representations, from the very beginning essentially reflex, require other terms than those of individual and specific animations. Itis clear that the simple personifying faculty of the intellect sufficedin its earliest emotions, but that after the slow development ofpsychical reduplication, and the enlargement of languages and ideas, itno longer satisfied the logical requirements of the mind. 

Consequently, explicit, --that is, rational--singular, and specific ideasgradually arose and assumed a definite form; they were interwoven andfused into these individual and specific types, and thus obtained aplace in the thoughts and language of primitive man. The gradualintrusion of specific rational ideas is natural to the human mind, sinceit is logically progressive, and the fact may be observed by those whowatch the mental growth of children, and of ignorant and untaughtadults. 

While the mythical intelligence continues as before to give its habitualmythical interpretation of many natural phenomena, the use is graduallyacquired of special and generic symbols which express special andspecific ideas, and these no longer include a personification of theindividual thing or idea. Without this intrusion of rational ideas anyprogress would be impossible, as well as the power of expressing allwhich time and education present to the mind, and gradually enable it tocomprehend; the fanciful image is fused in a rational conception, whichis, however, not yet definite and explicit. 

What are commonly termed abstract ideas arise from this necessity, asthe result of the perfection and development of speech, but these werenot at first abstract, although they made use of the abstract idea. Unconscious abstraction is certainly one of the primary acts of theintelligence, since abstraction follows from the consideration of a partor of some parts of a whole, which are themselves presented as a wholeto the perception. But this primitive abstraction was so far a concretefact for the perception, in that each act of the apprehensionconstituted a phenomenon of which the apparent character was abstractedfrom the other parts which formed a whole, and was transformed into aliving subject, as we have already shown at length. The really explicitabstraction, to which man only attained after many ages, consisting inthe simple representation of a quality or part of a thing, could not atthat time be effected, although special and specific ideas graduallyfound their way into thought and speech. All the terms for form andrelation in primitive speech, and also among modern savages, confirmthis assertion, as linguists are aware; the form and relation nowexpressing an abstract reference to actions and passions in the verbs, nouns, and adverbs, originally referred to a concrete object. 

Three modes or degrees of abstract representations occur in theprogressive exercise of the intellectual faculty; these, combined withthe special apprehensions of the individual memory, and with imaginativetypes, constitute the life of human thought, and are the conditions bywhich we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical typemay take the place of the general type in the logical exercise ofthought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the systemof the world, the abstract conception intervenes in the daily necessityfor communication between these general mythical types, and serves tocement them together, thus rendering the commerce of ideas among men andin the human mind more easy. 

The abstract conceptions which are formed in this way may be dividedinto three classes--physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with thefirst; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define asubject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance, identity, or analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conceptionwhich includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series ofsimilar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but itprimarily assumes a concrete form. I cannot say that anything is whiteor heavy, until by repetitions of the same sensation I have been able tocombine in a single conception the sensations diffused over an infinitenumber of objects. The genesis of these conceptions is found in thecomparative explicit judgment which depends on the memory for thenecessary conditions of its formation. 

The typical and abstract idea of white has not merely a nominal value, as it is asserted in some schools of thought, for an empty term couldexpress no idea, whereas this idea is perfectly clear. Neither is it areal thing, but rather an ideal reality, not a pure abstraction of thespirit, extracted, so to speak, from the material substance. Theconception of whiteness formed by the comparative judgment is limited bythe perception of the concrete, external fact perceived as one specialquality among all other qualities in nature, and it is therefore aphysiological fact of inward consciousness. 

In the abstract idea of white or whiteness we do not only picture toourselves a quality common to many things, but by this term, and by theidea which corresponds to it, the same sensation is actually present toour inward intuition, or the same quality of the sensation which waspreviously generated by our external senses in a concrete form. Although, therefore, the idea is generic, the sensation itself isrepresented to the mind in the form of a concrete perception. It is notconcrete in the sense of belonging to a special object or definite form, as it is presented to the outward perception, but only so far as thereis actually an inward and physiological sensation of whiteness, whichthe word recalls to the memory. There can be no mental confusion withthe quality of red, or of any colour, when I speak or think of what iswhite. 

When I speak or think of any object as white, I and others perfectlyunderstand what is meant, and a representation of this quality isinstantly formed in our minds, in the generic type which was graduallyconstituted by primitive man by the combination of numerous specialsensations, obvious to the sight, and subsequently expressed in speech. 

In order that the word which corresponds to the quality may have a givensense, it is necessary to perceive the form of the concrete sensationwhich gave rise to it; for although the representation is indefinite orgeneric, that is, not obvious to the external senses, yet it is notphysiologically distinct from the sensation of the quality described;the perception of that quality is present by the aid of memory to theinner consciousness. 

It is therefore evident that the physiological elements of consciousnessare actually contained in so-called abstract ideas, although it issometimes asserted that they are purely spiritual and intellectual acts, remote from every physiological process of fact and sense. An actualphysiological fact (colour in this instance) corresponds to the idea inthe nervous centres, and reproduces the sensation due to the perceptionof special objects, whose physical quality of whiteness we haveperceived, and this sensation makes part of the abstract, or ratherindefinite conception. 

In fact, all which is not actually present to the mind--and the presentis an infinitesimal fraction of knowledge--is reproduced by the memory, and this is effected by the molecular movements of the human brain, andby what may be called the ethereal modifications which took place whenthe sensations, perceptions, and acts first occurred. If the cellsvibrate, and the organs of the brain are affected by the recollection ofpast ideas and acts, just as when they actually occurred (and thisappears from Schiff's experiences as to the increase of the brain inheat and volume during dreams), this vibration will be still more markedwhen any quality which affects our senses is reproduced in the mind. 

The particular _form_ of the quality as it appears in a definite objectis certainly wanting in the abstract conception; it remains in the firststage of pure sensation, like a spontaneous act of observation, and itis transformed into apprehension by the mental faculty. But the inwardconsciousness of the quality is actual, psychical, and physical. Theabstract conception is a psychical symbol composed of idea andconsciousness, or rather of act and consciousness; both are fused into alogical conception of indefinite form, yet consisting of real elements, that is, of cerebral motions and of sensations. 

Estimated according to its genuine value, therefore, an abstractconception may be divided into three classes--physical, moral, andintellectual. Whiteness and colours in general, levity and weight, hardness, sound, and the like qualities, are all abstract types whichbelong to the physical class. Goodness, virtue, love, hatred, and angermust be assigned to the moral class; and equality, identity, number, andquantity, etc. , to the intellectual class. Such abstract conceptions, without which human speech would be impossible, did not in the case ofprimitive man take the explicit and reflex form in which they arepresented by mature science, and it is expedient to inquire whatcharacter they really assumed in the spontaneous exercise of thought andspeech. 

There is certainly a difference between the mythical and specific typesand the intrinsic value of these abstract conceptions. The former servedfor the causative interpretation of the living system of the world, andhad a superstitious influence on the moral and social progress ofmankind; the latter were merely the instrument of thought and speech, and were in spontaneous and daily use. But in spite of this difference, there was no radical and substantial diversity in the genesis of suchconceptions, and the fundamental elements of perception were common toboth. While the form varied, the primitive law and genesis remained thesame. 

We have shown that the perception of the phenomenon, as it affects theinner and external consciousness, necessarily involves the form of thesubject, and the causative power which animates that form, and thisbecomes the intellectual source of special and specific myths. Thesemyths, whether they are derived from physical or moral phenomena, aresubsequently so completely impersonated as to be resolved into aperfectly human form. In the case of the abstract conceptions necessaryin speech, such anthropomorphism does not generally occur; yet we seethat sensation and a physiological genesis are inseparable from anabstract conception. Without such sensation of the phenomenon theseconceptions would be unintelligible to the percipient himself and toothers. In direct sensation, the phenomenon is external, and when it isreproduced in the mind the same cerebral motions to which that sensationwas due are repeated. 

It is an absolute law, not only of the human mind but of animalintelligence, that the phenomenon should generate the implicit idea of athing and cause, and the necessity of this psychical law is alsoapparent in the abstract conception of some given quality. If the effectis not identical, it is at any rate analogous. Primitive man did nottake whiteness, for example, considered in itself, to be an activesubject, like the specific natural myths which we have mentioned, but heregarded it as something which had a real existence, and he might undercertain circumstances invest it with deliberate power. 

If we have fully grasped this deep faculty of the mind, and thespontaneous animation of all phenomena, both external and internal, itwill not be difficult to understand the reappearance of the same law inabstract conceptions. The sensation of the quality, and consequently ofthe phenomenon, is reproduced, and the phenomenon generates the implicitidea of a subject, and therefore of a possible cause in givencircumstances. If such a law did not produce upon man the mythicalpersonification of his primitive abstract conceptions, at any rate itinvolved a belief in the objective reality of these conceptions, whichwere implicitly held to possess an independent existence. 

Among prehistoric and savage races, who were ignorant of the laws andnature of cosmic forces, the greater or less weight of a thing did notinvolve any examination of the mass of a phenomenon, its distance, andthe general laws of gravity; this differential weight was itselfbelieved to be a thing which acted, and sometimes deliberately, acted indifferent ways on the different objects which they were comparing at themoment. In other words, gravity was regarded as something which existedindependently of the bodies in which its properties were manifested. 

This estimate of gravity, as an abstract quality or property, might berepeated of all other physical properties, as well as of those abstractconceptions which are moral and intellectual. Goodness came to beconsidered as a type, varying indeed in different peoples, according totheir race, and their local, moral, and civil conditions, but as a typewhich corresponded to the mutual relations of men, and to theirsuperstitions and religious beliefs as to the nature of things. 

In this case also the abstract conception of the good, the fitting, theuseful, which constantly recur in popular speech are regarded, not asmythical powers personified in a human form, but as having a realexistence in nature, as something extrinsic to the person or thing inwhich they are manifested, and as acting upon them as a living andcausative power. The same may be said of all other abstract conceptions. Hence, in addition to the formation of cosmic, moral, and intellectualmyths, fashioned after the pattern of humanity, logical conceptionsarose in the mind, necessary for the exercise of human speech and for aman's converse with himself, and these were regarded as having a realexistence, manifested in things and persons and in the system of nature. These entities have their origin in the same faculty as the others; inevery conception presented to the mind and reproducing the primitivesensation or emotion, the external or internal phenomenon implicitlygenerates the subject, and with this the cause. These abstractconceptions did not and do not result in the anthropomorphism ofphenomena or ideas, but are transformed into entities which have a realexistence. 

We must also observe the mobility and interchangeableness of thesefetishes, myths, and imaginary entities in the primitive times of thehuman race, and even in later ages; at one time the fetish acts as amyth, at another the myth has a logical existence. Of this there aremany proofs in the traditions of ancient peoples, in the intellectuallife of modern savages, and in that of the civilized nations to which weourselves belong. The historic development does not always follow theregular course we have just described, although these are, in a strictlylogical sense, the necessary stages of intellectual evolution. Historically they are often jostled and confounded together by thelively susceptibility and alacrity of the imagination of primitive man, and it is precisely this characteristic which makes these marvellousages so fertile in fanciful creations, and also in scientificintuitions. 

Any one who is sufficiently acquainted with the ancient literature ofcivilized peoples, and with the legends of those which are rude andsavage; any one who has reflected on the spontaneous value of words andconceptions in modern speech, must often have observed how myth assumedthe form of a logical conception as time went on; and conversely howthe logical entity assumed the form of a myth, and how interchangeablethey are. It is well known that the myths have been so far adapted tothe necessities of speech as to be transmuted into verbs; _libare_ from_liber_, which perhaps came in its turn from _liba_, a propitiatorycake, while _Libra_ was the genius who in mythological ages presidedover fruitfulness and plenty. So again _juvare_, from the root _jov_, after it had already been used for the anthropomorphic _Jove_. We findin Plautus the verb _summanare_, from the god _Summanus_, the nocturnalsky. Not only verbs but adjectives were derived in common speech fromthe mythical names of gods; from _Genius_, a multiform and universalpower in ancient Latin mythology, we have _genialis_ and hence theexpressions _genialis lectus_, _genialis homo_, _genialis hiems_, andpoets and philosophers apply the same epithet even to the elements andthe stars. On the other hand, Virtue, Faith, Piety, and other like moralconceptions, first regarded as real, yet impersonal entities, weretransformed into a perfect myth, and into human forms worthy of divineworship. 

Even in our own time, and not only among the uneducated people but amongmen of high culture--when they do not pause to consider the real valueof words in the familiarity of daily conversation--any one who seeks forthe direct meaning of the terms he uses will admit the truth of what Isay. We constantly ascribe a real existence to abstract conceptions andqualities, treating them as subjects which have a substantial being, andwhich act for the most part with deliberate purpose, although they arenot transformed as in the case of myths into human shapes. 

In abstract, intellectual conceptions, such as those of equality, distance, number, and the like, the same faculty and the same elementsare at work as in those which express physical and moral qualities. These conceptions, which as civilization advances ultimately become mereintellectual symbols necessary for logical speech, are at first formedby the actual comparison of things, and therefore by the aid of thesenses. Even if we were to assert with some schools of thought that theywere formed _a priori_ in the mind, sensation would still be necessaryas the occasion of displaying them. When such conceptions are expressedin words there is a physiological recurrence to the mind of what may betermed the shadow of previous sensations or perceptions, which areunited in an intellectual type to give rise to such conceptions. And inthe appearance of this phenomenal basis, thought unconsciously fulfilsthe fundamental law of assuming, or I might say of actually _feeling_, the reality of the subject. 

It must be remembered that in speaking of these entities created by theintellect, I refer to the primitive ages of human thought, or to thenotions of ignorant people, and also to the spontaneous language ofeducated men, who in ordinary conversation do not pause to consider thesimple and logical value of their expressions. We are only giving thenatural history of the intelligence, which necessarily excludes theanalytic and refining processes of rational science. An educated manwill, for example, say or write that identity is a most importantprinciple of logic as well as that of contradiction, although he isperfectly aware that such expressions only imply an abstract form ofcognition; he follows the natural and primitive process of theintellect, and for the moment expresses these conceptions as if theywere real entities in the organism of science and of the world. Any onemay find a proof of this fact in himself, if he will consider the ideasimmediately at work in his mind at the moment of expressing similarconceptions. And if this is true of those who pursue a rational courseof thought, it is true in a still more imaginative and mythical sense atthe dawn of intellectual life, both among modern savages and in the caseof the ignorant common people. 

Let us briefly sum up the truth we have sought to establish. Specialfetishes first had their origin by the innate exercise and historicaldevelopment of the human intelligence, by the necessary conditions ofthe perception, and of subsequent apprehension; these were only theanimation of each external or internal phenomenon, as it occurred, andthis was the primitive origin of myth, both in man and animals. In thecase of animals the fetish or special myth is transitory, appearing anddisappearing in accordance with his actual perceptions; while in manthere is a persistent image of the fetish in his mind, to which hetimidly ascribes the same power as to the thing itself. The specifictypes of these fetishes naturally arise from the mental combination ofimages, emotions, and ideas into a whole, and these impersonationsgenerate the various forms of anthropomorphic polytheism. As thesynthetic mental process goes on, these varied forms of polytheism aregradually united in one general but still anthropomorphic form, which iscommonly called monotheism. 

In addition to these spontaneous and anthropomorphic myths, which servefor the fanciful explanation of the system of the world, and the moralideas of social and individual life, other myths arise which are notanthropomorphic, but which ascribe a substantial existence to abstractconceptions of physical, moral, or intellectual matters; conceptionsnecessary for the formulation of human speech. For although primitivelanguages, of which we have some examples remaining in the language ofsavage peoples, are almost inconceivably concrete, yet speech isimpossible without expressions of form, or abstract conceptions whichare moulded and adapted to that intuition of the relations of thingswhich is always taking place in the mind. [27] The mythical human formdoes not indeed appear in these conceptions, but a substantial entity isinvolved in them which sometimes, as we have seen, may even assume theaspect of a complete myth. 

A careful analysis of the process of our intelligence has shown thatthis habitual personification of the phenomenon or abstract conceptionis due to the innate faculty of perception, since the appearance of anyphenomenon necessarily produces the idea of a subject actuated bydeliberate purpose; this law is equally constant in the case of animals, in whom, however, it does not issue in a rational conception. Theobjection of ourselves into nature, the personification of its phenomenaand myths in general, are common to all, while they take a more fancifulform in the case of primitive man; they are the constant and necessaryresult of the perception of external and internal phenomena. Thispersonification includes moral and intellectual as well as physicalphenomena, and it always proceeds in the same way, from specialphenomena to specific types, and hence to abstract perceptions. 

In this way we have established the important fact that the primitivepersonification of every external or internal phenomenon, the origin ofall myths, religions, and superstitions, is accomplished by the samenecessary psychical and physical law as that which produces sensation. That is, men, as well as animals, begin by thinking and feeling in amythical way, owing to the intrinsic constitution of their intellectuallife; and while animals never emerge from these psychical conditions, men are gradually emancipated from them, as they become able to thinkmore rationally, thus finding redemption, truth, and liberty by means ofscience. 

We now propose to unite in a single conception this necessity of ourintellect, at once the product and the cause of perception, and of thespontaneous vivification of phenomena; since the law may be expressed ina compendious form. 

Both in physical, moral, and intellectual myths, and in the substantialentity infused into abstract conceptions, the external or internalphenomenon immediately generates the idea of a subject, since it is afundamental law of our mind to _entify (entificare)_ every object of ourperception, emotion, or consciousness. If any one should object to thisneologism, in spite of its adequate expression of the original functionof the intelligence, we reply that the use and necessity of the verb_identify_ have been accepted in the neo-Latin tongues, and therefore_entify_, which has the same root and form, can hardly be rejected, since it, like the former, signifies an actual process of thought. Wetherefore adopt the word without scruple, since new words have oftenbeen coined before when they were required to express new conceptionsand theories. 

The primitive and constant act of all animals, including man, whenexternal or internal sensation has opened to them the immense field ofnature, is that of _entifying_ the object of sensation, or, in a word, all phenomena. Such _entification_ is the result of spontaneousnecessity, by the law of the intrinsic faculty of perception; it is notthe result of reflection, but it is immediate, innate, and inevitable. It is an eternal law of the evolution of the intelligence, like allthose which rule the order of the world. 

We do not only proclaim in this fact a law of psychological importance, but also the origin of myths, and in a certain sense of science, sincemyth is developed by the same methods as science. These two streams flowfrom one and the same source, since the _entification_ of phenomena isproper both to myth and science; the former _entifies_ sensations, andthe latter ideas, since science by reversion to law and rationalconception finally attains to the primitive entity. And finally, if animaginative idea of a cause is active in myth from the first, theconception of a cause is equally necessary to science. It is herbusiness to explain the reason of things, and in what they rationallyconsist:

 "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. "

CHAPTER VII. 

THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 

In the foregoing pages we have reached the primordial fact of ourpsychical and physical nature, in which, as it appears to us, both mythand science have their origin. After first considering the animalkingdom as a whole, we have seen that the interaction between externalphenomena and the consciousness of an organism results in thespontaneous vivification of the phenomenon in question, so that theorigin of the mythical representation of nature is found in the innatefaculty of animal perception. 

Nor could it be otherwise. The internal activity and intrinsic sense ofconscious and deliberate life which inspires animals and men, while thelatter are still ignorant of the rational order of things, isnecessarily reflected both in the external objects of perception and inthe internal emotions, as if they were operating causes independent ofthe will of the percipient. It is impossible for an animal, which isunable by voluntary observation to make, any analytic distinctionbetween the subject and the object, and their respective effects, toconsider such phenomena as mechanical entities, subject to necessary andeternal laws. The animal therefore accepts the idea suggested by hisspontaneous and subjective nature, that these phenomena are alive. Grass, fruits, plants, water, the movement of material bodies, ordinaryand extraordinary meteors, all are implicitly apprehended by him assubjects endowed with will and purpose after the manner of mankind. Norcan the living subjectivity of the phenomenon ever be gauged by theanimal in whom the deliberate power of reflection is wanting. His lifeis consequently passed in a world of living subjects, not of phenomenaand laws which mechanically act together; it is, so to speak, apermanent _metaphor_. 

Man himself, so far as his animal nature is concerned, acts in the sameway, and although he subsequently attains to the exercise of reasoningpowers in virtue of the psychical reduplication of himself, theprimitive faculty persists, and hence comes the mythical creation of apeculiar world of conceptions which give rise to all superstitions, mythologies, and religions. This is also the process of science itself, as far as the classifying method and intrinsic logical form areconcerned. The historical source of the two great streams of theintellect, the mythical and the scientific, is found in the primitiveact of _entifying_ the phenomenon presented to the senses. 

We must briefly describe the evolution of these two mythical andscientific faculties of the mind; we must investigate the mode and causeof their divergence from a common source, through what transformationsthey pass, in order to see in what way the one is gradually dried up, while the other increases in volume and force. The reader must forgiveus if we use some repetition in developing a subject on which we havealready touched, since without such repetition the present historicalexplanation would be obscure. 

The first stage of knowledge consists in the observation of the thingswhich surround us, and this first stage, which is necessary also inscience, is the common property of animals. Their observation ofthemselves and of external things is psychologically and physiologicallythe same as that of man, and in both cases there is a subjectiveanimation of the phenomena themselves. The primitive source of sciencein its observation of phenomena was the same as that of myth and of thespecial fetish; without such observation it would have had no existence. 

In immediate succession to this primitive fact, which is common to thewhole animal kingdom, there arose--if we consider the general processwithout the limitations of circumstances, places, time, and a thousandaccidents--two kinds of faculties which were identical in form, althoughthey had different effects, and produced opposite results. For in thecase of mythical entification the tendency to impersonation was alwaysincreasing and becoming more distinctly zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, and in this form it was crystallized or mummified, while science on theother hand was always enlarging its sphere and dissipating the firstmythical form of its conception, until nothing was left but a purelyrational idea. 

When this evolution takes place in peoples and races which are incapableof improvement, or have a limited capacity for advanced civilization, the faculty of myth remains in the ascendant; and as past and presenthistory shows, mythical stagnation and intellectual barrenness mayfollow, until intellectual development is arrested and even destroyed. If on the other hand the evolution takes place in peoples and racescapable of indefinite civilization, myth gradually disappears andscience shines forth victoriously. 

Even in historical and civilized races the two cycles go on together, since while robust intellects throw off as they advance the mythicalshell in which they were first inclosed, the ignorant masses continuetheir devotions to fetishes and myths, which they can infuse even intothe grandest religious teaching. They perhaps might also perish, crystallized in their miserable superstitions, unless, in virtue of therace to which they belong, the nobler minds were gradually to succeed inilluminating and raising them into a purer atmosphere. In our Aryanrace, and in our own country we have all seen the ideas of Christianitytransformed into the earlier fetishes and pagan myths; the saints aremerely substituted for the gods and demi-gods, for the deities ofgroves, of the sea and of war, as they are found in ancient mythology. The legends of the saints and of Christ himself are grafted on similarlegends of the ancient religions of Greece and Rome, and Paradise hasassumed the appearance and form of Olympus. The paintings still extantin the catacombs of Rome, which mark the transformation of the old intothe new religion, speak plainly enough by their symbols and figures. 

Myth is logically identical with the scientific process in its intrinsiccharacter; starting from a vague subjectivity which gradually assumes ahuman shape, the first intellectual vitality is lost, unless it isrevived by a higher impulse. Science, on the other hand, which begins inmyth, gradually divests this subjectivity of its anthropomorphiccharacter, until pure reason is attained, and with this the power ofindefinite progress. 

The theory which has hitherto been generally accepted by mythologists, even by those who profess Comte's great principle of historicalevolution, is that man began with special fetishes, that these werecombined in comprehensive types to form polytheistic hierarchies, andhence he rose by an analogous process to a more or less vague conceptionof monotheism. 

This theory, true as to the principal forms which myth successivelyassumes, is not accurate with respect to the stages of development, andit is also erroneous in some particulars of the actual history of thevarious mythologies of different peoples. 

In the early chapters of this work we have briefly touched on such adevelopment, and the reader must pardon us for returning to the subject, now that we have to give an historical account of the process ofevolution. In fact, the fetish, in the general sense of the term, is notthe first form of myth which is revealed in the dawn of human life. Inorder to estimate its positive value, it is necessary to analyze such aconception with greater accuracy, and then to verify it historicallywith the help of the science of ethnology. 

The first manifestations of mythical ideas must be considered in man asan animal; that is, as the result of his spontaneous intercourse withthe world, independently of the psychical faculty peculiar to himself, after he had acquired by subsequent evolution of mind and body thefaculty and habit of reflection. This first stage does not involve anydefinite fetish, that is, an immediate belief in a special object whichexerts its influence on the human soul, even when it is remote andunseen: such a fetish is a secondary stage in human development. Thefirst mythical representations of animals, and of man, so far as hisanimal nature is concerned, are not confined to fixed objects, whichcan be retained in the mind as operative under all circumstances; theyare indefinite, and diffused through all the phenomena which aresuccessively perceived and vivified. The unseen wind which rises andfalls, the moving cloud, the flash of lightning and roar of thunder, thedawn, the rushing torrent--when any of these things are perceived byanimals and primitive men, they are endowed with subjective life and aresupposed to act with deliberate purpose; and this is the first form ofmyth. But when they are not present (I here speak of the animal natureof man) they do not remain in the mind as persistent beings to which thetribute of worship inspired by hope or fear must be paid; these andother phenomena only inspire such sentiments when they are actuallypresent. 

It is no vain distinction which I mate between the first vague andintermittent form of myth suggested by phenomena actually present, andthat of the first stage of fetish: this distinction marks the differencebetween the mythical representation of animals and the classifying andreflective process peculiar to man. 

Comte was the first to remark, quite incidentally, that animals mightsometimes attain to the idea of a fetish; Darwin gave the instance of adog which was scared by the movement of an open umbrella in a meadow, although he remained quiet when it was unshaken by the wind; and HerbertSpencer, partly accepting these ideas, adduces two somewhat similarinstances of the behaviour of dogs. It seems to us that these great menare mistaken on the one hand in assuming that the first essential originof myth is not to be found in the animal kingdom, and on the other insupposing that these facts have only an _accidental_ value, and thatanimals only occasionally acquire a vague consciousness of the fetish. 

Those readers who have gone with us so far will perceive that these werenot mere accidents of rare occurrence in animal life, but that they arethe necessary effect of mythical representation in its first stage, although they cannot in any way be supposed to be produced by fetishism, properly so called. For if the dog were frightened and agitated by themovement of the umbrella, or ran away, as Herbert Spencer tells us, fromthe stick which had hurt him while he was playing with it, it wasbecause an unusual movement or pain produced by an object to which habithad rendered him indifferent, aroused in the animal the congenital senseof the intentional subjectivity of phenomena, and this is really thefirst stage of myth, and not of its subsequent form of fetishism. 

I must therefore repeat that the first form of myth which spontaneouslyarises in man as an animal, is the vague but intentional subjectivity ofthe phenomena presented to his senses. This subjectivity is sometimesquiescent and implicit, and sometimes active, in which case it mayarouse the fear of evil, or the hope of physical pleasures. 

As in man the reflex power slowly and gradually grows--although at firstin an exclusively empirical form--so he slowly and gradually accepts thefirst form of fetishism, which consists in the permanent and fixedindividuation of a phenomenon or object of nature, as a power which hereflectively believes to be the artificer of good or evil. 

In this stage it is no longer the phenomenon actually present whicharouses the apprehension of an intentional subjectivity, while its imageand efficacy disappear with the sensible object; the phenomenon, or theinanimate or animate form, is reflectively retained by the memory, inwhich it appears as a malignant or benignant power. In a word, the firststage of fetishism, which is the second form of the evolution of myth, is the universal and primitive sense of myth in nature, which man aloneis capable of applying permanently to some given phenomenon, such aswind, rain, and the like, or lakes, volcanoes, and rocks, and theseremain fixed in the mind as powers of good or evil. In the earlier stageof myth the scene is constantly changing, while in the latter, certainobjects or phenomena remain fixed in the memory, exciting the sameemotions whether they are present or absent, and to this consciousnesswe may trace the dawn of worship. 

Ethnography affords plain proofs of the fetishism which preceded thecivilization of many peoples, and among those which still remain in thestage of fetishism we can trace the primitive form of a vagueimpersonation of natural objects and phenomena. [28]

As we have already seen, every animal and unfamiliar object is in thisfirst stage of fetishism regarded as the external covering of aspiritual power which has assumed what is believed to be the primordialform of the fetish; this fetish takes the place of the naturalphenomenon, and is believed to be capable of exercising a directsubjectivity which is vague but perfectly real. 

We pass from this first form of fetish to the second, namely to theveneration of objects, animals, plants, and the like, in which anextrinsic power is supposed to be incarnated. Many ages elapsed beforeman attained to this second stage of fetishism, since it was necessarilypreceded by a further and reflex elaboration of myth, namely, thegenesis of a belief in spirits. 

Herbert Spencer and Tylor are among the writers who have given amasterly description of this phase of the human intellect, and historyand ethnography have confirmed the accuracy of their researches andconclusions. The shadow cast by a man's own body, the reflection ofimages in the water, natural echoes, the reappearance of images of thedeparted in dreams, the general instinct which leads man to vivify allhe sees, produced what may be called the reduplication of man inhimself, and the savage's primitive theory of the human soul. Originallythis soul was multiplied into all these natural phenomena, but it wasafterwards distributed by the mythical faculty into three, four, five, or more powers, personifying the spirits. This belief in a multiplicityof souls in man is not only still extant among more or less rude peoplesof the present day in Asia, Europe, Africa, America, and Polynesia, butit is also the foundation of the belief of more civilized nations on thesubject, including our own Aryan race. Birch and others observe that theEgyptians ascribed four spirits to man--Ba, Akba, Ka, and Khaba. TheRomans give three:

 "Bis duo sunt homines, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra. "

The same belief is found among nearly all savages. The Fijiansdistinguish between the spirit which is buried with the dead man andthat more ethereal spirit which is reflected in the water and lingersnear the place where he died. The Malagasy believe in three souls, theAlgonquin in two, the Dakotan in three, the native of Orissa in four. 

Since a fetish, strictly so called, is the incarnation of a power insome given object, it must be preceded by this rude belief in spiritsand shades. Such a complex elaboration takes time, since it involves aprevious creation of powers, spirits or the shades of men; these lead tothe belief in independent spirits of various origin, which people theheavens and all parts of the world. Hence arose the belief intransmigration, the necessary prelude to the theory of the incarnation, which was ultimately constituted by fetishism. The comparative study oflanguages shows that including the Aryan and Semitic races, the beliefin spirits was developed in all peoples, and in all of them we also finda belief in the transmigration of souls. 

The transmigration of the human soul was first believed to take place inthe body of a new-born child, since at the moment of death the soul ofthe dying person entered into the foetus. The Algonquins buried thecorpses of their children by the wayside, so that their souls mighteasily enter into the bodies of the pregnant women who passed that way. Some of the North American tribes believed that the mother saw in adream the dead relation who was to imprint his likeness on her unbornchild. At Calabar, when the mother who has lost a child gives birth toanother, she believes that the dead child is restored to her. Thenatives of New Guinea believe that a son who greatly resembles his deadfather has inherited his soul. Among the Yorubas the new-born child isgreeted with the words: "Thou hast returned at last!" The same ideasprevail among the Lapps and Tartars, as well as among the negroes of theWest Coast of Africa. Among the aborigines of Australia the belief iswidely diffused that those who die as black return as white men. 

Primitive and ignorant peoples perceive no precise distinction betweenman and brutes, so that, as Tylor observes, they readily accept thebelief of the transmigration of the human soul into an animal, and theninto inanimate objects, and this belief culminates in the incarnation ofthe true fetish. Among some of the North American tribes the spirits ofthe dead are supposed to pass into bears. An Eskimo widow refused to eatseal's flesh because she supposed that her husband's soul had migratedinto that animal. Others have imagined that the souls of the dead passedinto birds, beetles, and other insects, according to their social rankwhen still alive. Some African tribes believe that the dead migrate intocertain species of apes. 

By pursuing this theory, as we shall presently show more fully, thetransition was easy to the incarnation of a spirit, whether that of aman or of some other being, into any object whatever, which was therebyinvested with beneficent or malignant power. It is easy to show that inthis second stage of fetishism, which some have believed to be theprimitive form of myth, there would be no further progress in themythical elaboration of spirits, their mode of life, their influence andpossible transmigrations. This elaboration is indeed a product of themythical faculty, but in a rational order; it is a logical process, mythical in substance, but purely reflective in form. For which reasonit was impossible for animals to attain to this stage. 

Some peoples remained in this phase of belief, while others advanced tothe ulterior and polytheistic form. This may also be divided into twoclasses; those who classify and ultimately reduce fetishes into a moregeneral conception, and those whose conception takes an anthropomorphicform. Let us examine the genesis of both classes. 

When the popular belief in spirits had free development, the number ofspirits and powers was countless, as many examples show. To give asingle instance--the Australians hold that there is an innumerablemultitude of spirits; the heavens, the earth, every nook, grove, bush, spring, crag, and stone are peopled with them. In the same way, someAmerican tribes suppose the visible and invisible world to be filledwith good and evil spirits; so do the Khonds, the Negroes of New Guinea, and, as Castren tells us, the Turanian tribes of Asia and Europe. Consequently, fetishes, which are the incarnation of these spirits insome object, animate or inanimate, natural or artificial, areinnumerable, since primitive man and modern savages have created suchfetishes, either at their own pleasure or with the aid of their priests, magicians, and sorcerers. 

Man's co-ordinating faculty, in those races which are capable ofprogressive evolution, does not stop short at this inorganicdisintegration of things; he begins a process of classification and, atthe same time, of reduction, by which the numerous fetishes are, bytheir natural points of likeness and unlikeness in character and form, reduced to types and classes, which, as we have already shown, comprisein themselves the qualities of all the particular objects of the samespecies which are diffused throughout nature. 

By this spontaneous process of human thought, due to the innate power ofreasoning, man has gradually reduced the chaos of special fetishes to atolerably systematic order, and he then goes on to more precisesimplification. Let us try to trace in this historic fact theclassifying process at the moment when the first form of polytheismsucceeds to irregular and anarchical fetishism. 

In the Samoan islands, a local god is wont to appear in the form of anowl, and the accidental discovery of a dead owl would be deplored, andits body would be buried with solemn rites. The death of this particularbird does not, however, imply the death of the god himself, since thepeople believe him to be incarnated in the whole species. In this factwe see that a special fetish is developed into a specific form; thus apermanent type is evolved from special appearances. 

Acosta has handed down to us another belief of the comparativelycivilized Peruvians, which recalls the primitive genesis of theirmythical ideas. He says that the shepherds used to adore various stars, to which they assigned the names of animals; stars which protected menagainst the respective animals after whom they were called. They heldthe general belief that all animals whatever had a representative inheaven, which watched over their reproduction, and of which they were, so to speak, the essence. This affords another example of the moregeneral extension and classification, and, at the same time, of thereduction of the original multitude of fetishes. 

Some of the North American Indians asserted that every species of animalhad an elder brother, who was the origin of all the individuals of thespecies. They said, for example, that the beaver, which was the elderbrother of this species of rodents, was as large as one of their cabins. Others supposed that all kinds of animals had their type in the world ofsouls, a _manitu_, which kept guard over them. Ralston, in his "Songs ofthe Russian People, " tells us that Buyan, the island paradise of Russianmythology, contains a serpent older than all others, a larger raven, afiner queen bee, and so of all other animals. Morgan, in his work uponthe Iroquois, observes that they believe in a spirit or god of everyspecies of trees and plants. 

From these beliefs and facts, drawn from different peoples and differentparts of the world, we can understand how a vague and inorganicfetishism gradually became classified into types which constitute thefirst phase of polytheism. The logical effort which transformed themanifold beliefs into types goes on, but from their vague and indefinitenature, not only the power, but also the extrinsic form of man is easilyinfused into them, so that they are invested with human faculties andsensations, and also with the anthropomorphic form and countenance ofwhich we have spoken elsewhere. In fact, when the special fetishes whichare naturally alike are united in a single type, the object, animal, orphenomenon which corresponds to it in this early stage of polytheism isno longer perceived, but a _numen_ is evolved from this type, which hasnot only human power, but a human form; and hence follow the specificidols of serpents, birds, and all natural phenomena, in which theprimitive fetish has been incarnated. [29]

In this second stage of polytheism, anthropomorphism appears in anexternal form, and the specific type is transformed into the idol whichrepresents and dominates over it, inspiring the commission of beneficentor hurtful acts. Of this it is unnecessary to adduce examples, since allthe mythologies which have reached this polytheistic stage areanthropomorphic, and in these the specific type, which serves as thefirst step to polytheism, subsequently becomes a completely human idol. 

After this anthropomorphic classification has been reached by logicalelaboration, a new field is opened for the reduction of special typesinto those which are more general, as had been previously the case inthe early stages of myth. By continually concentrating, and at the sametime by enlarging the value of the conception, it is united in a singleform which constitutes the dawn and genesis of monotheism. Thismethodical process, which is characteristic of human thought, may betraced in all peoples which have really attained to the monotheisticidea, in the Aryan and Semitic races, in China, Japan, and Egypt, inPeru and Mexico; the belief may also be obscurely traced in an inchoateform among savage and inferior tribes, as, for example, among theIndians of Central and North America, and among some of the inhabitantsof Africa and barbarous Asia. 

While this conception took a more or less definite form among the moreadvanced peoples, the earlier and debased myths maintained their ground, and still continue to do so. Of this we have examples in Europe itself, and among its more civilized peoples which have been transplantedelsewhere; for while in one direction a capacity for classificationleads to a purer monotheistic conception, and even to rational science, the great majority of the common people, and even of those of higherculture, still hold many ideas which are polytheistic andanthropomorphic, and some which really belong to the debased stage offetishism and vulgar superstition. 

Other causes contribute to produce the natural and intrinsic concurrenceof the several stages of myth which are found existing together in thelife of a people. Such, for example, is the conquest effected by a morecivilized nation over another race, inferior by nature or retarded byother circumstances. The mythical ideas of the conquered people remain, and are even diffused through the lower classes of the conquering race;or they are ingrafted by a synthetic and assimilating process, so as tomodify other mythical and religious beliefs. This compound of variousstages and various beliefs also occurs through the moral andintellectual diffusion of dogma, without the acquisition of really newmatter. Manifest proofs of these various stages of myth, co-existenttogether, may be traced in the development of the Vedic ideas among theearlier aboriginal nations, and conversely; as in the case of the Aztecsand Incas in Mexico and Peru, whose earlier beliefs were mixed withthose of their conquerors. The same thing may be observed in thedevelopment of Judaism during the Babylonish captivity, in the biblicaland messianic doctrines which were grafted on pagan beliefs, and in theteaching of Islam, as it was adopted in the East and among the blackraces of Africa. 

We must make allowance for these extrinsic accidents if we are todescribe correctly the natural course and logical evolution of myth. Even with respect to the special evolution of myth in a separate people, unmixed with others, while it is normal in what may be termed itsgeneral form and categorical phases, yet like all natural objects andphenomena, and much more in all which concerns the human mind, there arevariations in its forms, and it attains its ends by many ways. 

If we take a wider view of the general and reciprocal influences ofethnic myths; as respects the historic results of mythologies, we shallsee that if every race evolved its sphere of myth in accordance with thecanons laid down by us, their effect upon each other would work togetherfor a common result more quickly than when each is taken apart. Thereader must allow me to make my meaning clear by the following passagefrom my work on the "Dottrina razionale del Progresso, " which Ipublished in 1863, in the "Politecnico, " Milan, on the fusion of themonotheistic conception of the Semitic race with the beliefs of Greeceand Rome at the dawn of Christianity:--

"Christianity was originally based on the absolute idea of the divinefirst Principle, to which one portion of the Semitic race had attainedby intellectual evolution, and by the acumen of the great men whobrought this idea to perfection. Either because of their clearerconsciousness, or from their environment and the physical circumstancesof the race, the Semitic people passed from the primitive ideas ofmythology to the conception of the absolute and infinite Being, whileother races still adhered to altogether fanciful and anthropomorphicideas of this Being. Our race had an Olympus, like the others, andthroughout its history this Olympus was always assuming new forms, although a human conception was the basis of its religious ideas. TheChinese and Semitic races were the first to rise to the conception of anabsolute first principle, but in both cases the conception was more orless unfruitful. 

"The gradual transition from consciousness to conception, from the factto the idea, from the idol to the law, from the symbol to the thought, from the finite to the infinite, is the characteristic and essentialcourse taken by the human mind. But, practically, this process is moregradual or more rapid, is retarded or advanced, attains its aim or stopsshort in its first rudiments, according to the race in which it occurs. So it was that, as we have just said, the Chinese and Semitic races werethe first to reach the final goal of this psychological progress; otherpeoples, such as the Aryans and their offshoots, savages and partiallycivilized races, remained in the early stages of this dialectic scale. Undoubtedly, in our own race, the early religious conceptions whichconstituted a simple worship of nature in various forms were constantlybecoming of purer character, and they were not only exalted in theirspiritual quality, but in the Greek and Roman religions they attained tosomething like scientific precision. Yet even in these higheraspirations the race did not surrender its mythical faculty, to which itwas impelled by its physical and psychological constitution, and thepure conception was unconsciously overshadowed by symbolic ideas. We canplainly see how far this symbolism, peculiar to the race, obscured theminds of Plato and Aristotle, and of almost all the subsequentphilosophers. In the Semitic and Chinese races this inner symbolism ofthe mind, with reference to the interpretation of nature, was lesstenacious, intense, and productive, and they soon freed themselves fromtheir mental bonds in order to rise to the conception of the absoluteBeing, distinct from the world. When this idea had been grasped by rudeand popular intuition, men of the highest intellectual power perfectedthe still confused conception, and founded upon it science, civil andpolitical institutions, and national customs. 

"The idea of Christianity arose in the midst of the Semitic peoplethrough him whose name it bears, and who perfected the religious ideaof his nation. This idea, in its Semitic simplicity, consisted in abelief in the existence of one, eternal, infinite God, the immediatecreator of all things; it included the tradition of man's loss of hisoriginal felicity, and the promise of a restoration of all peoples, andof the Israelites in particular, to their former condition of earthlyhappiness. Christ appeared, and while he upheld the Mosaic law and itsoriginal idea, he declared himself to be the promised deliverer, sent ofGod; the Son of God, which among the Semitic people was the term appliedto their prophets. His moral teaching gave a more perfect form to theold law, and by his example he afforded a model of human virtue worthyof all veneration; the germs of a marvellous civilization were to befound in his moral and partially new teaching. The same doctrine hadbeen, to some extent, inculcated by the Jewish teachers, and the schoolsof Hillel and Gamaliel were certainly not morally inferior to his own, as we learn from the tradition of the Talmud, and from some passages inthe Acts of the Apostles. The origin, development, and teaching ofprimitive Christianity were therefore essentially Semitic, since it hadits origin in a people of that race, and in a man of that people. Yetthe Semitic race did not become Christian; and, after so many ages haveelapsed, it still rejects Christianity. It was the Aryan race, to whichwe Europeans belong, which adopted this teaching and became essentiallyChristian, although this race is psychologically the most idolatrous ofthe world, as far as the æsthetic idol--not the common fetish--isconcerned. Let us inquire into the cause of this remarkable fact. 

"As soon as the teaching of Christ was adopted by those familiar withAryan civilization and opinions, an idea repugnant to Semiticconceptions, and still unintelligible to that race, was evolved fromit--I mean the idea that the human Christ, the Son of God, was Godhimself. The Semite holds that God is so far exalted above all creation, so great and eternal in comparison with the littleness of the world andof man, that God incarnate is not merely a blasphemy but an unmeaningand absurd phrase. Such a dogma was therefore energetically repudiated, and the Semitic race submitted to persecution and dispersal rather thanaccept it. This is the real reason why Christianity has not beenreceived and will never be received by the Semitic race. When Mahometreorganized and perfected the Arab creed, he preserved intact theSemitic principle of the absolute and incommunicable nature of God: theSemitic religion has ever held that there is one God, and his prophet. 

"On the other hand, Christianity was rapidly diffused among the Greekand Latin peoples, and in all parts of Europe inhabited by our race:even savages and barbarians accepted more or less frankly a doctrinerejected by the Semites in whom it had its origin. Many and variouscauses have been assigned for this rapid diffusion of the new doctrine, and the old Greek and Latin fathers ascribed it to the fact that men'sminds had been naturally and providentially prepared for it. It wasattributed by others to the miseries and sufferings of the slavepopulation, and of the poor, who found a sweet illusion and comfort inthe Christian hope of a world beyond the grave. Some, again, suggest theomnipotent will of a tyrant, or the extreme ignorance of the common andbarbarous people. Although all these causes had a partial effect, theywere secondary and accidental. The true and unique cause lay deeper, inthe intellectual constitution of the race to which Christianity waspreached; just as physiological characteristics are reproduced in thespecies until they become permanent, so do intellectual inclinationsbecome engrained in the nature. 

"We have said that our race is æsthetically more mythological than allothers. If we consider the religious teaching of various Aryan peoples, from the most primitive Vedic idolatry to the successive religions ofBrahma and Zend, of the Celts, Greeks, Latins, Germans, and Slavs, weshall see how widely they differ from the religious conceptions andideas of other races. The vein of fanciful creations is inexhaustible, and there is a wealth of symbolic combinations and a profusion ofcelestial and semi-celestial dramas. The intrinsic habit of formingmythical representations of nature is due to a more vivid sense of herpower, to a rapid succession of images, and to a constant projection ofthe observer's own personality into phenomena. This peculiarcharacteristic of our race is never wholly overcome, and to it is addeda proud self-consciousness, an energy of thought and action, a constantaspiration after grand achievements, and a haughty contempt for allother nations. 

"The very name of Aryan, transmitted in a modified form to allsuccessive generations, denotes dominion and valour; the Brahmaniccosmogony, and the epithet of apes, given to all other races in the epicof Valmiki, bear witness to the same fact; it is shown in the slaveryimposed on conquered peoples, in the hatred of foreigners felt by allthe Hellenic tribes; in the omnipotence of Rome, the haughtiness of theGermanic orders; in the feudal system, in the Crusades; and finally, inthe modern sense of our superiority to all other existing races. Thequickness of perception, and the facile projection of human personalityinto natural objects, led to the manifold creations of Olympus, and thiswas an æsthetic obstacle to any nearer approach to the pure and absoluteconception of God, while the innate pride of race was a hindrance to ourhumiliation in the dust before God. The Semites declared that man wascreated in the image of God, and we created God in our own image; whileconscious of the power of the _numina_ we confronted them boldly, andwere ready to resist them. The Indian legends, and those of theHellenes, the Scandinavians, and the whole Aryan race, are full ofconflicts between gods and men. The demi-gods must be remembered, showing that the Aryans believed themselves to be sufficiently noble andgreat for the gods to love them, and to intermarry with them. Thus theAryan made himself into a God, and often took a glorious place inOlympus, while he declared that God was made man. 

"We might imagine that the doctrine of God incarnate would be asrepugnant to the ideas, feelings, and intellect of the Aryan as it wasto the Semitic race. But the anthropomorphic side of Christianity wasreadily embraced by the former as a mythical and æsthetic conception, and indeed it was they who made a metaphorical expression into anessential dogma: the pride natural to the Aryan race made them eager toaccept a religion which placed man in a still higher Olympus: a beliefin Christ was rapidly diffused, not as God but as the Man-God. These arethe true reasons, not only for the rapid spread of Christianity inEurope, but also for the philosophic systems of the Platonists andAlexandrines which preceded it. Although Philo was a Hebrew, andprobably knew nothing of Christ, he attained by means of Hellenism tothe idea of the Man-God; the Platonic Word, which was merely theprojection of God into human reason, was accepted for the same reasonas the Christian dogma of the Word made man. 

"Let us see what new principles, what higher morality and civilizationwere added by the diffusion of Christianity to those principles whichwere the spontaneous product of the race. We must first consider whatpart the pagan gods, as they were regarded by educated men, played inthe history of the European race, with respect to the individual and tothe commonwealth. The pagan Olympus, considered as a whole, and withoutreference to the various forms which it assumed in different peoples, was not essentially distinct from human society. Although the godsformed a higher order of immortal beings, they were mixed up with men ina thousand ways in practical life, and conformed to the ways ofhumanity; they were constantly occupied in doing good or ill to mortals;they were warmly interested in the disputes of men, taking part in theconflicts of persons, cities, and peoples; special divinities watchedover men from the cradle to the grave, and they were loved or hated bythe gods by reason of their family and race. In short, the heavenly andearthly communities were so intermixed that the gods were only superiorand immortal men. 

"The people were accustomed to consider their deities as ever present, distinct from, and yet inseparably joined with them; so that theindividual, the country, the tribes, were ever governed, guarded, favoured, or opposed by special and peculiar gods. Olympus had ahistory, since the acts of the gods took place in time and werecoincident with the history of nations, so that every event in heavencorresponded with one on earth; the idea of divine justice wasexemplified in that of men, and both were perfected together. Amongpagans of the Aryan race there was a perpetual and repeated alliancebetween men and gods made in the image of man. This action of the godsboth for good and evil became in its turn the rule of life for theignorant multitude, and they acted in conformity with the supposed willand actions of the gods; the divine will was, however, nothing but an _apriori_ religious conception of an idol representing the forces ofnature or some moral or religious idea. The moral perfection of nations, as time went on, also perfected the supreme justice of Olympus, and themoral worth of the gods increased as men became better. So that it wasnot the original theological idea, but man himself, who made heaven moreperfect, and the gods morally better and more just. 

"The explicit power of mental reasoning and of science was added to thisspontaneous evolution of the religious idea, so far as the improvedmorality of the race perfected the heavenly justice which was its owncreation. The pagan Olympus was gradually simplified by sages andphilosophers; the illicit passions of the gods were set aside, and itwas transformed into a providential government of individuals and ofsociety, much more remote from direct contact with men. The conceptionof the immortal gods included one supreme power, formative, protectingor avenging, and this conception bordered on the Semitic idea of theabsolute Being, although without quite attaining to it. God wasconfounded with the order of things, his laws were those of theuniverse, by which he was also bound, and the righteous man lived inconformity with these laws. When Christianity began, pagan rationalismhad arrived at the idea of a spiritual and directing power, organicallyidentical with the universe. It was neither the Olympus of the commonpeople, nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the conscious and inevitableorder of nature. Although, either as an Olympus or as a dogma, the deitywas confounded with men or constrained them to follow a more rationalrule of life, yet paganism clearly distinguished the gods from men intheir concrete personality, and the action of humanity was thereforedistinct from that of the deity. 

"When Christianity began, the peoples of the Aryan race in Europe, or atleast those of more advanced civilization, had constituted forthemselves a heavenly Pantheon, which contained nearly all the primitivedeities, but in a more human form and exercising a juster rule over theworld, while at the same time they were regarded as quite distinct fromthe society of men. Although there was in this multiplicity of divineforms an hierarchical order of different ranks, there was no generalconception to include the destinies of the whole human race, and tomanifest by its unity its providential and historical development. Eachpeople believed in their own special destiny, which should either raisethem to greater glory and power or bring them to a speedy and inevitableend; but there was no common fate, no common prosperity nor disaster. Rome had, as far as possible, united these various peoples by the ideaof her power, by the inforcement of her laws, and by the benefits of hercitizenship, yet the Roman unity was external, and did not spring fromthe intimate sense of a common lineage. While the nations were soclosely united to Rome by brute force, the subject peoples were agitatedby a desire for their ancient independence and self-government. Some ofthese pagan multitudes advanced in civilization through their educationin the learning of the Romans, and in morality through their spontaneousactivity, but they did not possess any deep sense of a generalprovidence, and heaven and earth continued to be under the sway of anincomprehensible fate. 

"If we now turn to consider the mental conditions of educated men atthat time, we shall see that they transformed the Olympus of personaland concrete gods into symbols of the forces of nature, and that theyhad risen to a purer conception of the deity by making it agree with theprogress of reason; but this deity was so remote from earth as to havescarcely anything to do with the government of the world. According tothe teaching of the Stoics, which was very generally diffused, man wassupposed to be so far left to himself that he was the creator of his ownvirtue, and had to struggle, not only against nature and his fellow-man, but against fate, the underlying essence of every cosmic form andmotion. If this pagan rationalism gave rise to great theoretic morality, and produced amazing examples of private and public virtue, it hadlittle effect on the multitudes, nor did it contain any guidingprinciple for the historical life of humanity as a whole. 

"Christianity proclaimed the spiritual unity of God, the unity of therace, the brotherhood of all peoples, the redemption of the world, andconsequently a providential influence on mankind. Christianity taughtthat God himself was made man, and lived among men. Such teaching wasoffered to the people as a truth of consciousness rather than of dogma, although it was afterwards preserved in a theological form by thepreaching of Paul, and the pagan mind was more affected by sentimentthan by reason. The unity of God was associated in their æstheticimagination with the earlier conception of the supreme Zeus, which nowtook a more Semitic form, and Olympus was gloriously transformed into acompany of elect Christians and holy fathers of the new faith. Aconfused sentiment as to the mystic union of peoples, who becamebrothers in Christ, had a powerful effect on the imagination and theheart, since they had already learned to regard the world as thecreation of one eternal Being. In the ardour of proselytism and of thediffusion of the new creed, they hailed the historical transformation ofthe earthly endeavour after temporal acquisitions and pleasures into aprovidential preparation for the heavenly kingdom. 

"In Christ, the incarnation of the supreme God, they beheld theapotheosis of man, so acceptable to the Aryan race, since he thus becamethe absolute ruler of the world and its fates. Ideas and sentiments, ofwhich the Semitic mind was incapable, and which were opposed to theirhistorical and intellectual development, moved and satisfied the Aryanmind, and became associated as far as possible with the dogma and beliefto which the race had attained in their pagan civilization. Thus heaven, dogma, and Christian rites assumed from the first a pagan form; andwhile the original idols were repudiated in the zeal for new principles, their common likeness was maintained by the imaginative power of therace. 

"In this way Christianity became popular, and the Semitic idea wasinvested with pagan forms, in order to carry on the gradual and moreintimate spiritual transformation which is not yet terminated. Itsteaching was at first decidedly rejected and opposed by cultivatedminds, accustomed as the Greeks were with few exceptions to use theirreason. Among philosophers, the popular belief in a personal Olympus haddisappeared, and a more rational study of mankind did not allow them tounderstand or comprehend a dogma which re-established anthropomorphismunder another aspect, so that this new and impious superstition becamethe object of persecution. These were, however, mere exceptions, ananticipation of the opposition of reason to mythical ideas, which becamemore vigorous in every successive age, until the time arrived whenreason, educated by a long course of exercise, was able to renew theeffort with greater authority and success. The common people graduallybecame Christian, and so also did educated men, who thus added theauthority of the schools to a teaching accepted by the feelings andinnate inclination of the race, and hence followed the theologicaldevelopment of Christian dogma. 

"These new principles and beliefs, eventually accepted by all thenations of Europe, both barbarous and civilized, not only brought toperfection the religious intuition characteristic of the morality andcivilization of the race, but they produced a new and renovating powerin historical and social life. This fresh virtue consisted in the beliefin a power consubstantially divine and human. Although the pagan godswere human in their extrinsic and intrinsic form, only differing frommortals by their mighty privileges, yet they were personally distinctfrom men, and while the acts of Olympus mingled with those of earth, they had an habitation and destinies apart. But by the new dogma, theone God who was a Spirit took on him the substance of man and was unitedwith humanity as a whole, according to the Pauline interpretation, whichwas generally accepted by our race. The divine nature was continuallyimparted to man, the body and members in which the divine spirit wasincarnated, since the Church or mystical community of Christians was thetemple of God. Through this lively sense of the divine incarnation, theChristian avatar with which the race had been acquainted under otherforms, God was no longer essentially distinguished from mankind in theform of a number of concrete beings, but was spiritually infused intomen and acted through them. The Christian as man felt himself to be aparticipator with God himself by a mystic intercourse. Since, therefore, the human faculty was historically identical with the divine, and sharedin the spiritual work which was to effect the redemption of society, this new and Christian civilization added daring, confidence, and virtueto the natural energy of the race. 

"Not many years elapsed before men ceased to contemplate the immediateend of the world predicted by the first apostles and the Apocalypse;they looked forward to a more distant future, and except in the case ofsome particular sects, they applied the prophecies which referred to thefirst generation of Christians to the future history of the race. Itwas therefore Christianity which introduced into the consciousness ofour Aryan peoples the principles of a divine historic power acting onthe social economy of mankind, and in this way the natural dignity andenterprising pride of the race was increased. Through this freshreligious intuition and spiritual exaltation, the purity and moralsweetness of the Semitic Nazarene became the law of society, and thechurch organization gradually assimilated everything to itself, andreceived divine worship in the person of the supreme Pontiff, whocontinued for many ages to be the temporal ruler of consciences, ofpublic institutions, and of civilization. Strange daring in a race whichfrom its early beginnings down to our own days has been always true toits own character, and in one form or other has displayed vigour, energy, ambition, transforming power, and great designs. 

"This remarkable process could only go on in and through those peopleswhose vigour and pride equalled their physical strength; to whom it isdeath to sit still, and life to be always busy, to transform all thingsto their own image, to dominate over all--over God by the intellect, over the world by science, over other races by force of arms. After theanthropomorphic form was given to natural phenomena, which is done tosome extent by all races, the gods were made in the image of man; fullof æsthetic imagination, of grand and vigorous conceptions, theymodified and transformed the truth of the Semitic idea, to suit theirown genius and imagination, and in this way they produced the wonderfulfabric of Christian civilization and of Catholicism. They alone accepteda teaching which infused new spirit into social life and produced therule of religion over the world, and the race still stands alone in themaintenance of its beliefs, to which science has added the powerfulsimplicity of the Semitic idea, and their vigorous influence hasperpetuated and perfected human progress upon earth. [30] The Aryan raceattained to the Semitic conception in its purity and cosmic reality bythe process of reason, and only because it was endowed with all thecivilizing and moral qualities which were acquired in so many ages ofmoral and intellectual energy, has the old conception been so vigorousand productive. 

"The Semitic race, on the other hand, adhered to their old faith, rejected Christianity, as it had been formulated by the Aryans, and hadlittle influence on the world. The Israelites, indeed, dispersed amongother nations, retained the idea of the one spiritual God in all itspurity, and civilization would have been much indebted to them for thisrational idea of God if they had more clearly understood its scientificbearing and the nature of man; many of them are indeed justly entitledto fame in every department of science. But taken by themselves and as apeople, they had little effect on civilization, since they lacked theenergy of purpose, courage, mental superiority, and imagination, whichcreate a durable and powerful civilization. 

"The Arabs, aroused for a time by Mahometan fanaticism, overran greatpart of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but without influencing civilization. While in possession of a great and productive idea, they remained asterile and nomad people, or founded unproductive dynasties. For theSemitic race, the interval between God and man, and consequently betweenGod and civilization, was and is infinite, impassable. The Arabspossessed nothing but the devastating force of proselytism to fertilizetheir minds and social relations; and, with the exception ofarchitecture, geography, and cognate sciences, they were for the mostpart only the transmitters of the science of others. We, on thecontrary, filled up the gulf by placing the Man-God between God and man, and civilization has a power and vigour which has never flagged, andwhich, now that dogma is transformed into reason, will not flag whilethe world lasts. "[31]

This extract from a work published many years ago, seems to me toconfirm the theory of myths which I have explained; it shows how theyare ultimately fused into a simple form, in conformity with the ideas ofcivilized society, and it will also throw light on what is to follow. 

If we consider the primitive genesis and evolution of myth, confirmed byall the facts of history and ethnography, it will appear that althoughthe matter on which thought was exercised was mythical and fanciful, theform and organizing method were the same as those of science. It is, infact, a scientific process to observe, spontaneously at first, and thendeliberately, the points of likeness and unlikeness between specialobjects of perception; we must rise from the particular to the general, from the individual to the species, thus ever enlarging the circle ofobservation, in order to arrive at types, laws, and ultimate unity, orat least a unity supposed to be ultimate, to which everything isreduced. So that the mythical faculty of thought was scientific in itslogical form, and was exercised in the same way as the scientificfaculty. 

But science does not merely consist in the systematic arrangement offacts in which it begins, nor in their combination into general andcomprehensive laws; the sequence of causes and effects must also beunderstood, and it is not enough to classify the fact without explainingits genesis and cause. We have seen that the innate faculty ofperception involved the idea of a cause in the supposition that thephenomenon was actuated by a subject, and while thought classifiedfetishes and idols in a mythical way, an inherent power for good or evilwas ascribed to them, not only in their relation to man, but in theireffects on nature. What Vico has called "the poetry of physics"consisted in the explanation of natural phenomena by the efficacy ofmythical and supernatural agents. From this point of view again, mythand science pursue identically the same method and the same general formof cognition. 

Nor is this all. Science is, in fact, the _de-personification_ of myth, arriving at a rational idea of that which was originally a fantastictype by divesting it of its wrappings and symbols. In the naturalevolution of myth, man passes from the extrinsic mythical substance tothe intrinsic ideal by the same intellectual process, and when the typeshave become ideas, he carries on intrinsically the _entifying_ processwhich he first applied to the material and external phenomena. 

In this case also the process is gradual; by attempting a more rationalexplanation of physical phenomena, man attains to ultimate conceptionswhich express direct cosmic laws, and he regards these laws assubstantial entities, which in their originally polytheistic form werethe gods who directed all things. Here the scientific myth reallybegins, since natural forces and phenomena are no longer personified inanthropomorphic beings; but the laws or general principles of physicsare transformed into material subjects, which are still analogous tohuman consciousness and tendencies, although the idolatrousanthropomorphism has disappeared. 

The combination of myth and science in the human mind does not stophere, since, as I have said, it goes on to form ideal representations. When thought penetrates more deeply into the physical laws of theuniverse, and is also more rationally engaged in the psychicalexamination of man's own nature, ideas are classified in more generaltypes, as in the primitive construction of fetishes, anthropomorphicidols, and physical principles; and in this way an explicit and purelyideal system is formed, in which the images correspond with the fancifuland physical types which were previously created. 

It usually happens that thought, by the innate faculty of which we haveso often spoken, regards the ideas produced by this complex mentallabour as material entities endowed with eternal and independentexistence; and this produced the Platonic teaching, the schools inGreece and Italy, and other brilliant illustrations of this phase ofthought. Such teaching, the result of explicit reflection, is a rival ofthe critical science which followed from it. It is always active, whileconstantly varying and assuming fresh forms; and it not only flourishesin our time in the religions in which it finds a suitable soil, butalso, as we shall see, in science itself. 

In addition to this complex evolution of myth as a whole, special mythsfollow similar laws; since they are generated from the same facts, andpass through the same phases, they culminate in a partial ideality, andthis involves a simple and comprehensive law of the phenomena inquestion, and even a moral or providential order. For example, we maytrace the Promethean myth to the end of the Hellenic era, and thedifferent phases and final extinction of this particular myth are quiteapparent. 

The origin of the myth, which was directly connected with the perceptionof the natural phenomena of light and heat, was due to the same causesas all others, but we will consider it in its Vedic phase, as it may begathered from tradition, and from the discoveries of comparativephilology, and we have a sure guide in this research in the greatlinguist Kuhn, whose remarks have been enlarged and illustrated byBaudry. 

The Sanscrit word for the act of producing fire by friction is_manthâmi_, to rub or agitate, and this appears from its derivative_mandala_, a circle; that is, circular friction. The pieces of woodused for the production of fire were called _pramantha_, that whichrevolves, and _arani_ was the disc on which the friction was made. Inthis phase, the fetishes are, according to our theory, in the secondstage. The Greeks and Romans, and indeed almost all other peoples, knewno other way of kindling a fire, and in the sacred rites of thePeruvians the task was assigned to the Incas at the annual festival offire. The wood of the oak was used in Germany, on account of the redcolour of its bark, which led to the supposition that the god of firewas concealed in it. Tan is called _lohe_, or flame, in Germany. Thisprimitive mode of kindling a fire was known to the Aryans before theirdispersion, and friction with this object was equivalent to the birth ofthe fire-god, constraining him to come down to earth from the air, fromthunder, etc. ; indeed fire was also called _düta_, the messenger betweenheaven and earth. The question arose who had drawn fire from heaven, anddeveloped it in the _arani_. A resemblance was also traced between theinstruments for kindling fire and the organs of generation, a reciprocalinterchange of various myths, as we have before observed. _Agni_ isconcealed in _arani_, like the embryo in the womb (Rig-Veda). Thus_pramantha_ is the masculine instrument, _arani_ the feminine, and theact of uniting them is copulation. 

_Agni_ had disappeared from earth and was concealed in a cavern, whenceit was drawn by a divine person; that is, fire had disappeared and wasconcealed within the _arani_, whence it was extracted by the _pramantha_and bestowed upon man. _Mâtariçvan_, the divine deliverer, is thereforeonly the personification of the male organ. 

In virtue of the idea that the soul is a spark, and that the productionof fire resembles generation, _Bhrigu_, lightning, is a creator. The sonof _Bhrigu_ marries the daughter of _Manu_, and they have a son who athis birth breaks his mother's thigh, and therefore takes the name of_Aurva_ (from _uru_ a thigh). This is only the lightning which rends theclouds asunder. 

Many Græco-Latin myths, beginning with that of Prometheus must bereferred to _Mâtariçvan_ and to the _Bhrigu_, and we can trace in thename of Prometheus the equivalent of a Sanscrit form _prâmathyus_, onewho obtains fire by friction. Prometheus is, in fact, the ravisher ofcelestial fire (a phase of the polytheistic myth in a perfectly humanform); he is a divine _pramantha_. It is Prometheus who in one versionof the myth cleaves open the head of Zeus, and causes Athene, thegoddess who uses the lightning as her spear, to issue from it. TheGreeks afterwards carried on the evolution of myth in its transitionfrom the physical to the moral phenomenon, and, forgetful of his origin, they made Prometheus into a seer. As _Bhrigu_, he created man of earthand water, and breathed into him the spark of life. Villemarqué tells usthat in Celtic antiquity there was an analogous myth, as we mightnaturally expect, since the Celts belong to the Aryan stock; Gwenn-Aran(albus superus) was a supernatural being which issued like lightningfrom a cloud. 

The more thoughtful Greeks did not limit the Promethean myth to the idoland to anthropomorphic fancies, but it passed into a moral conception, and we have a proof of this transition in Æschylus. 

In fact, as Silvestro Centofonti observes in a lecture on thecharacteristics of Greek literature, the grand figure of the ÆschyleanPrometheus is a poetic personification of Thought, and of its mysteriousfates in the sphere of life as a whole. First, in its eternal existence, as a primitive and organic force in the system of the world; then in theorder of human things, fettered by the bonds of civilization, andsubject to the necessities, lusts, and evils which constantly, arisefrom the union of soul and matter in unsatisfied mortals. Thought isitself the source of tormenting cares in this earthly slavery, yet thesense of power makes it invincible, firm in its purpose to endure allsufferings, to be superior to all events; assured of future freedom, andalways on the way to achieve it by reverting to the grandeur of itsinnate perfection; finally attaining to this happy state, by shaking offall the enslaving bonds and anxious cares of the kingdom of Zeus, and byobtaining a perfect life through the inspirations of wisdom, when therevolutions of the heavens should fill the earth with divine power, andrestore the happiness of primeval times. It is evident that in thisstupendous tragedy Æschylus is leading us to the truth in a threefoldsense: æsthetic, morally political, and cosmic. The supreme idea whichsums up the whole value of the composition is perhaps that of aninevitable reciprocity of action and reaction between mind and effectiveforce, between the primitive providence of nature and the subsequentlaws of art, both in the civilization of mankind and in the order andlife of the universe. 

In this way the evolution of the special myth was transformed intopoetry by the interweaving, collection, and fusion with other myths, andin the minds of a higher order it was resolved into an allegory orsymbol of the forces of nature, into providential laws or a moralconception. 

This law of progressive transformation also occurs in the successivemodifications of the special meaning of words, so far as they indicatenot only the thing itself, but the image which gave rise to theprimitive roots. For a long while, those who heard the word were notonly conscious of the object which it represented, but of its image, which thus became a source of æsthetic enjoyment to them. As time wenton, this image was no longer reproduced, and the bare indicationremained, until the word gradually lost all material representation, andbecame an algebraical sign, which merely recalled the object in questionto the mind. 

When, for example, we now use the word (_coltello_), _coulter_, theinstrument indicated by this phonetic sign immediately recurs to themind and nothing else; the intelligence would see no impropriety in theuse of some other sign if it were generally intelligible. But in thetimes of primitive speech, the inventors of this rude instrument wereconscious of the material image which gave rise to it, and they werelikewise conscious of all the cognate images which diverged from thesame root, and in this way a brief but vivid drama was presented to theimagination. 

If we examine this word with Pictet and others, we shall find that thename of the plough comes from the Sanscrit _krt, krnt, kart_, to cleaveor divide. Hence _krntatra_, a plough or dividing instrument. The root_krt_ subsequently became _kut_ or _kutt_, to which we must refer _kûta, kûtaka_, the body of the plough. This root _krt, kart_, is found in manyEuropean languages in the general sense of cutting or breaking, as inthe old Slav word _kratiti_, to cut off. It is also applied to labourand its instruments: _kartóti_, to plough over again, _karta_, a line orfurrow, and in the Vedic Sanscrit, _karta_, a ditch or hole. Hence theLatin _culter_ a saw, _cultellus_, a coulter, and the Sanscrit_kartari_, a coulter. The Slav words for the mole which burrows in theearth are connected with the root _krt_, or the Slav _krat_. In veryremote times, men not only understood the object indicated in the wordfor a coulter, but they were sensible of the image of the primitive_krt_ and its affixes, which were likewise derived from the primitiveimages, and with these they included the cognate images of the severalderivatives from the root. In these days the word coulter and theSanscrit _kartari_ are simply signs or phonetic notations, insignificantin themselves, and everything else has disappeared. But in primitivetimes an image animated the word, which by the necessary faculty ofperception so often described was transformed into a kind of subjectwhich effected the action indicated by the root. As this personalitygradually faded away, the actual representation of the image was lost, and even its remote echo finally vanished, while the phonetic notationremained, devoid of life and memory, and without the recurrence ofcognate images which strengthened the original idea by association. Allwords undergo the like evolution, and this may be called the mythicalevolution of speech. 

Thus the Sanscrit word for daughter is _duhitar_; in Persian it is_dôchtar_, in Greek [Greek: Thugatêr], in Gothic _dauhtar_, in German_Tochter_. The word is derived from the root _duh_, to milk, since thiswas the girl's business in a pastoral family. The sign still remains, but it has lost its meaning, since the image and the drama havevanished. This analysis applies to all languages, and it may also betraced in the words for numbers. The number _five_, for example, amongthe Aryans and in many other tongues, signifies _hand_. This is thecase in Thibet, in Siam, and cognate languages, in the IndianArchipelago and in the whole of Oceania, in Africa, and in many of theAmerican peoples and tribes, where it is the origin of the decimalsystem. In Homer we find the verb [Greek: pempazein], to count in fives, and then for counting in general; in Lapland _lokket_, and in Finland_lukea_, to count, is derived from _lokke_, ten; and the Bambarese_adang_, to count, is the origin of _tank_, ten. 

When the numerical idea of five was first grasped, the conception wasaltogether material, and was expressed by the image of the five-fingeredhand. In the mind of the earliest rude calculators, the number five waspresented to them as a material hand, and the word involved a realimage, of which they became conscious in uttering it. The number and thehand were consequently fused together in their respective images, andsignified something actually combined together, which effected in amaterial form the genesis of this numerical representation. But thematerial entity gradually disappeared, the image faded and was divestedof its personality, and only the phonetic notation five remained, whichno longer recalls a hand, the origin of the several numerals, nor wordsconnected with it. It is now a mere sign, apart from any rational idea. The same may be said of the other numerals. 

We give these few examples, which apply to all words, since they allfollow the same course, beginning with the real and primitive image, subjectively effecting their peculiar meaning. Hence we see how theintrinsic law of myth is evolved in every human act in diverse ways, butalways with the same results. 

In fact, before articulate speech, for which man was adapted by hisorgans and physiological conditions, was formulated into words forthings and words for shape, man like animals thought in images; heassociated and dissociated, he composed and decomposed, he moved andremoved images, which sufficed for all individual and immediateoperations of his mind. The relations of things were felt, or ratherseen through his inward representation of them as in a picture, expressing in a material form the respective positions of figures andobjects which, since they are remote from him, can only be expressed bysuch words as _nearer, lower_ or _higher, faint_ or _clear_, by morevivid or paler tints, such as we see in a running stream, in the formsof clouds, in the reciprocal relations of all objects represented inpainting. 

In order to understand the primeval process of thought by means ofimages, it is necessary to conceive such a picture as living and mobile, and constantly forming a fresh combination of parts. Animals have not, and primeval man had not, the phonetic signs or words which give anindividual character to the images, and so represent them that bycombining these images in an articulate form, thought may berepresented by signs; and in and through these a universal and objectivemode of exercising the intellectual faculty of reasoning has beencreated. 

Speech can, by means of reflex memory, produce at will the particularimages already classified in the mind, and this makes the process ofreasoning possible; since such a process becomes more easy by the use ofsigns to which the attention can revert. The relative size of objects, and the like qualities, which are at first regarded as so many differentintuitions in space, are defined by words or gestures, and are thussubjected to comparative analogy; but in the early stages of languagethese relations were presented in an extrinsic form by phonetic signs, and became images which in some sort represented one particular state ofconsciousness with respect to the two things compared. Galton, speakingof the Damaras, tells us that they find great difficulty in countingmore than five, since they have not another hand with which to grasp thefingers which represent the units. When they lose any of their cattle, they do not discover the loss by the diminution of the number, but bymissing a familiar object. If two packets of tobacco are given to themas the regulation price of a sheep, they will be altogether at a loss tounderstand the receipt of four packets in exchange for two sheep. Suchexamples might be multiplied to any extent. 

We repeat that when not endowed with speech, or some analogous means, animals and man think in images, and the relations between these imagesare observed in the simultaneousness and succession of their realdifferences; these images are combined, associated, and compared by thedevelopment of reflex power, and hence arises the estimate of theirconcrete relations. Of this we have another proof, observed by Romanesin a lecture on the intelligence of animals, and confirmed by myself, inthe condition of deaf-mutes before they are educated, in whose case theextrinsic sign and figure takes the place of the phonetic and articulatesign. Where speech is wanting, it is still possible to follow aconscious and imaginative process of reasoning, but not to rise to thehigher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. Thethought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one whowas educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always beforethought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who hasindependently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who hasbeen able without education to form any conception of a supernaturalworld. R. S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed, before his education, that the Bible had been printed in the heavens bya printing press of enormous power; and Graham Bell speaks of adeaf-mute who supposed that people went to church to do honour to theclergyman. In short, the intellectual condition of uneducated deaf-mutesis on a level with that of animals, as far as the possibility offorming abstract ideas is concerned, and they think in images. There isa well-known instance in the deplorable condition of Laura Bridgman, whofrom the time she was two years old, was deaf and dumb, blind, and evenwithout the sense of taste, so that the sense of touch was all thatremained. By persevering and tender instruction, she attained to anintellectual condition which was relatively high. A careful study of hercase showed that she had been altogether without intuitive knowledge ofcauses, of the absolute, and of God. Howe doubts whether she had anyidea of space and time, but this was not absolutely proved, since as faras distance was concerned, she seemed to estimate it, by muscularsensation. Everything showed that she thought in images. Althoughwithout any sensation of light or sound, she made certain noises in herthroat to indicate different people when she was conscious of theirpresence or when she thought of them, so that she was naturally impelledto express every thought or sensation, not externally perceived, by asign; and this shows the tendency of every idea and image towards anextrinsic form. She often conversed with herself, generally making signswith one hand and replying with the other. It was evident that amuscular sign or the motion of the fingers was substituted for thephonetic signs of speech, and in this way ideas and images receivedtheir necessarily extrinsic form. The image was embodied in a muscularact and motion, and in this way thought had its concrete representation. The same results would, as far as we know, be obtained from others inthe same unhappy conditions as Laura Bridgman. 

It is therefore clear that primitive language was only a vocal andindividual sign of material images, and it was for a long whilerestricted to these concrete limits. Since the vocal signs of therelations of things are less easily expressed, these relations were atfirst set forth by gestures, by a movement of the whole person, andespecially of the hands and face. This preliminary action is helped bythe imitative faculty with which children and uncultured peoples aremore especially endowed, of which we have also instances in the higheranimals nearest to man. The negroes imitate the gestures, clothing, andcustoms of white men in the most extraordinary and grotesque manner, andso do the natives of New Zealand. The Kamschatkans have a great power ofimitating other men and animals, and this is also the case with theinhabitants of Vancouver. Herndon was astonished by the mimic arts ofthe Brazilian Indians, and Wilkes made the same observation on thePatagonians. This faculty is still more apparent in the lower races. Many travellers have spoken of the extraordinary tendency to imitationamong the Fuegians; and, according to Monat, the Andaman islanders arenot less disposed to mimicry and imitation. Mitchell states that theAustralians possess the same power. 

This fact also applies to the languages of extremely rude and savagepeoples. Some American Indians, for instance, help out their sentencesand make them intelligible by contortion of their features and othergesticulations, and the same observation was made by Schweinwurth of anAfrican tribe. The language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs tomake the meaning of their words intelligible that it cannot beunderstood in the dark. These facts partly explain the natural genesisof human languages. 

We have learned from our earlier observations that phenomena appear tothe perceptive faculty of primitive man as subjects endowed with power. The subjectivity of these phenomena, their intrinsic conditions andactions are fused into speech, which is their living and conscioussymbol; and it is clear that the evolution of language from the concreteto the symbolical, and hence to the simple sign of the object, divestedof its original power, is analogous to that of myth. 

This law of evolution also applies to the art of writing, which is atfirst only the precise copy of the image; it is next transformed into ananalogous symbol, and then into an alphabetical sign, which serves asthe simple expression of the conception, divested of its originallyrepresentative faculty. Hence it is apparent that the evolution of mythconforms to the general law of the evolution of human thought, of allits products and arts in their manifold ramifications. From the image, the informing subject, from the conception and the myth, the necessarycycle is accomplished in regular phases, wherever the ethnic temperamentand capacity and extrinsic circumstances permit it, until the rationalidea is reached, the sign or cipher which becomes the powerfulinstrument of the exercise and generalization of thought. In order toshow the efficacy of the mythical and scientific faculty of thoughtcomprised in the systems of ancient and modern philosophy, and its slowprogress towards positive and rational science, we will adduce aninstance from the people in whom such an evolution was accomplished, aided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication withthem. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a timewhen they first attempted to reduce the earlier and scanty knowledge ofnature to a system. 

In Greece the historical course of this faculty ramified into twoclasses of research, which were at that time objective, the Ionic andthe Pythagorean schools. In the former, the phenomenon and nature wereassumed to be the direct object of knowledge, while in the latter theobject in view was the idea and harmony of things. Influenced by earlierand popular traditions, a mythical and philosophic system arose in theIonic school, which was exclusively devoted to physical speculations. InLower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the mostpart Doric, a science was constituted which, although it includedphysics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their materialvalue, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion ofgood and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between thePythagorean philosophy and lyrical music--of which the origin was soughtas a clue to explain the world--shows how far this philosophy wasconsonant with Doric thought. This historic process is quite natural, since the speculations of philosophy are first directed to physicalphenomena, as they are displayed in inward and in external life, andthen rise to the consideration of specific types, in a word, to thegeneral and the universal. 

Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly fromthe objective point of view, and this is in conformity with theintellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied withthe knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic ofthings, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleaticschool followed from the two former, although its development wascontemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influenceupon them was to some extent reactionary. 

Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle, namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from thewater by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its sourcein the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that theteaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which wefind traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in manylegends diffused through the world even in modern times. He said thateverything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself wasderived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is theorigin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it isthe primitive principle of the world. We see how much this theory isconcerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth bymeans of seed. He regarded the world as a living being, which had beenevolved from an imperfect germ of moisture. This mode of animating theworld, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already inexistence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy. He saw life inthe appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to beanimate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filledwith demons and genii. [32]

We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales, declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything wasderived from a primitive condition of germs. The same opinion was heldby Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras. Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremelyancient in his time. The other philosophers of the Ionic and successiveschools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement oftheir theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so thatit is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions areidentical. 

It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved amore rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols andprimitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although theyassumed a larger and more scientific form. Thales and others assigned amechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which wascontrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world asa living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functionsas all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons, thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race. 

While the scientific faculty was gathering strength and leading the wayto a more rational consideration of the world and natural phenomena, really advancing beyond the earlier ideas which had been almost whollymythical, myth was still the matrix of thought, although itsenvelopment was partly rent asunder and was becoming transparent. Fromthis brief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for our purpose, let us return to the Pythagorean school, in which, although the facultyat work is essentially objective, there is a closer consideration of theanalogies between thought and the world, and the ground is more oftenretraced, so that theory assumes a more intellectual form. 

The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the world as the union of thetwo opposite principles of the illimitable and the limited, of the equaland the unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive union, sincethey formulated the supreme principle as equal--unequal (Arist. _Met_. Xii. 7. ) They held the infinite to be _the place of the one_. There wasan attraction between the two principles, which was termed the _act ofbreathing_; hence the void entered into the world and separated thingsfrom each other. Thus their conception of the world was that of aconcourse of opposite principles. They represented its limits as a unityand as the true beginning of multiplicity. They regarded the developmentof the world as a process of life regulated by the primitive principlescontained in the world; its breath or life depended on the breakingforth of the infinite void in Uranus, and the time which is termed the_interval_ of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath into theworld. All therefore emanates from one, and all is at the same timegoverned by one supreme power. Number is everything, and is the essenceof things, but the _triad_ includes all number, since it contains thebeginning, middle, and end. Everything is derived from the primitive_one_ and from the principal number; and since this number in breathingits vital evolution into the void is divided into many units, everythingis derived from the multiplicity of these units or numbers. 

Since, by his idea of the source of universal order, Pythagoras partlyaccepted the theocosmic monad as the final and necessary root of alllife, and of all that is knowable, he could not fail to see theconvertibility of the unit into the Being. But if the unit must alwaysprecede the manifold, there is a first unit from which all the othersproceed; if this first and eternal unit is at the same time the absolutebeing, it follows that number and the world have a common origin and acommon essence, and that the intrinsic causes and possible combinationsof number are virtually accomplished in the development of the world, and these causes and combinations are ideal forms of this development. The monad is developed by these laws through all the generativeprocesses of nature, while at the same time it remains eternal in thesystem of the universe; so that things not only have their origin andessence, their place and time according to numerical causes, but each isin effect a number as far as its individual properties and theuniversal process of cosmic life are concerned. The reason of the numbermust depend upon the substance, by the configurations of which it isdefined, divided, added, and multiplied, and to this geometry is added, which measures all things in relation to themselves and others. Thiseternal cause makes it intelligible that if immaterial principlesprecede and govern the whole material world, it is also by means ofthese that the classification of science is in intrinsic agreement withthat of nature. Numbers have their value in music, in gymnastics, inmedicine, in morals, in politics, in all branches of science. ThePythagorean arithmetic is the bond and universal logic of the knowable. But at the same time Pythagoras and his school peopled the world withdemons and genii, which were the causes of disease; they did not abandonthe old mythical ideas of the incarnation of spirits and thetransmigration of souls--theories and beliefs which recur in nearly allprimitive and savage peoples. 

In this vast Pythagorean scheme, which contrasts with that of the Ionicschool of physics, thought is more explicitly freed from the rudermythical ideas, and rises to a more intelligent and rational conceptionof the world, but the ancient popular traditions still persist, andthere is an evident _entification_ of number. The primitive monad, numbers, their genesis and relations, are not regarded as abstractconceptions, necessary for understanding the order of nature, and amerely logical function of the mind; they are the substantial essencewhich underlies all mythical representations. Although the essentiallife of the world is considered from a more abstract point of view, yetthe mythical analogy of animal life evidently finds a place in thebreath of the void and of time, assumed to be independent entities. Thesubsequent train of beliefs in spirits, of their incarnations andtransmigrations, are closely connected with the phantasmagoria of thepast, and display their mythical genesis; yet by their deeper and moreexplicit thought they may be said to infuse intellectual life into theworld and into science which relates to it. In this first rationalclassification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and itsideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation ofmanifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamentalconceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of beingaltogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific. 

I must here be allowed to quote a hymn in the Rig-Veda, which washistorically earlier than the primitive philosophy of Greece, but whichreveals the same tendency, the same mythical and scientific teaching inits interpretation of the world. In this hymn, which has been translatedand explained by Max Müller, we see how boldly the problem of the originof the world is stated (hymn 129, book x. )--

 "Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above. What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed? Was it the water's fathomless abyss? There was not death--yet was there nought immortal, There was no confine betwixt day and night; The only One breathed breathless by itself, Other than It there nothing since has been. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled In gloom profound--an ocean without light-- The germ that still lay covered in the husk Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat. Then first came love upon it, the new spring Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned, Pondering, this bond between created things And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth, Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven? Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose-- Nature below, and power and will above-- Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here, Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang? The gods themselves came later into being-- Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? He from whom all this great creation came, Whether his will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven, He knows it--or perchance even He knows not. "

It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when humanthought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, thescientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world isshown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yetit shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive Hellenicspeculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problemof creation. In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of thevoid or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of theOne, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; ofproductive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; ofconceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleaticphilosophies, which all converge into _the one_. All belong to the sameAryan race. 

The Vedic composition represents in _Dyâvâprthivî_ the close connectionbetween the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as theactive and creative principle, the other as that which is passive andfertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not onlythe first philosophies, but successive theories and systems. The worshipof water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and theythen became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolutionwhich we have laid down. In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta, the waters are collectively invoked by their special name _âpas_, andthey are termed the _mothers_, the _divine_, which contain the _amrta_or ambrosia, and all healing powers. In _Agni_ and its Vedictransformations we clearly trace the worship of fire, and its cosmicvalue. The Vedic worship of the air is Vâyu, from _va_, to breathe, whois associated with the higher gods, and especially with _Indra_, rulerof the atmosphere: next comes _Rudra_, the god of storms, accompanied bythe _Maruti_, the winds; and in the Zendavesta the air is invoked as anelement. Hence we see that a more rational conception of the genesis ofthe world succeeds to these earlier representations andpersonifications of the elements; representations which in another formendure throughout the course of human thought. 

It is now necessary to consider the other period of the mythical andscientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato andAristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two greatcurrents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more importantto consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythicalevolution of the earlier representations has full and clear expression;while in the Aristotelian philosophy an element of dissolution isalready at work which throws some light on the illusions of the Platonicschool. 

We must bear in mind that the spontaneous and even the reflectiveintellectual faculty gradually assimilated special and independent mythsinto comprehensive types, which referred to all natural objects. Next, the incarnation of spirits produced the earliest forms of polytheism, and these were slowly classified into more concentric circles, andfinally into a single hierarchical system. Owing to the attitude andethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of theirOlympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it wasimpersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of theworld, of gods and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, wascarried on in all races. Hence it resulted that every object had a type, its god; everything was typically individuated in an anthropomorphicentity in such a way that there arose a natural dualism between thephenomena, facts, and cosmic orders on the one side, and on the otherthe hierarchy of gods who represented them and over whom they presided. The Hellenic philosophies prior to Plato, both physical andintellectual, and also the psychological morality of Socrates, hadalready accomplished the first evolution of this typical stage ofuniversal polytheism, substituting for anthropomorphic representationsphysical and intellectual principles and powers. Thought was educated inits inward exercise, as well as in the observation of facts and idealrepresentations. But--and this constituted the first evolution ofanthropomorphism in general--these powers all expressed the thing in itsgeneral and phenomenal form; it was endowed with merely zoomorphicforce, and the world was regarded as physiologically living. 

Plato, impelled by the foregoing evolution, and by the large andexquisitely æsthetic character of his genius, accomplished the secondand altogether intellectual stage of evolution by inverting the problem;he affirmed that the final and intrinsic result of the exercise ofthought was its earlier and eternal essence, extrinsic and objective. The types which were first fetishes and then polytheistic weretransformed into the physical and intellectual principles of the world, divested of all mythical and extrinsic form as far as their materialorganization was concerned. Plato held that such types were reallyideal, as in fact they had unconsciously been from the first; that is, that it was simply a logical conception of species and genera which isnatural to human thought; a conception necessary for the spontaneous aswell as for the reflex and scientific processes of thought. From thetype, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea of eachspecial object was easy, since each object has its psychicalrepresentation in the mind. Special and specific ideas were thenarranged in a certain order, and those which are more general in aconcentric and systematic classification; this had been also the case inthe earlier polytheistic system, since the process of the intelligencenaturally arranges all its representations. But he did not stop here, nor indeed was it possible for him to do so. 

We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, buttheir relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty;these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitivelyperceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motionof the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and thenembodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that inprimitive thought these relations involved an active entity, and were ina word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning, and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the _ideality_ of theserelations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence hewas constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm thatan idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the generalconstruction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but anactive, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individualand a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understandingof ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According toPlato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of ageneral character, like those which embrace all ideal relationswhatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse ofthought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apexof ideas, so that the Good is emphatically _the_ Idea, or God. Onturning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas arethe eternal model (_paradigm_) according to which things are made; theseare the images (_idoli_) of which the others are the imperfect copies(_mimesi_). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, afigure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from thelowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in thesphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined togetherby higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on tothe apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good whichincludes and sums up the whole. 

Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become thebody by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it;matter considered in itself is the indefinite (_apeiron_), theindefinable (_aoriston_), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal withideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had itsorigin, the image of the invisible deity, God in power, the livingorganism (_Zoon_), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul. The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautifulwhich can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also themost perfect motion. 

The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixedstars, then the planets, then the earth, _created deities_; the earthproduced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work andobject of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourishhim, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, themicrocosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in abody. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head, the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. Thebreast is the seat of generous passions, while the bestial appetites arefound in the belly and intestines. 

The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortalelements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality ofthe soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life andmatter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate, equivocal being, the _demiurgos_. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of theintelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to themonistic theory of the Eleatics. 

In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of theelements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical formscorrespond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. Hedivides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which areever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and dependupon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will behappy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; butthose who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander asshades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of variousanimals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods:they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made offire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result ofdemoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniacpowers are themselves demoniacs. 

We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns theorganization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of thesoul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regardedas deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered tobe alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life andintelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, theirrecollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderingsaround the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, areall very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part ofthe theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times andplaces. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, butthose which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts:throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in thetransmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. TheTasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abidethere; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons, of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called adiabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a livinganimal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only theprimeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena appliedto the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much ofPlato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historiccourse of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modifiedbefore his time. 

We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in thisthe advance made by Plato in the evolution of myth really consists, andit marks a very definite stage which had and still has a powerfulinfluence on subsequent and modern thought. 

We have already shown how, by the logical power of thought, this phasein the ideal evolution of myth was reached, and we have traced it in aninchoate form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ultimatemodification in Plato. In his writings it takes the form of a complete, vast, and organic theory. The logical conceptions and representativeideas, idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first involved infetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are now divested of their earlierwrappings, and are classified as the intellectual ideas which theyreally are, and which they have become by the innate and reflex exerciseof human thought. But on account of the faculty which ever governs ourimmediate perception of internal and external things they could not inPlato's time, nor indeed in that of many subsequent philosophers, remainas simple intellectual signs of the process of reason. This facultyinfluenced these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether particular, specific, or general, and they became living subjects, like phenomena, objects, shades, images in dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations. Thus the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoretically, _entities_ with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, and absoluteessences. But the fetish, the anthropomorphic idol, was not onlyregarded as a living but as a causative subject; the same power waslikewise infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes ofparticular things, of which they were the earlier and eternal type. Thusthe myth in the Platonic Ideas became scientific, but it continued to bea myth; the substance varied, but the form was the same. The objectivephenomena of the world had first been personified, or their fancifulimages were assumed to be objective; now the world of reason waspersonified, and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic. 

Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said that he realizedabstractions, or personified ideas; but no one, as I think, perceivedthe natural process which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty bywhich he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory was only an ultimatephase of the evolution of the vague and primitive animation of theworld, which had passed through fetishism, polytheism, and the worshipof the elements of nature, and had reached the entification andsubjectivity of ideas, which was also attained by natural science, afterpassing through its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes, which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened to be objective, while they were in Plato's case subjective, owing to the character andtemperament of his mind; both conduced to the development and æstheticsplendour of this teaching among the Greeks. The teaching of Plato, which had more or less influence on all the earlier civilized peoples, of his own and subsequent times, and which was also involved in themythical representations of later savages, assumed an aspect whichvaried with the special history, the ethnic temperament, thegeographical and extrinsic conditions of different peoples; butconsidered in itself, it is always the same, and is the necessary resultof the evolution of myth and of thought. Since the evolution of mythleads to the gradual genesis of science, which becomes more rational asmyth is transformed from the material to the ideal, ideas aresubstituted for myths, and laws, as Vico well observes, for the canonsof poetry. 

This noble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideasresembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supremeIdea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to anothermythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it wasafterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute. This wasfused with the Logos, the Platonic demiurgos of Messianic ideas, andafterwards produced the universal philosophy and religion ofCatholicism, which dominated and still dominates over thought withvigorous tenacity, and extends into all the civilized world inhabited byEuropean races. We do not only trace the same thought, modified, classified, and perfected in the Fourth Gospel, in the Councils, theFathers, and the schoolmen, but also in independent philosophies. Inour own time it has assumed new forms, derived from the rapid progressmade in cosmic and experimental sciences, even in those which areapparently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in Hegel, Fichte, andSchelling, nor is it difficult to trace it in the latest and artificialtheories of the schools of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In all these casesthe entification of logical conceptions is evident; in all there is anarbitrary personification of a conception or of a fundamental Idea. 

In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth andscience, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose inGreece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thusobtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. Inaddition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, theEleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those ofLeucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea andthe fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of theuniverse. 

In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition tothe speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which werederived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world wasconsidered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus becamemore conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected bythis combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. Thiswas what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, passingbeyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on themovement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followedthe theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, ofbodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since, however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimentalmethods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded withthe mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogetheranthropomorphic conception of gods who were dissolved and formed again;the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed theancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginaryforms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressiveand rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato, and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up toour time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to thecontinuance of myth. 

The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching;if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical entities ofPlato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other histheory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations inphysiology and anatomy, and his natural classification of the animalkingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an _a posteriori_method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposedit to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas ofcosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, hisconception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in allthings, were indeed obstinately maintained by the philosophy ofCatholics and schoolmen, and served as an obstacle to the real progressof science; but on the other hand, his general method of observingnature, the discoveries which he made, and the tendency of hisresearches, as well as the importance he assigned to consciousness inthe formation of ideas, did much to foster independent inquiry in thehistory of human thought; and coupled with the earlier mechanicalschools, he prepared the way for the evolution of modern science. Thisis not the place for tracing the simultaneous course of the evolution ofthe ideal and mechanical schools during the ages which separate us fromtheir origin; and while the influence of the one gradually waned, theother gained strength, although in a sporadic way, first amongprivileged minds, and then more generally. 

It necessarily happened that as the evolution of thought went on, impelled by its early tendencies, both mechanical and positive, theideal system was also modified, and gave place to sounder and truertheories. This great fact, the ultimate evolution of our own time, waseffected on the one side by psychological analysis, and on the other bythe direct and experimental observation of nature. Setting aside thegradual preparation which led up to this point, we can considerDescartes and Galileo as the representatives of these two great factors;since the one by the analysis of thought, the other by naturalexperiments, overthrew the mythical ideas, although without being awarethat the achievement would produce such grand results. 

The Platonic Ideas were objective to the mind, and independent of it, since they were regarded as a divine, concrete, absolute world inthemselves. The earlier evolution of myth and science relied upon thisand were resolved into it. But we know that the process of thought iscontinuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of itspersonality and assumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus thematerial Idea passed into an intellectual conception; that which firstappeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective andintrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gaverise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first realitywas wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectualmyth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect whichformulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of thefaculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, theworld and all which it contained had a doubtful existence. This tendencyhad its ultimate expression in Fichte, who created the universe by meansof the Ego, thus transforming the earlier objective myth into one whichwas wonderfully subjective. Descartes doubted about everything beyondthe range of his own thought, and was the first to overthrow the formerideal realism, and to lead the way to science, and to more rationalanalysis. To him the teaching of Spinoza and Kant was really due, aswell as the English schools which had so much to do with the destructionof the earlier mythical edifice of ideas. 

But, as I have already observed, if this great rational progress wereimportant on the one side, on the other it produced a more spiritualizedform of myth, namely the subjective, which became still more powerful inthe philosophy of Kant. While some thinkers sought to resolve anddissolve the objective myth, they did it in such a way as to addstrength to the subjective form of myth and science, for which Descarteshad prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school ingeneral fundamentally consists in the substitution of entified forms anddialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A greaterror was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolutionof myth disappeared, in favour of another which, although stillerroneous, was more rational and independent. 

The subjective and still mythical representations, either of the mind orof external objects, were afterwards reduced to true science by positiveand experimental methods, aided by instruments, and confirmed by thediscoveries of Galileo and of his disciples throughout the civilizedworld. He was in modern times another great factor of the dissolution ofmyth, so far as it is definitive. Nature was made subordinate to weightand measure, and to their mathematical and mechanical proportions invarious phenomena; these were deduced from experiment and the use ofinstruments, the factors which in the hands of Galileo and his greatsuccessors in all civilized nations, destroyed and are still destroyingthe old mythical conception of the world. In astronomy they overthrewthe catholic tenet of the geocentric constitution of the heavens; theyshattered the spheres in which they were confined, opened infinitespace, and peopled it with an infinite number of stars, and in theattraction of gravity they discovered the universal law of motion in thefirmament. Thus all the mythical representations of the system of theworld, whether Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, or Biblical, vanished for ever, and the great zoomorphic body of the universe was dissolved; to bereplaced by worlds circulating in infinite space, subject to the laws ofnumber and of geometry. 

Measure, weight, and proportion were applied to all celestial andterrestrial phenomena, and physics, chemistry, and all the organicsciences became the manifestation of facts, of observed and calculatedlaws, arranged in a natural order, and in this way an immense advancewas made in all branches of science. The history of mankind, firstregarded as the arbitrary arrangement of a superior being, as it wasformulated in the teaching of Judaism and Christianity, had its own lawsin the facts of which it consisted, and thus the mythical conceptionwhich endowed it with personal life was dissolved. The origin of thingswas explained by this method of observation, and by these positiveconceptions; the records which had hitherto been regarded as a divine, extrinsic revelation came to be considered as simple documents, in whichtruth was to be separated from the myth which obscured and encompassedit. So by degrees, from fact to fact, from analysis to analysis, byobservation, experiment, and decomposition, the rational, mechanicalexplanation arose and gathered strength. The generation of things, thevariety of phenomena and their order, were derived from the primitivechemical atom, and from the various changes of form and rapidity ofmotion to which they are subjected. The old conception of atoms, whichhad never been forgotten, and which had unconsciously swayed andinfluenced the minds of men, reappears; but it reappears transformed byobservation, by weight and measure and experiment, and it has become ascience instead of a simple speculation. The atomistic evolution of theancients, accepted by one school of speculative thought, which sought tooverthrow the mythical representation of the world, was only an isolatedanticipation of a few philosophers; it has now become a scientificevolution, common to all modern civilization. The theory of descent, transformation, and the general evolution of species, followed as anecessary corollary and immediate result of the dissolution of Plato'smythical conception of specific ideas, and of all the generic butmaterial personifications with which nature had been peopled. When suchconceptions of the ideal world were dissipated, those of the actualworld of nature soon followed, and this de-personification of natural, mythical species in the vast organic kingdom is one of the most splendidintellectual achievements of the age. 

This victory of the natural sciences has reacted on those which arepsychological, and on the theory of the mind, and has subjected them tothe necessities and form of this new phase of the evolution of thought. The subjective had been substituted for the objective myth and hadcreated the forms of mind, its logical laws and intrinsic process, theobjective synthesis of the world, and it was now influenced by thestupendous discoveries and analyses of other sciences, so thatpsychology was in its turn transformed into a science, not only ofobservation, but of experiment. Measure, weight, numerical proportion, in short the experimental method, took possession of the facts, acts, and processes of the mind, as of every other object and subject ofnature. In addition to the great names of modern psychologists inEngland, we may mention among other experimental psychologists inGermany, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze, Helmholtz, Weber, Kammler, etc. ;illustrious men in France and elsewhere might also be cited to show whatprogress has been made and is about to be made in this field. Thedestruction of myth and of the subjective myths of psychology is alwaysgoing on, and a positive science of mental phenomena has arisen, likethat of natural phenomena. The ultimate phase of myth is so near its endthat it has been possible to create a psychology implying the absence ofa soul. The scientific faculty has now indeed a complete ascendency overthe mythical representation with which it was originally coeval. 

Yet we do not mean to say that myth is extinct. In the case of the greatmajority of the human race, a small and elect portion excepted, myth andall the superstitions which proceed from it persist in an ideal, cosmic, spiritual, or religious form, and these are only slowly disappearingamong the common people, and even among the educated classes. Owing tothe primordial and innate necessity which it is so difficult toovercome, science itself still nourishes myths within its pale, althoughunconsciously and in their most rational form. Within our ownrecollection _the imponderable_ was a tenet of physics, and this wasindeed, in spite of all the enlightenment of science, a mythicalentification of forces. The same mythical entifications were found inphysiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly thesescientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they arenotwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtuallypersonify laws, or mere modes of motion. 

Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its lawsand influences from the atoms which constitute the world, and workingamong and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of theimponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be amaterial entity, while it may be only another modification of theelementary matter in a state differing from the three already known tous; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremelygaseous matter leads to this assumption. The divided forces of matter, and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions. Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, andtruth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantlyreappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this isan evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to anintrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistentlyreappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifyingfaculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease. Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, andscience, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advancewith caution and assurance. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

OF DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, ANDMADNESS--CONCLUSION. 

In the preceding chapters, I have shown, as I believe, the genesis ofmyth, the fundamental faculty in which it necessarily originates, andits evolution in man, particularly in the Aryan and Semitic races. Wehave seen that the primitive and universal fact consists in theimmediate and spontaneous entification of natural phenomena and of theideas themselves; and we have resolved this fact into its elements, fromwhich all the generating sources of myth issue, that is, from theimmediate effects of the perception. Putting man out of the question, weascertained that the same innate necessity was common to the animalkingdom. 

In order to complete the theory, we must consider some other facts andpsychical phenomena, both normal and abnormal, so as to ascertainwhether these are not due to the same cause, as far as respects theirintrinsic forms; namely, the belief in the reality of images seen indreams, as well as in those which appear in illusions, in normalhallucinations of the senses, and in those which are abnormal, inecstasy, in delirium, in madness, in idiocy, and dementia. In all thesemental conditions, we ascribe a body and material existence to imageswhich for various causes appear to be really presented to our senses. 

If we are able to show that all such appearances are believed to have areal existence in virtue of the same law and faculty of perception whichgenerated myth in its earliest manifestation, we shall have succeeded inestablishing a common genesis for all these various psychical phenomena, thus affording no contemptible contribution to psychology in general, and to the science of human thought. 

To dream is not merely a normal act of man, but, as it appears from manywitnesses, it is common to all animals. In dreams the ordinary laws oftime and space are strangely modified, and images of all kinds appear, sometimes confusedly, sometimes in a rational order, often in accordancewith the laws of association, while the voluntary exercise of thoughtmay be said to be dormant. This is, speaking generally, the conditionand nature of dreams, which we must presently consider adequately withmore subtle and exact analysis. 

Before we trace the cause of the apparent reality of these images, andthe laws which govern it, let us consider man in his waking condition, so as to ascertain at once the likeness and the difference betweenthese two states. We must first inquire whether the waking is absolutelydistinct from the dreaming state as far as the appearance of the images, their nature, and mode of action are concerned. It has been observed bymany psychologists and physiologists that in the waking state, whenimages do not arise from the immediate presence of objects, or are notdirected by the will to a definite aim, they appear, group themselves, and disperse by the immediate association of ideas, and the measurementsof time and space are modified just as they are in dreams. Theseobservations are correct, and the phenomena may be verified by every onefor himself. 

In this waking state, which really resembles that of dreams, only theanalogy of form has been perceived; the ideas of the objects present tothe mind have resembled those of images seen in dreams, but they havecontinued to be mere ideas, presented to the imagination, whereas indreams the things seen have been supposed to have a real existence. Inthis respect the analysis is partly true and partly false; it is not, aswe shall see, perfect and exact. 

It sometimes happens, owing to special circumstances and conditions ofmind, or to peculiar temperaments, that the ideas of things do notremain as mere _thoughts_ in the thinker's mind, but that they become sointense that they are for the moment held to be real, precisely as in adream. 

I do not here speak of abnormal or pathological conditions, or ofextraordinary phenomena, but of a normal and common condition. If thereis any novelty in the assertion, it is owing to a want of observationand reflection, and to not attempting to trace the real nature of thephenomena in which we take part, and which occur every day. The habitualinaccuracy of observation has led to the use of many proverbs andaphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmittedfrom one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitableaxioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we havean instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams imagesappear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue tobe mere thoughts and ideas. 

This is not the fact, since, putting illusions and hallucinations out ofthe question, thoughts and ideas sometimes assume the character andnature of real objects, just as they do in dreams. This fact constitutesthe link and gradual assimilation of the two states, since in no seriesof phenomena _natura facit saltum_. 

When, for instance, as often happens, we abandon ourselves to a train ofthought, and our perception of surrounding objects is weakened byinattention, we become as it were unconscious, and are only intent onthe thoughts and ideas which move us. Since no definite objectconstrains the will to rule and guide these thoughts and ideas, thatcondition of mind is established which we have shown to be identical inform with the act of dreaming, for in this case also thoughts and ideashave their origin in association alone. In this condition a phenomenonpeculiar to dreams may also occur which may be termed the suggestiveimpulse; a sound or some sudden sensation produces an immediatetransformation of the image itself, and a new dream arises in conformitywith the nature of the new impression. Every one must, consciously orunconsciously, have experienced such a phenomenon, and this specialcharacteristic of dreams may also take place in the waking conditionwhich I have described. I myself can bear witness to this fact, and willmention one among several instances: I was once reading inattentively, seated at my ease in a lounging chair, and my thoughts took quiteanother direction, wandering vaguely from one thing to another. All atonce some people entered an adjoining room talking together; I heardwhat they said indistinctly, but the word Florence reached my ears, andI soon imagined myself to be in that city, and going on from oneassociation to another I continued for some time to see again theplaces, monuments, and people I had known there. Yet I was fully awake, and from time to time I brushed the flies from my face and glanced atthe clock on the chimney-piece, since I had to go out at three o'clock. 

It appears from this fact, which will be confirmed by many of myreaders, that some waking states resemble those of dreams in form, andmoreover they are sometimes even alike in substance. Ideas and thoughtsin the conditions just indicated may not only be latent, active, combined, or transformed by suggestive impulses, but ideas arerepresented by images in such vivid relief that, until the observerrecollects himself, they are seen and felt by him with the same sense ofreality as in a dream. This mental transformation is however sohabitual, that the implicit conviction of being really awake, does notallow us to observe what the actual nature of the phenomenon is, sincethere is an immediate transition from an implicit perception of theimage as real to the habitual form of simple thought, withoutdistinguishing the difference between these two states of consciousness. Any one who has long practised himself in the observation of suchdistinctions will, however, be able to understand the psychical processand to estimate its value. 

It has often occurred to myself, in circumstances analogous to theabove, when thinking of persons or places at a distance, to see themimaged before me in such vivid relief that I have been startled as if bya morbid hallucination. Once, in passing through my chamber, myattention was so strongly fixed on an absent person that I was not onlyvividly conscious of his form, but also of his voice and gestures, sothat I was amazed by the lively image brought before me. I could adduceother instances from my own experience and that of others to show thatin a waking and altogether normal state we may believe in the reality ofthe image as we do in dreams. 

This vivid and momentary realization of images is very common in thelower classes, who often talk to themselves, and use gestures which showthat they are conversing at the moment with imaginary persons, who standbefore them, as if they were really there, in the same manner as indreams. Indeed, every one has experienced this phenomenon for himself, especially when strongly excited by anger, sorrow, or hope. If it werepossible to reflect on the process of thought at the time we shoulddistinctly understand that we were dreaming while still awake. 

The vivid imagination of artists is well known, so that they are able tosee and represent things and persons, either in words, with the pencil, or the chisel, just as if they were actually present. The image sovividly realized is a necessary condition of the exercise of theirrespective arts. When great poets, such as Dante, Ariosto, Milton, andGoethe, conceived and idealized their thoughts with every detail ofcircumstances, persons, actions, expressions, and movements, no one candeny that the images were vividly present to their minds, and that whilein the act of composition these were unconsciously regarded as having areal existence. If these poetic descriptions are presented to theattentive reader in such a vivid form as to transport him into a realworld, much more must the authors of these marvellous creations havelooked upon them as real at the moment of composition. The impression oftruthfulness is indeed produced by the fact that the writers saw thesethings as though they were real. I speak of states of consciousness, notof reflex observation, of intense moments of sensation and imagination, which are unnoticed by the man who experiences them in his wakingmoments. Such is the reader of a poem, a romance, or history, thespectator of a picture, who is able for the time to abstract himselffrom surrounding objects, and who implicitly believes that he sees thoseplaces and persons, or whatever the book or painter has described orrepresented. If suddenly interrupted, he rouses himself, and may be saidto awake to the present reality of things, as if startled from a dream. 

Wigan relates that a celebrated portrait painter worked with suchquickness and facility that he painted more than three hundred portraitsin a year. When he was asked the secret of his rapid execution and ofthe faithfulness of the likeness, he replied, "When any one proposes tohave his portrait taken, I look at him attentively for half an hour, while sketching his features on the canvas; I then lay the canvas asideand pursue the same method with another portrait, and so on. When I wishto return to the first, I take his person into my mind and place itbefore me as distinctly as if he were actually present. I set to work, looking at the sitter from time to time, since I am able to see himwhenever I look that way. " Talma asserted that when he was on the stage, he was able by mere force of will to transform his audience intoskeletons, which affected him with such emotion as to add force andenergy to his action. Abercromby speaks of a man who had the faculty ofcalling up visions with all the vividness of reality whenever hepleased, by strongly fixing his attention on mental conceptions whichcorresponded to them. Yet he was a sane man, in the prime of life, perfectly intelligent, and versed in practical affairs. 

A very slight withdrawal of the attention from surrounding objects isall that is necessary to enable artists and some other persons to callup these images with vivid distinctness, since even in the waking statethe image may for the moment appear to be actually before them. Any onemight attain to the same power of verification if the transition fromthe real to the merely ideal image were not in the waking state soinstantaneous and easy; whereas in a dream the state of illusion isuninterrupted, and it is physiologically impossible for the mind to passimmediately from the image, which is believed to be real, to the simplyrepresentative idea of the thing. 

Even in the waking state, the image and representative idea of the thingnaturally tend to become, or to appear to be, actual realities, even ina strictly normal condition of mind and body. Nor do they onlyimplicitly tend to become such by the innate impulse of the mind, butthey actually become so in fugitive moments of which man is scarcelyconscious, and they appear to him exactly as they do in dreams. Hence itfollows that there is no hard and fast line between the sleeping andwaking states, so far as the nature of images, their source, action, andcombinations are concerned, when men are distracted in mind, and thecourse of their thoughts is not voluntarily directed to some definiteobject; so that by a psychological process the phenomena of the wakingstate may be partly transformed into those of dreams. The vividcharacter of the image, presented to the senses as if actually there, iscommon to both phenomena. The way in which we begin to dream shows how, owing to our physiological conditions, we pass through regular stagesfrom the waking state into that of sleep. 

 "Nuovo pensiero dentro a me si mise, Dal qual più altri nacquero e diversi; E tanto di uno in altro vaneggiai Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, E il pensamento in sogno trasmutai. "[33]

So Dante writes in the "Purgatorio" with deep and subtle truth. Each mancan verify for himself the exactness of the great poet's description. 

I myself can readily study the phenomena of dreams, since I never sleepwithout dreaming so vividly that I remember all the circumstances in themorning. I have used all sorts of artifices in order to trace thebeginning of sleep and dreams, and always with the same result, so thatI am certain of the accuracy of experiments which have been repeated ahundred times. I have examined other persons who have made the sameobservations, all of whom agree with me. 

When repose, the herald of sleep and dreams, begins, my thoughts wanderin an irregular and somewhat confused manner. As they are graduallysubjected to the associations to which they successively give rise, theyare transformed into more vivid images, a vividness which is always ininverse proportion to the attention. This gradually produces the statewhich has been described by Maury and others as hypnagogichallucination; that is, the images seem to be real, although the subjectis still partly awake, and the voluntary exercise of thought is lostfrom time to time in this species of incipient chaos. It is at thispoint that images are really most intense, and that every idea assumes abody and form, every image a reality: finally, when the body and thebrain have reached the physiological conditions of sleep, thoughts whichhad been changed into hypnagogic images in the intermediate stagebetween sleep and waking, are altogether transformed into the realimages of dreams. 

By an effort of will I have often been able to surprise myself in thisintermediate stage, and the same thing has been done by others, and italways appears that this is the real moment of transition fromwakefulness to dreaming, I have been able to verify the fact that thefirst dream is only the continuation of our last waking thoughts, whichhave now become dramatic and real I have also observed that thisintermediate stage between waking and dreaming, during which the imagesare real and vivid, although we are still conscious of our realcondition, goes on for a long while, sometimes for a whole night, withbrief intervals of sleep. This has occurred to me when I was kept awake, either when travelling at night, or when I had taken a large draught ofwater before lying down (other liquids or food does not produce thephenomenon) or if I have been looking during the day at objectsilluminated by dazzling sunshine. In all these circumstances the brightand vivid images appear reduced to an almost microscopic scale, althoughvery distinct in form and colour; in ordinary cases, the images appearof the ordinary size, but not without a tendency to become smaller. 

I believe that there is a physical cause for the reduction andattenuation of the images in the excessive excitement of the retina, orcentral encephalic organ in which images are formed in consciousconcurrence with the cortical part of the hemispheres. Owing to theexcitement caused by wakefulness, by fatigue, by sunshine, or in somecases by the condition of the nerves of the stomach, the objectiveprojection on psychical space, partly transmitted by heredity andgradually formed by associations and local signs, [34] is arrested by theinnate force of the image on the organ, and it appears to be smaller andin proportion with the relative smallness of the image which is producedby minute vibrations and by the susceptibility of the cellule. Thisintermediate and persistent stage of hypnagogic images serves in everyway to explain the physical genesis of involuntary hallucinations. 

As a proof that the image physiologically assumes the form of a realappearance, I may mention the experience of myself and others. Whensuddenly awakened from a vivid dream I have sometimes, even when I wasfully awake, seen for an instant the figures of my dream still moving, and projected on the wall. This fact shows that even the images of ourwaking state have, in the physiological conditions of the brain, atendency to take real forms, so that they may be termed normal, or moreproperly, inchoate hallucinations, corrected by the conscious efforts ofour waking state and external consciousness. So that it might be saidthat dreams are at first the transformation of our waking thoughts intonormal images and hallucinations, and afterwards into those of dreams, properly so called. 

If the hypnagogic phase actually affects the cerebral cellules inconnection with the various senses of which they are the organs, thephases of sleep and dreams, strictly so called, have more generalconditions. The idea, converted into an image presented to the senses, may thus be said to have three stages: that of the waking state, whichdepends as we have said on the intensity and vividness with which it isreproduced, aided by a momentary detachment from the real environment;secondly, the hypnagogic phase, in which there is the physiologicalaction of the nervous centres, which produce the image, though stillwith the implicit consciousness of the waking state; and finally, theactual dream, in which this implicit consciousness is almost alwayswanting, and the psychical exercise of thought is completely transformedinto visions and figures which are believed to be real. This in its turndepends upon the other two causes, and on the physiological relaxationof the body, which is to a great extent isolated, so that the effectualimpulses of external nature are greatly attenuated. 

In the waking state, the whole body and all its organs of relation andmovement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites thewhole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation orrelative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all itsdependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but itstimulates and directs our whole system, as numerous experiments haveshown. In the waking state both these functions are exercised equally, as far as the impulses and functions of the body are concerned, and aslong as the psychical and organic characteristics of the waking statecontinue. But in sleep the exciting influence of the brain isdiminished, and the brain transmits much less of the normal excitementand normal tension to the spinal axis with its ramifications in theafferent and efferent nerves; in the waking state an external impressionis promptly conveyed to the centres, whence it returns in correspondingmovements with the usual connection and rapidity, whether reflex ordeliberate. Since in sleep the relative condition is flaccid and torpid, this action no longer takes place. For if the brain be affected bystrong impressions, and these are followed by corresponding movementsdue to reflex action, as is often the case, even in sleep, the dreameris only obscurely conscious of them, and they almost wholly depend onthe spinal axis, and the peripheral ganglia. 

As we have said, the function of the brain is duplex; it stimulates anddirects, and it is also sentient and conscious, and this second functionis persistent in dreams. Although the brain is no longer directed by apower which dictates psychical acts and phenomena, yet its automaticaction is not destroyed, and to this the apparent reality of imagesseen is owing, since there is no longer any distraction from theexternal world, or, at all events, its impulses are so attenuated as tobe unobserved. In such conditions past images recur with an appearanceof reality owing to the mnemonic and automatic action of the brain; sucha tendency exists in the waking state, and the images are associated anddissociated in a thousand ways, by means of analogies, resemblances, former combinations of facts, and series of facts analogous to those ofthe waking state, and are modified by suggestive impulses. We haveexperimental proof, to which I can add my own irrefragable witness, thatthe stimulating influence exerted by the brain in the waking state isdormant in sleep, and that only its automatic act of representationremains active, with the occasional exercise of an aroused and consciouswill. 

The following strange and unpleasant phenomenon generally occurs to meonce or twice a year. All at once, in the midst of a deep sleep, Ibecome wide awake; I am fully conscious of myself, of the place where Iam, of my position and the like, and wish to move like a person who isfully awake. Yet for some time this is impossible; the psychical, cerebral faculty is perfectly awake, and master of itself, but not thestimulating faculty, so that the limbs do not respond to the firstimpulse of the will. All my efforts are unsuccessful; I only succeed inescaping from this unpleasant situation by uttering with greatdifficulty some inarticulate sound, which acts as a shock, and I thusobtain the mastery of my body, for the nerves of speech and the muscularmovements of articulation also fail to answer to my will. If this occurswhen I am alone, the struggle is severe, and there is a violent shock tothe whole body before its equilibrium is restored and the motor functionof the brain resumes its office. 

It is therefore manifest that the stimulating function of the brain isdormant in sleep and dreams, but its automatic, psychical functionpersists; it sometimes happens that the stimulus of the will is awakenedbefore the stimulus of motion, and that the brain may be aroused toconsciousness for some moments before it has resumed its normalfunctions as a stimulating organ, which were attenuated and relaxed insleep. The abnormal condition of paralysis proves and confirms thisfact. 

Let us now ascertain the cause of the various psychical andphysiological conditions which aim at and often succeed in presenting tothe mind a mere representative sign as a substantial and real image. What is the cause of the apparent reality of dreams? The image isclearly a psychical phenomenon, containing a sensible element of whichwe are conscious; the fundamental faculty of the perception is exertedon it as on a real object, and the immediate results are preciselyidentical. The reader will remember that we have shown that aphenomenon involves the intuitive idea of an active subject, so that theimage also, in accordance with the innate faculty of perception, mustnormally appear to the mind as such. When this is not the case, it isbecause the normal effect of natural phenomena, to which our attentionis constantly directed, and our mental education and hereditaryinfluence, have accustomed us to distinguish at once between the mereidea and the real object, and thus we discern the difference between thenormal action of thought and sense, and illusions, hallucinations, anddreams. But since these psychical and physiological conditions losetheir force when the habit and actions of our waking state are dormant, the primitive and innate entification of the image quickly recurs, as wecan plainly see from the previous analysis. 

This is so much the case, that some savage peoples even now find it hardto distinguish real events from those of dreams, and this is owing to adefect in their memory or to the imperfection of their language. Infact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have withoutexception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen indreams, and their personification has been the source of an immensenumber of myths. Even now, with all our civilization and advancedscience, not only the common people, but many of those in fashionableand tolerably cultivated society, believe in the reality of dreams andin their hallucinations, and derive from them fears, hopes, and warningsfor their future life. 

I will give one instance in a thousand to prove the innate tendency evenin the act of dreaming to transform the image into a real object. Itappeared to me that I was in a large room filled with acquaintances andstrangers, who discussed an event which had really occurred in the citya few days before. All at once I raised my eyes to the wall of the room, and saw a large picture, representing a landscape with distantmountains, streams, cottages, and animals. As I looked, the picture wasgradually transformed into a real object, and I found myself, togetherwith the company before mentioned, in the midst of the fields, on thebank of the river, and within one of the cottages. 

In another dream, I appeared to be conversing with an old soldier on theshores of a lake; after some incoherent talk, he began to describe abloody battle in which he had taken part; he had not gone far before thenarrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midstof a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe. Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relatingterrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have becomean actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book. In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hiredcarriage, and I seemed to see before me a friend from whom I had partedon the previous day, when he got into an omnibus to return to thecountry. I soon saw in the distance a large coach-builder'sestablishment, a vast enclosure with sheds and carriages, and in the_piazza_ I saw the manager, a man I knew, who had really someappointment in a carriage manufactory; the building recalled byassociation the familiar appearance of the high chimneys which roseabove the roof, and while thinking of those chimneys with my eyes fixedon the manager, he appeared to me to be changed into a very highchimney, still bearing a human face. Finally, not to multiply examples, I remember a dream in which I was present at a popular disturbance, where one woman, more furious than the rest, came to blows with herhusband, and called him a dog. Suddenly the scene changed, and I wastransported to a courtyard in which there were poultry, pigs, and a finedog of my acquaintance, called Lightning. Again the scene changed, and Ifound myself in a country district with some friends, exposed to aviolent storm of thunder and lightning. 

We clearly see from these facts that whatever may be presented to theimagination is transformed into a real object in the dream itself, sothat it might be called a dream within a dream, and in the last instancethe transmutation passes through three images and consecutive objects. This transmutation not only consists in the transition from our wakingthoughts to the image of our dreams, but it takes place in the act ofdreaming; such is the power of the faculty of perception, in which wefind the first origin of myth in man, and its roots also in the animalkingdom. Thus the genesis of myth, as far as the entification of theimage is concerned, is the same as that of dreams. 

The normal illusions of the senses, which are believed to be real byprimitive men, and by those ignorant of physical laws, have a similarorigin. The objection of such phenomena as a mirage, or the tremulouseffect produced in tropical regions by the refraction and reflection oflight on trees, rocks, and mountains, so well described by Humboldt, isdue to ignorance of the laws of nature, and this is in fact anentification of the phenomenon, occasioned by the innate tendency toanimation which is proper to the perception. In this it is easy to tracethe genesis both of myth and dreams. The fact of hallucination is morecomplex, even in its normal state, that is, in those general conditionsof mind and body in which reason has complete command over us. 

Without entering into any analysis of the various forms of hallucinationof which many able psychologists and physicians of the insane havetreated, let us turn to the more ordinary cases in which an image of themind is projected on the external world so as to appear real. The rootsof such a phenomenon are strictly organic, and belong to the centres inwhich the image is formed, as we have already observed; this imagesometimes stands out in such vivid relief on the psychical space that itseems to be an external, not, as it usually appears in less vivid form, an internal intuition. The hallucinations which Nicolai describeshimself to have experienced may be taken as a classical example. WhenAndral was returning from an autopsy, he clearly saw the corpsestretched before him as he entered his room. Goethe, Byron, and manyothers, have been affected in the same way. I myself have occasionallyhad hallucinations of the kind when in a perfectly healthy condition ofmind and body; one, in particular, of a very vivid character, occurredwhen I awoke one morning and seemed to see a tall and venerable priestentering my chamber. It is needless to multiply examples; similar factsabound in classic books in English, French, German, and other languages. Let us rather study the phenomenon and trace its origin. 

It is clear on the one side that the images of the hallucinations ofsight or hearing appear to have a real existence, so that they may beobserved and studied with ease; and it is also certain that this imagehas no external existence, and is simply a cerebral fact, due to theorgans adapted for perception. Without considering the cause of theexternal projection, to which I have already alluded, since perhaps itsphysiological and psychical genesis is not yet fully understood, wemust consider the image, so far as it is believed to be real. 

In cases of normal hallucination the reason is intact, and the observeris conscious of the illusion, yet notwithstanding this positive judgmentthe image has an appearance of complete reality. The cause of thisillusion is evidently the same as that of the illusions of dreams, andof the origin of myth; namely, that everywhere and always the mental ornatural phenomenon and its image are respectively entified. In thenormal waking state, habit and other causes on which we have touchedrender our ideas of things altogether immaterial, as merely psychicalforms and representative signs, but when the excitement of the organsincreases, so as to present them to the consciousness as objectiveimages, then, owing to the interruption of the ordinary process, theyare suddenly entified, and appear as an external phenomenon. Hallucinations are therefore explained by our theory, and it is furtherconfirmed by the hallucinations of animals, and especially by thedelirium of dogs and other animals affected by hydrophobia, or bycerebral excitement artificially produced by alcoholic and exhilaratingdrugs. 

If a man is habitually subject to many and various hallucinations, andhis sane judgment esteems them to be such, they are undoubtedly unusualphenomena, but they do not in any way injure the rational exercise ofthe mind. It is only when he believes the images to be real that theabnormal state begins, termed delirium if it is of short duration, andmadness if it is permanent. We must examine hallucination under thesenew conditions. 

In the delirium of fever, or in various forms of disease, the cerebralexcitement is so great that not only the deliberate exercise of reason, but the power of estimating external objects is lost, and the organs ofthe senses are so completely altered, that the perceptions themselvesare exaggerated and confused. In this state hallucination reaches itshighest point, and the patient sees, hears, and feels, directly orindirectly, strange and terrible things: wild beasts, enemies of allkind, torments; or again, pleasing and agreeable images. Independentlyof the alteration in various sensations produced by the morbidalteration of the special organs which induce them, the real cause ofthis phenomenon consists in the objection of mental sensations andimages. Such an objection of images or sensations, considered in the actwhich transforms them into a reality, depends on the same cause as allother acts of perception; there is always an entification of thephenomenon, which in this case is a vivid internal image, appearing tobe external and real. 

The entification of images is still more direct and powerful because inthis morbid crisis the necessary corrections made by reason cannot takeplace, since the sick man is for the time deprived of it, and he is infact a dreamer, whose condition is intensified by abnormal excitement. Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and servesto explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of therepresentations of the intellect. The transition is easy from deliriumto madness, for although an insane person is not always delirious, butsometimes calm and composed, yet there is a fundamental resemblance todelirium in the change in his states of consciousness and its relativeorgans, which imply a constant hallucination. The most famous and acutephysicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a hundred insanepersons are subject to hallucinations. The morbid condition whichgenerates them is also produced by debility, by anæmia, and the seniledecay of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, andold age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the powerof fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owingto the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the external world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases therecollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear ashallucinations. The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms ofdementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from their morbid andorganic conditions, derived from the same source which produces myths, dreams, and normal hallucinations; the objective entification of imagesis due to the innate faculty of the perception, which leads to theimmediate personification of any given phenomenon. We have shown that, given a sensation, there naturally arises the implicit notion of asubject and a cause, and this natural impulse is further developed bythe influence of heredity; both in man and animals the constant andpowerful sense of individual life is infused into the phenomenonperceived. 

The various forms of madness throw a clearer light on this necessary andprimitive fact of human and animal perception. The act of sensation maythen be said to be under its own direction, and generates itself in theautomatic exercise of the brain, as in dreams, without the explicit, disturbing, and modifying influence of reflection, and the habit ofrational analysis. The act of sensation is spontaneously completed anddeveloped in and with its own constituents, and since it is isolatedfrom other modes and exercises of thought, its real nature appears. Thehallucinations of madness, produced by the mental realization of images, either detached or in association, prove that all our mental images orideas have a tendency in themselves to become real objects ofconsciousness; with this difference, that a sane man recognizes thesemental entifications by their mobility and incessant alterations, whichcontrast with the fixity and permanence of external and cosmicphenomena. 

The following considerations will confirm the truth of these facts. Inour advanced state of civilization, thought may, after so many ages'exercise, almost be said to have become part of the organism by theindisputable effect of heredity; and the phenomenon of the recurrence tomemory of past facts and distant places is obvious and intelligible, since our judgment of them is never subject to illusion, or only in rareinstances and in abnormal conditions. But this judgment is less obviousand easy in the case of primitive savages who have advanced littlebeyond the innate exercise of the intelligence. The rational analysis ofthe states of consciousness has not been made, and hence their specialand general distinctions are seen with difficulty or not seen at all. Consequently the primitive and natural amazement of man must have beengreat, when by day, and still more in the lonely silence of night, persons, places, and his own past acts recurred to his mind, and he wasable to contemplate them as if they were actually present. He wasincapable of giving an explanation of this marvellous fact in therational and reflective manner which is possible to psychologists and toall civilized men. This revival of the past appeared to him as a fact inits simple and spontaneous reality; he made no attempt to explain it, but it was presented to his consciousness like all other natural facts. The only explanation of the phenomenon appeared to him to be that theseimages did not recur to the mind by the necessary action of the brain, but that by their own spontaneous power they were recalled to taketheir part within his breast: he supposed the phenomenon to beobjective, not subjective. 

Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, andsome primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down bytradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to themind. The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions. The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to beexternal, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams;primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memoryand of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed toconsist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance inthe waking or sleeping state. The images assumed in the memory arelative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams. In fact, somesavages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states, and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection ofthings, the fancy, and dreaming. This also occurs in children, who at avery early age often call by name absent persons and things which recurto their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the factsof real life from those of dreams. I have observed this fact in severalchildren. 

Among primitive peoples it often happens that an object with which theyare unfamiliar, but which has some analogy with those with which theyare acquainted, becomes associated with the latter, and is constitutedinto a compound being, endowed with life. The Esquimaux believed thevessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars. When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship tobe a whale with sails. The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, andimagined that it required the nourishment of grass. When an Arauco saw acompass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has beenheld by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, whichplay tunes mechanically. Herbert Spencer mentions similar behaviour insome men belonging to one of the hill tribes in India; when they saw Dr. Hooker pull out a spring measuring tape, which went back into its caseof itself, they were terrified and ran away, convinced that it was asnake. From these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it notonly appears that everything is spontaneously animated by man, but alsothat the images of his memory are fused with those which are actuallypresent, since their respective factors are esteemed to be equally real. This primitive objection of the images of the memory also occurs in themythical representations of dreams, which, as the images of absentobjects, have much in common with the images of the memory. In fact, allpeoples, as we have seen, have believed in the reality of dreams. 

The North American Indians believe in the existence of two souls, one ofwhich remains in the body while the other wanders at pleasure duringthe dream. The New Zealander supposes that the dreamer's soul leaves hisbody, and that he meets the things of which he dreams in the course ofhis wanderings. The Dyak also believes that the soul is absent duringsleep, and that the things seen in dreams really occur. Garcilassoasserts that this was likewise the Peruvians' belief. A tribe in Javaabstains from waking a sleeper, since his soul is absent in dreams. TheKarens say that dreams are what the _là_ or soul sees during sleep. Thistheory is also found among more civilized peoples, as for instance inthe Vedic philosophy and the Kabbala, and it has come down to our daysamong the common people, and even among those of some culture. 

One belief connected with dreams, generally diffused among all savageand civilized peoples, is that of the appearance of dead men, or oftheir ghosts. Of this all the traditions and popular myths in the worldare full. Such a belief, first excited by the vision of the dead indreams, is easily aroused in the savage or uneducated mind, even when herecalls to memory while he is alone, and especially at night, the imageof one whom he loved in life. Affection, and the lively emotion ofsorrow and desire give such a life-like appearance to these images thatthey become objectively present to the mind, to console the mourner, or, on the other hand, to threaten the murderer. I have more than once heardpersons of all classes, after the death of children, of a husband orwife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, eitherduring life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all goodfaith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory andvisible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifullyappear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them fornot fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem tothem to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, butobjective and personal apparitions within the soul. The cases are notrare in certain dispositions of mind, in which the projection of theseimages on the memory gradually produces madness. We must not forget thatpsychical phenomena in general are very differently regarded by thesavage and the civilized man, since the latter is accustomed toanalysis, and to the real distinctions of things. If this canon isforgotten we shall fall into grave errors in the attempt to interpretthe evolution and primitive history of thought and of humanity. 

We shall more readily understand the nature and genesis of all thesehallucinations, and of normal and abnormal illusions, if we studyanother phenomenon of frequent occurrence which I myself have often hadoccasion to observe. I mean the illusion or hallucination which does notconsist in the absolute projection of an internal image with an externalsemblance of reality, but which presents it in the twilight as anobject of uncertain form, either in a room or out of doors. It oftenhappens, as I and others have experienced from childhood, that a dressor other object lying by chance on a chair, or on the ground, or hangingon a piece of furniture or a peg, seen in connection with the otherthings near it, is transformed into a person or animal, in a sitting orstanding posture or lying at full length, as if it had been a spectre orphantasm; somewhat like the figures which we all take pleasure intracing in the strange and mobile forms of clouds. The fantastic figuresometimes appears instantaneously and at the first glance, sometimes itis only gradually made out; but in both cases, as we shall see, itsgenesis is the same. Although in the former case that which in thelatter is gradually developed _appears_ to be developed all at once, yetin reality it passes through the same stages. 

Let us now consider the second mode; and in order to be perfectlyaccurate, I will describe one out of many apparitions which I saw sorecently that its gradual formation is retained distinctly in my memory. On a small three-legged table beside my bed there was a little ovalmirror, on which hung a woman's cap, which fell partly over the glass:there was also an easy chair, on which I had thrown my shirt beforegoing to bed, while my shoes were as usual on the floor. I awoke towardsmorning, and as I chanced to look round the large room, in the uncertainlight of a night-light which was almost burnt out, my eyes fell uponthe easy chair. Immediately I seemed to see a head above it, corresponding to the mirror, and a vague and confused image of a personseated there. As I am accustomed to do in similar cases, I closed myeyes for a little, and on reopening them I looked at the appearance withattention and interest; this time the person or phantasm had a lessconfused outline, although I did not see the form distinctly, nor thefeatures, nor its precise position. Yet in this second observation, Iobtained an idea of it as a whole, and in details. 

On further examination the face and person stood out more clearly, andthe features became more distinct, the longer I looked. Each accidentalfold or shadow on the cap was transformed into bright eyes, stronglymarked eyebrows, into the nose, mouth, hair, beard, and neck; so that asI went on I had before me a perfectly chiselled face corresponding tothe type which had first flashed across my mind as the confusedimpression of a face conveyed by the cap and mirror. The same process ofevolution was pursued with respect to the limbs, the breast, arms, legs, and feet; parts of the body which at first appeared to be vague andindeterminate gradually, and as if by enchantment issued distinctly fromevery fold of the shirt, from every shadow, angle, and line, so as tocompose what Dante would call _una persona certa_. Finally I saw beforeme a man dressed in white, of an athletic form, sitting in the easychair and looking fixedly at me: the whole body was in harmony with thehead, which had first resulted from the rude resemblance to a humanface. The image appeared to me so real and distinct that on rising fromthe bed and gradually approaching it, its form did not vanish, even whenI was near enough to touch the object which produced it. An analysisshowed that the features, limbs, and position corresponded in everypoint with the folds and relative position of the articles of dresswhich had formed it. A similar process, issuing in such apparitions, isa frequent cause of illusions, which in the case of ingenuous, superstitious, and primitive peoples, may lead to the firm convictionthat they have seen an apparition. This has certainly been the case inprimitive and even in civilized times, and has given occasion to myths, legends, and the worship of tutelary deities and saints. 

If we consider the causes of such a phenomenon, and analyze its elementsand motives, we shall, I think, discover that it goes far to explainmany normal and abnormal hallucinations. 

In the first place, there is in man a deep sense of the analogies ofthings, partly developed by the organic tendency to regard any givenobject of perception as subjective and causative, and to infuse into itour own animal life, a tendency confirmed by education and the practiceof daily life. Such analogies, which find their expression in metaphor, are very vivid and persistent in the vulgar and in those persons whoapproximate most closely to the primitive ingenuousness of theintelligence. The most frequent analogies are between natural phenomenaand objects and animal forms. Analogies are also found between thevarious forms of inanimate natural objects, but the former are moreusual, and especially those which refer to the human form. There arenumerous and familiar instances of the names of men or women given tomountains, rocks, and crags, because they have some remote resemblanceto some human feature or limb. Every day we may be called upon to see aface in some mountain, stone, or trunk of a tree, in the outline of thelandscape, a wreath of mist or cloud. We are told to observe the eyes, nose, mouth, the arms and legs, and so on. [35] Every one must rememberto have often heard of such resemblances, even if he has not himselfobserved them. All the facts and laws which we have observed explain whythe sudden appearance of some vague form in an uncertain light, reminding us in a confused way of the human figure, instantly causes usto trace a resemblance to man rather than to any thing else. It must benoted, as my experiment has already proved, that in this first sketchof a phantasm in human form, a general, though indefinite type of thewhole figure has spontaneously arisen, to which it is made tocorrespond. This is the key to the ultimate perception of thephenomenon. What may be called the prophetic type of the figure whichwill afterwards appear to us in all its details, although it may seem tobe produced by external resemblance, is in fact the product of the mind, which has been unconsciously exercised in its construction. 

In fact, out of the immense variety in faces, and in the general form ofpersons, of gestures, fashions of dress, attitudes in rest and motion, which are indelibly impressed on the memory, every one constructsgeneral types for himself; types which are revealed in the allusionsmade in our daily conversation to the resemblances which we arecontinually observing. These remain in the memory, with all the manifoldresemblances, as well as the ideal of certain types in which thenumerous forms we have seen and compared are formulated. We know thatwhen the memory has been dormant, which is often the case, it may beawakened by the stimulus of association, of analogy, or of will, so asto reproduce the forgotten ideas and sensations which are thus againpresented to the consciousness. When, therefore, one or more objects areseen in an uncertain light, so as to present a confused appearance ofthe human form, its general lineaments are unconsciously made by us tocorrespond with the human type already existing in the memory, and thistype presides in the subsequent composition of the reproducing artistwho observes the phantasm. The unconscious mental labour which isaccomplished in the reproducing cellules of past impressions and ideasby the instantaneous creation of the type, gathers round this type theform and features corresponding with it, which had its earlier existencein our own experience. The external pose and indefinite modification ofthe objects appear to correspond with the gradual mnemonic revival ofthe typal form, and they reciprocally stimulate and react on each other. For while a fold, shadow, or line of the objects seen appear tocorrespond with some feature of the mnemonic type, on the other hand, afold, shadow, or outline of the object recalls a feature of the inwardphantasm composed by the memory. 

In this process the mnemonic details which are in accordance with thepre-existing type, and sometimes also in accordance with some remarkableface or person which was the first to present itself to the mind, serveas a model for the accidental form of the external object or objectswhich correspond to it; this in its turn recalls features which remainin the memory, and in this way the external form of this particularphantasm is gradually chiselled into full relief. The more intently weregard the object which is modified to suit the mental image, the moreperfectly they agree together, and the apparition stands out with morevivid distinctness. This will be the experience of every one to whomsuch a phenomenon appears, and a dispassionate analysis of all thephases of this fact must fully confirm our theory. 

Such a fact, which is implicitly included in the general law we havelaid down for the origin of myth, will also as I think throw furtherlight on the origin of many hallucinations, both in normal conditions ofmind and in the abnormal state of nervous disorders. The differentappearances of objects, animals, and men, the voices, words, songs, andconversations seen and heard in these hallucinations, are produced, byan internal impulse as well as by a stimulus from without; they areinternal in the images and sensation already unconsciously impressedupon the memory, and they are external in the accidentally modified formin which they occur in sensible objects, so that they act reciprocallyas an incentive and impulse to each other. 

If in normal hallucinations the vividness of the internal image is incertain physiological conditions projected outwardly, the configurationand accidental form of the external objects contribute to complete thecomposition in accordance with the nature and design of this internalimage. Sometimes the physiological conditions of hallucination are sopowerful that it is at once produced by the appearance of an objectwhich has some analogy with the mental image. Whatever may be thegenesis and primitive character of the idea of space, and its psychicaland physiological relations to actual space--a question which has beenthe theme of so much discussion in our time--it is certain that firsthabit and then hereditary influence cause us to have the sensation andapprehension of a psychical space, which may be termed artificial andcongenital, and upon which the various impressions of the senses arespontaneously projected. Of this there is an evident proof in the factthat if we look at the sun or any bright object, such as the windows ofa room in the day time, and then close our eyes, so as to make thevision of external space impossible, the image of the sun, sometimes ofa different colour, or of the window, is projected into the darkness atsome distance from us, and moves about this psychical space. Thisphenomenon also occurs in the subjective sensations of hearing, sincethe sounds do not appear to be close to the ear, but at a distance. Weare not here called upon to discuss the causes which generate theappearance of this psychical space, but the fact is indisputable; sothat conversely it becomes intelligible how the internal image may beprojected in the same way, or may at least appear to be externallyprojected in hallucinations. This surprising phenomenon is only amodification of the ordinary exercise of the psychical and physiologicalfaculties in the projection of images; of which, after the idea of spacehas been formed by primitive experience, habit and education are thechief factors. 

Hallucinations, in the cases observed above, are due to an externalimpulse; and this is especially the case in madness and other nervousdisorders; since a critical observation and clear discernment of thingsis wanting, some object of vision, a voice, phrases, or sounds are muchmore apt to act as a stimulus to a vast field of visual hallucinations, or to a long succession of sentences and speeches. It is not, therefore, wonderful that in an ecstasy, for instance, in which all the facultiesare concentrated on very few ideas and images, or perhaps on one only, every external sign, whether obvious to sight or hearing, combined withthe mnemonic effort already explained, is modified to correspond withthese vivid and exalted images; thus constituting the wonderfulphenomenon of ecstasy. In such a case the ecstatic phenomenon in personssubject to these nervous affections is often invested with fresh wondersby the additional sensations of light and subjective colours; this isnot uncommon even in persons of a sane mind and body, but undoubtedly itis more frequently the case in those whose mental and physicalconditions are abnormal. It is not rare to hear an ecstatic personrecount divine visions, suffused with extraordinary light and glory. 

In order to contribute to the researches of others into the nature ofthis phenomenon, I must be permitted--not from vanity, but from adesire that my own imperfections may serve the cause of science howeverslightly--to relate some facts, personal to myself, which bear upon thequestion, facts of very general experience. From my childhood I havehad, both by day and night, various subjective sensations of light whichI was, as a person of perfectly sane mind, able to observedispassionately. After reading for a long while, or when fatigued bysleeplessness, mental excitement, or some temporary gastric derangement, I see clear flames circling before my eyes. These are in a small, oblongform, arranged at brief intervals in concentric curves, and composing amoving garland projected upon space, tinged with a yellowish light, shading into vivid blue. Sometimes this figure is changed for stars, twinkling in a vast and remote space, as in a firmament. In addition tothis phenomenon, I have about twenty times in the course of my lifeexperienced other subjective and more extraordinary sensations of light, not unknown to others. This phenomenon occurs when I am in a normalcondition of health, and always begins with a confusion of sight, sothat I am unable to see objects and the faces of people distinctly;after which everything within the range of vision becomes mobile andtremulous. This state continues for ten minutes, and then clear anddistinct vision returns. Next a lucid circle, zig-zagged in acuteangles, appears close to the eyes, now on the right, now on the left. It moves in a somewhat serpentine course, and is broken in the centre ofthe lower half. It withdraws from the eye into subjective space, and theshining band of which it is composed gradually loses its sharp angles, and becomes wider and undulated, while still in motion. 

Another remarkable sensation follows. The shining band, which hasdilated until it is withdrawn from the eyes, whether closed or open, toan apparent distance of several yards, becomes tinted with all thecolours of the rainbow, standing out in such vivid splendour on the darkbackground that I have never seen them equalled in nature. Indeed thebeauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with variouscolours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distancefrom the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues todilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. Fromits beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to twenty-fiveminutes. 

Throughout the phenomenon I continue to be perfectly collected and freein mind, so that I can observe it in all its details with perfectcalmness, and can also impart my observations to the persons with whom Ihappen to be. Only when the subjective sensation has ceased, I feel anobscure pain in the brow of the eye in which the phenomenon occurred. This is readily explained by the well-known interlacing of the nerves, and the action of the hemispheres. 

Supposing that such phenomena occur, as they more readily do, in personspredisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and ina society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habituallycontemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if inmoments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to theimages proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is verylikely to be the case, or the iridescent aureole we have described, theywould certainly accept and glorify the heavenly vision revealed to them. The revolution of the bright stars or iridescent band, preceded by theobscurity of vision which accompanies the ordinary ecstatichallucination, would certainly be ascribed to the saints or angels, andwould thus become more supernatural and consonant with the believer'sidea of heaven; and these very subjective sensations might often producethe ecstatic vision, so ready to appear in the morbid conditions whichlead to hallucination. 

According to the process previously described, by which the phenomenonof natural hallucinations is produced by an external stimulus, theseluminous phenomena would revive the memory of angelic and saintly forms, of which men were so profoundly conscious in times of religiousexcitement, and would be regarded as their external signs, while theywould at the same time stimulate the appearance of such angelicvisions. Ultimately this would lead to the vast drama of celestialhallucinations described for us in the accounts of many ecstaticvisions. They do not only occur in modern religions, but in those of theold heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of savages. Theethnography of the most savage peoples of our time teaches us that theorigin of very many myths is to be found in normal and abnormalhallucinations, and in the luminous visions which conform to theirmental conditions. Persons subject to nervous affections, from simpleepilepsy to madness and idiocy, were and still are supposed to beinspired, and endowed with the power of prophesying and workingmiracles; they are also venerated for relating the strange visionspresented to them in the crisis of their disorder. Africa, barbarousAsia, America, Oceania, and the ignorant and superstitious people inEurope itself, abound with such facts; they have occurred and are likelyto recur in civilized peoples of all times, including our own, as weknow only too well. 

We have thus reduced the primitive origin of myth, of dreams, of allillusions, of normal and abnormal hallucinations, to one unique fact andgenesis, to a fundamental principle; that is, to the primitive andinnate entification of the phenomenon, to whatever sensation it may bereferred. This fact is not exclusively human in its simple expressionand genesis, since it occurs in the lower animals; evidently in thosewhich are nearest to man, and by the necessary logic of induction inall others, according to their sensations and modes of perception. Inthe vast historic drama of opinions, beliefs, religions, mythical andmytho-scientific theories which are developed in all peoples; and again, in the infinite variety of dreams, illusions, mystic and nervoushallucinations, all depend on the primitive and unique fact which isalso common to the animal kingdom, and identical with it; in man this isalso the condition of science and knowledge. I think that thisconclusion is not unworthy of the consideration of wise men and honestcritics, and that it will contribute to establish the definitive unityof the general science of psychology, considered in the vast animalkingdom as a whole, and in connection with the great theory ofevolution. 

This primitive act of perception, the radical cause and genesis of allmythical representations, and the physical and intellectual condition ofscience itself, is also one of the factors and the æsthetic germ of allthe arts. The constraining power which generates the intentionalsubjectivity of the phenomenon, and the entification of images, ideas, and numerous normal and abnormal appearances, also unconsciously impelsman to project the image into a design, a sculpture, or a monument. Since an idea or emotion naturally tends, as we have seen, to take anexternal form in speech, gesture, or some other outward fact; so also ittends to manifest itself materially and by means of various arts, and totake the permanent form of some object. It is embodied in this way, asit was embodied in fetishes in the way described in the foregoingchapters. Owing to this innate cause, and by the instinct of imitationwhich results from it, children as well as savages always attempt somerude sketch of natural objects, or of the fanciful images to which theyhave given rise. Drawings of animals and some other objects are foundamong the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians. Nor isthis fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which arestill in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings andremains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date havebeen found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age ofour flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water. There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitiveimpulse to imitative arts. A stag's meta-tarsal bone, on which there wasa carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny: in a caveat Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs ofschist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office, on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and otheranimals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked manin a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there isalso the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thinwoman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known bythe name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, orso-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, goingwith its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard. Other designs of the chase and of animalsafford a clear proof of the remote period at which the primitiveinstinct towards the imitative arts existed. 

It is peculiar to man to portray things and animals, and to erectmonuments out of a superstitious feeling, or to glorify an individual orthe nation; the bower-birds and some cognate species may perhaps beregarded as an exception, since they show a certain sense of beauty, andan extrinsic satisfaction in gay colours, which indeed appears in manyanimals. But art in the true sense and in its essential principle arethe act and product of man alone, of which I have demonstrated the causeand comparative reasons in another work, so that it is unnecessary torepeat them here. Some rare cases indicate an artistic constructionwhich is not an essential part of animal functions, and the sense ofform and colour occurs in some species. But this only shows that thereexist in the animal kingdom the roots of every art and sentimentpeculiar to man, subsequently perfected by him in an exclusive andreflex manner, and this confirms the general truths of heredity andevolution. 

When primitive man draws or carves objects, he does not merely obey theinnate impulse to give an external form to the image already in hismind, but while satisfying the æsthetic sentiment which actuates him, heis conscious of some mysterious power and superstitious influence. Thissentiment is not only apparent in our own children, but among nearly allsavages, of which many instances might be given; some of them are evenafraid to look at a portrait, and shrink from it as from a livingperson. 

As time went on, a belief in spirits was developed from causes alreadymentioned, the rude theory of incarnation followed as its corollary, andthis sentiment was naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images;for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of menand animals. In these figures the amulet, talisman, or _gris-gris_ ofsavages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universalphallic superstitions. The belief in spirits, resulting from thepersonification of shadows, or of the image of a man's own soul whichwas supposed to return from the tomb, had a mythical influence on themode and ceremonies of sepulture, on the position of corpses, on theorientation of tombs, and their form. In fact, the mythical ideas ofspirits, and the fanciful place they took in the primitive idea of theworld, produced the custom of burying corpses in an upright, stooping, or sitting position, and their situation with reference to the fourcardinal points. In America the cross which was placed in very earlytimes above the tombs is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been asymbol of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb itself andto the human remains enclosed in it. One Australian tribe buries itsdead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the headand feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow thesame custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning theface to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sittingposition, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the headto the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned tothe west, because this is the attitude in which they place their deadbefore burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and allother peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, hadand continue to have special customs in burying their dead. 

All the primitive artistic representations of the human form, theorientation of tombs and temples and their peculiar form, were promptedby these spiritualist and superstitious ideas; they expressed asymbolism derived from mythical ideas of the constitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends. This assertion might beverified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among allpeoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those ofour times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, andparticularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, beginning with the Greeksand passing through the Latins down to the Christianity of our day; norneed we exclude the Oceanic races, and those of the two frigid zones. 

Doubtless the purest æsthetic sentiment was gratified in the productionsof the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was atits highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment. At the same time, for the great majority of peoples in early andsubsequent ages down to our own time, there was and is the consciousnessof a _numen_, in the proper meaning of the word, within the statue oreffigy, and these were unconsciously entified by the same law whichleads to the entification of natural phenomena; the august presence ofthe gods and an artificial symbol of the living organism of the worldwere contained in the material form. While this sentiment took a higherdevelopment in art, and was gradually emancipated from its mythicalbonds, it never altogether disappeared in artistic creations; and thereare still many who would, like some uncultured peoples of early andmodern times, cover up their images when they are about to commit someaction which might be displeasing to these idols of the gods or saints. If we were to gauge the sentiments which really animate a man of thepeople, even when he; looks at the statue of a great man, we shouldfind that in addition to his æsthetic satisfaction, he unconsciouslyimagines that the spirit of the dead man is infused into the image andis able to enjoy the admiration of the observers. 

The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded onthis belief in the incarnation of spirits and the _numen_ of fetishes. There is indeed no real difference between the superstitious adorationof a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in manyreligions of modern civilization. Although people of culture, and thescholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectfulveneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that themajority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief inrelics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc. , is plainly anevolution of the amulets and _gris-gris_ of savages. This fetishtic andidolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development beeninfused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hungon plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbolof perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills. We haveanalogous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or thewords of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn roundthe neck. The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lampskept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help andfavour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thustransforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous orcivilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, forinstance, and some other American peoples regarded the number "four" assacred. 

In addition to the cherished remembrance always inspired by portraits ofthose we love, a breathing of life, as if the dead or absent person werecommunicating with us in spirit, is perhaps unconsciously infused intothe picture while we look at it. These are transient states ofconsciousness, of which we are scarcely aware, although they do notescape the notice of careful observers. Any dishonour or insult offeredto images, whether sacred or profane, deeply moves both the learned andunlearned, both barbarous and civilized peoples, not merely as a baseand sacrilegious act against the person represented, but from aninstinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in theimage. Any one who analyzes the matter will find it impossible toseparate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinaryscenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resultedfrom the identification of the image with the thing represented. 

Even when a man of high culture and refined taste for beauty standsbefore the canvas or sculpture of some great ancient or modern artist, his spiritual and æsthetic enjoyment of these wonderful works is, as hewill find from the observation of his inmost emotions, combined with theanimation and personification of what he sees; he is so far carried awayby the beauty and truth of the representation that the passionsrepresented affect him as if they were those of real persons. Thisrelative perfection of a work of art, either in the way the objectsstand out, in the varied diffusion of light and shade, in the movementand expression of figures, in the effect of the whole in its details andbackground, is all heightened and confirmed by the underlyingentification of images. The process we have before described by which aconfused group of objects appear to us as a human form or phantasm isalso effected in this case in a more subtle way and with less effort ofmemory; it is all ultimately due to the primitive fact of animalperception. Our imagination can supply the resemblance, the limbs, colour, and design in a picture in which a face, figure, or landscapeare slightly sketched, or in a roughly chiselled statue. We often hearthe complaint that a work of art is too highly finished, and it weariesand displeases us because it leaves nothing for the imagination tosupply. The remark reveals the fact, of which we are all implicitlyconscious, that we are ourselves in part the artificers of everyexternal phenomenon. 

We need not stop to prove a truth well-known to all, that architectureand all kinds of monuments lend themselves to a symbolism derived fromancient and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in India, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Judæa, Greece, Ancient and ChristianRome, and in the ancient remains found in savage countries and inAmerica. The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the earliest and mostvaried traditions with the symbols of Christianity. We unconsciouslycarry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, althoughthe meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs in the open air which encloseda spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacredbuildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture, both religious and civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, thedevelopment of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphalarch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic mythwere reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archæology, and the history ofall peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is onlynecessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader. Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as humanspeech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were analgebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive andconcrete image whence it proceeded. The arts also, like other humanproducts, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course;the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritualbeliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformedinto symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and giveplace to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fullysatisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends. 

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin andevolution as the others. Vico, Strabo, and others have asserted thatprimitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark. Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocalmodulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulateemotion. In truth, the mental and physiological effort which tends byvocal enunciation to present the image or emotion in an external form, is on the one hand not yet fully disintegrated, and on the other thegreater or less intensity of feeling involved in primitive languages acorresponding vocal modulation to supplement it, just as it requiredgesture and pantomime. Thus speech, gesture, and song, in the largersense of the word, had their origin together. This is also true of manyof the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilizedpeoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection;in this case the frequent repetition of the same monosyllable conveys adifferent meaning, not only from its relative position, but from themodulation and tone in which it is uttered. The same thing may beobserved in children who are just beginning to talk. 

Rhythm, or the graduated and alternate action and reaction with which avibration begins and ends, is a universal law in the manifestation andmovements of all natural phenomena; a law which is revealed on a grandscale in all the recurring periods of nature, whether astral, telluric, or meteorological, as well as in the form and manifold phases oforganisms and their modes of reproduction. This universal law alsoapplies to the whole mental and organic system of animals and men, whenever they become conscious of their own existence. The sameuniversal rhythm constitutes the fundamental form of sound in thevibration of metallic bars, or of strings, and becomes perceptible tothe external senses by means of our organ of hearing, as also by theexternal and innate necessity slowly developed by our habits ofconsciousness, which may be termed the external causes of its organicevolution and constitution. 

By these organic and cosmic tendencies, and by the intrinsic impulsetowards modulation of sound already explained, speech first issued fromthe human breast in harmonious accents and rhythmic form, and thesebecame in their turn the causes and genesis of versification and metre. The classic experiments of Helmholtz show that each note may be regardedas a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompanyit in its complete development. With reference to our own race, thegenesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by theresearches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of theVedic Aryans, the Turanians, and the Greeks, since the fact that theirmetres were the same implies a common origin. The demonstration iscomplete, if we compare the iambic metre of Archilochus with that of theVedic hymns. There are in both three series of iambuses--the dimeter, the cataleptic trimeter, and the acataleptic. [36]

This observation applies to the physical and physiological conditions ofthe phenomenon, since primitive men could not speak without rhythmicmodulation of words. We are not quite without hope of discovering byinduction the origin of wind or stringed instruments which accompaniedthe songs, after the specification of the modes of speech was so faradvanced as to distinguish singing--which had already become anart--from the daily necessity of reciprocal communication in words. Inthis research we must proceed step by step, aided by minute observation, lest we should accept an hypothesis which does not correspond with thefacts. 

Not only man, but some animals--among others a species of mouse found inSouth Africa--naturally uses his limbs to moderate or strengthen thelight of vision. This mouse was observed to shade its eyes with itsforepaws in order to look at some distant object under a blazing sun, aswe should do in like conditions. In man, whose arms and hands arereadily adapted to this primitive art, the habit is common, even amongthe rudest savages. Putting sight out of the question that we mayconsider hearing, which is our present theme, reflex movements, eithercasual or habitual, have certainly induced primitive men to place theirhands on the mouth, either so as to suppress the sound or to augment itby using both hands as a kind of shell. It is easy to imagine the use ofshells or other hollow objects as a vehicle of sound, either foramusement or some other cause, and these rude instruments might serve asthe first step to the invention of wind instruments. Reflection on thesespontaneous experiments would readily lead to the search for some modeof prolonging or imitating the voice. In these attempts men might beguided by their observation of the whistle and song of birds, whosebeaks may have served as a model for the construction of the flute andreed-pipe. Pott traces the word for sound to the root _svar_, and hence, after some natural phonetic changes, we have in Lithuanian _szwilpti_for the song of birds. Of all natural objects, different kinds of reedsand the hollow stalks of plants are, owing to their hollow andcylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak andthe sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for aflute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, _vança_ and _vênu_mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, _nâ_ and _nây_ mean a flute andreed; in Greek [Greek: donas], and in Latin _calamus_, have the samedouble meaning, and many more examples might be given. 

Stringed instruments are a more elaborate invention, and may have beensuggested by the vibration of a bow-string when it is twanged. The bowis common to all modern savages, and was also found among extinctpeoples and those which are now civilized, as well as in prehistorictimes. The Sanscrit word for a stringed instrument, _tata_ or _vitata_, is derived from the root _tan_, to stretch. Pictet observes that onename for a lute is _rudri_, from _rud_, to lament, that is, a plaintiveinstrument; in Persian we have _rod_ for song, music, or a stringedinstrument. The etymology of _arcus_ is the same; the root _arc_ notonly means to hurl, but to sing or resound. Homer and Rannjana oftenallude to the sonorousness of the bow and its string. Homer says inspeaking of the bow of Pandarus, "_stridit funis, et nervus valdesonuit_. " And when Ulysses drew his avenging bow, the cord emitted aclear sound like the voice of a swallow. _Lôcàka_, another name for acord, also means one who speaks, from _lòc_, _loqui_; and the Persian_rûd_, _rôda_, a bow-string, also means a song. In the Veda the root_arc'_ is used in speaking of the roaring wind, or of a long echoingsound. Again _tâvara_, a bow-string, is from _tan_, to stretch, tosound. The Greek [Greek: tonos] must be referred to the same root, andsignifies, a bow-string, a sound, an accent, a tone. Benfey traces theGreek [Greek: lura], in which this root is wanting, through [Greek:ludra], or _rudra_. Kuhn confirms this transformation by the analogybetween the Vedic god _Rudra_ and the Greek Apollo, both of whom arearmed with a bow. Rudra, like Apollo, is a great physician; the formeris called _kapardin_, from his mode of wearing his long hair, and_vanku_ from his tortuous gait as the god of storms; to the latter theepithets of [Greek: achers echomes] and [Greek: loxias] are applied; themouse was sacred to Rudro, and Apollo had the surname of Smintheus, fromthe mouse, [Greek: Smintha], which was his symbol. 

These wind and stringed instruments were not, in their primitive forms, at once used as an accompaniment to song. Before such use was possible, there must have been considerable progress in the specification oflanguage, and special songs must have been disintegrated from commonspeech, which was at first an inchoate song. Possibly some rudeinstruments were invented for amusement or some other purpose beforethis specification had taken place. At any rate the use of variousinstruments for accompaniment was preceded by gesticulation, or thespontaneous striking of some object which coincided with animatedspeech, or which accompanied it in sonorous cadences. 

The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to speak in song, alsoimpelled them to accompany it with gestures and movements of the body, and this was the origin of the dance, which, when the body moved incorrespondence with cadenced utterances, was at first merely theaccompaniment of song. Tradition, modern ethnography, and the primitivehabits of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to therhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there is the practice ofspontaneously beating time with the hands and feet, which were doubtlessthe first instruments used by man as a musical accompaniment. Hence, owing to the facility of, construction, there arose percussioninstruments, which were at first made of stone or pieces of wood. Sothat singing, dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some rudelyfashioned object arose almost simultaneously, as soon as the process ofspecification had established a distinction between song and ordinaryspeech. The first simple instruments which we have described only madethe song, shout, war-dance, or religious ceremony more effective. 

When chanted speech was formulated in a fixed order by means of rhythmand the modulations of the voice, it became verse, and the melodyitself, as the simple expression of the song which had been cast intoverse, or even into an inarticulate chant, was naturally evolved fromit. An artistic education is not needed in order to experience thepleasure of rhythmic order in the succession of sound, for apredisposition of the nervous system will suffice. Savages, children, and even animals are sensible of rhythm, which is the order and symmetryof sensations. The dance, as Beauquier justly observes, is the practicalform of rhythmic motion and the gesture of music. The motion impressedby sound on the internal organism tends to manifest itself in externalgesture, and in fact, the rhythm of the music is repeated in dancing inthe limbs and in the whole body of the dancer. The rhythm, regarded inits material cause, need not be accompanied by any very musical sound. The percussion instruments were at first only used to mark and intensifythe rhythm. 

Melody may be termed a fusion of rhythm and sounds of different pitches, united in time, and assuming a regular and symmetrical form; melody, asothers also have observed, constitutes the whole of music, sincewithout it harmony itself is vague and indefinite. Notwithstanding thenumerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labourimplied in its analysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation ofman, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorantof music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we haveinstances in popular and national songs, which are generated by themusical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has anindependent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, andconduces to its subsequent progress among peoples capable of developingit in all its power. [37]

Music has a powerful influence upon all the senses. It has at all timesbeen supposed to have a healing power, and in the Middle Ages it wasbelieved to cure epilepsy, madness, convulsions, hysteria, and all formsof nervous affections; while in our own time it is usefully employed incerebral diseases, since it has both a stimulating and soothing effect. Women, since they are generally more nervous and sensitive than men, aremore especially affected by music. Animals as well as man are influencedby it, as it has been shown by exact and numerous experiments. Every oneknows that many birds can be taught airs, which they sing with taste andlively satisfaction. The major key, with its regular proportions, itsfull and gradual sounds, arouses in man a sense of life and joy, whilethe minor key excites languor and invincible sadness, and animals areaffected in the same way. 

It is evident that the formation of the scale, the essential foundationof music, varies with, the epoch, climate, habits, and physiologicalconditions of the different races which have successively adopted thediatonic, the major, and minor scales. The music of the Chinese differsfrom our own, and while it is equally elaborate, it does not quiteplease us, and the same may be said of the music of the Indians, of theancient Egyptians, and others. Undoubtedly our scale is more convenientand conformable to art, setting aside the physiological conditions ofrace, since the notes separated by regular intervals form a morespiritual and independent, in short a more artistic system. 

Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and ofmusic, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effecton man and animals. We must now consider the subject from the mythicalpoint of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts. We knowthat the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and thisfanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in itsexpression. It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneouslyand unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea oremotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as awhole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflectivemanner, in consequence of intellectual development. Among all civilizedpeoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not onlypersonified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified. It iswell known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified theGræco-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted uponit. If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, avague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur orwhisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishticpower, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utteranceof words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to thehealing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calmstorms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes. 

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed forexorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directedagainst men or things. _Kar_ means to bewitch, as in German we have_einem etwas anthun_, in low Latin _facturare_, in Italian_fattucchiere_, and from _Kar_ we have _carmen_, a song or magicformula. The goddess _Carmenta_, who was supposed to watch overchildbirth, derived her name from _carmen_, the magic formula which wasused to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as_Carmenta_, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs weretermed _carmentes_. [38] The Sanscrit _mâya_, meaning magic or illusionand, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from _man_, to think or know; from_man_ we have _mantra_, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, _manthra_is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse _manadh_, incantation or juggling, and _mòniti_ in Lithuanian. The linguisticresearches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that inprimitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, andthe relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identicalforms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. Soalso the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came fromthe same root. 

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to useexorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with thenoise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology, and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the firstrude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms downto our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to PiusIX. By M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water againstthe innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people thecosmic spaces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of allmodern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fancifulpersonification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song, and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories, and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of thetrumpets, as if these contained the spirit of God. The Patagonians, toquote a single instance from among savages, drive away the evil spiritsof diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons arepainted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees, which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing. 

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves, and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughoutPolynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole ofAfrica. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers inAfrica give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such aworship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited byinvisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries ofmother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man. 

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerialspace, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, theirsecret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearanceboth by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, mustnecessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. Theworship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that oftrees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and theeagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought thecelestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common inAmerica, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger ofHurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of theArikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers andimages of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which theywere animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia. [39]It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, andother birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and themagpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus. Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths. [40] Nor are theywanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledgeand of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, ofthe raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament speaksof the worship of groves at Ashtaroth in Canaan, of sacrifices under thegreen trees, and we know that such worship occurred in the Semitic racesof Numidia and elsewhere. 

The simultaneous elaboration of myths relating to trees and birds asobjects of worship, as beneficent or malign powers, and as thetransmitters of oracles, necessarily confirmed and extended thepersonifications of speech and song, and were fused through many sourcesinto a whole, which represented a supernatural agent, endowed with thepower of a mediator, of a good or evil spirit or idol. This ultimatelyled to a universal conception of the efficacy of sound, considered asthe manifestation of occult powers. In this mythically spiritualatmosphere, all peoples formerly lived and in great part still continueto live. 

As the innate impulse led to the entification of speech and of thesinging of men and animals, so it also led to the mythicalpersonification of dancing and instrumental music, in which nearly allpeoples have recognized a demoniac and deliberate power. For thisreason, dancing and the noise of rude instruments generally accompaniedsolemn religious and civil ceremonies, and any remarkable cosmic, astral, or meteorological fact; and in polytheistic times the deities ofpoetry, dancing, and music served to accentuate and classify ideas. 

The instrument became a fetish, and was invested with a mysterious powerresembling that which was supposed to exist in all utterances of theanimal world. Indeed, instruments were, and still are among savages, regarded as sacred and as an integral part of public worship, so thateach had its definite function and office. This need not surprise us, since for such men every object is a fetish, which contains a soul. TheKarens, a tribe in Burmah, believe that their arms, knives, utensils, etc. , have all a _kelap_ or soul, which is termed a _wong_ by thenegroes of West Africa. The same belief is found in a more explicit formamong the Algonquins, the Fijians, and the aforesaid Karens, whosebeliefs are characteristic of all peoples which have reached this stageof mythical conceptions. The different objects belonging to a dead man, and his instruments, arms, and utensils, are laid in his tomb, or burntwith his body, and this is owing to the belief that the souls of theseobjects follow their possessor into another life. The same customunfortunately extends to persons, and there are instances of this evilpractice among relatively civilized nations; the massacre which takesplace at the death of a king of Dahomey is well known, and is revoltingfrom the number of victims and from the mode of their sacrifice. It istherefore easy to imagine the way in which musical instruments and thesounds produced by them were personified, since these manifestationsseemed to approximate more closely to those of animals. 

Fetishtic beliefs concerning magic songs or sounds were, as we haveseen, confirmed by the influence naturally exerted on men and animals intheir normal or abnormal state by rhythmic and musical sounds, howeverrude and unformed they may be. Theophrastus tells us that blowing aflute over the affected limb was supposed to cure gout; the Romansrecited _carmina_ to drive away disease and demons: the old Slav wordfor physician, _vraçi_, comes from a root which means to murmur; inServian, _vrac_ is a physician, and _balii_, an enchanter or physician. The use of incantations as a remedy prevailed among the Greeks inHomer's time. The Atarva-Veda retains the old formula of imprecationagainst disease, and the Zendavesta divides physicians into threeclasses, those which cure with the knife, with herbs, and with magicformulas. Kuhn believes that the Latin word _mederi_ refers to theseproceedings, comparing with it the Sanscrit _méth_, _mêdh_, to oppose orcurse. Pictet traces the meaning of exorciser in another Sanscrit wordfor a physician: _Bhisag_ from _sag_, _sang_, tojurbo gate. 

As the civilization of the historic races advanced, poetry, singing, andmusical instruments became more perfect, and were classified as reflexarts. Among the more intellectual classes the earlier fetishtic ideasconnected with them almost disappeared, while in the case of the commonpeople, the fetish was idealized, but not therefore lost; it persisted, and still persists, under other forms. Polytheism, modified to suit theplace, time, and race, and yet essentially the same, offers us a moreideal form of the arts, each of which was personified as a god, andtaken together they formed a heavenly company, which generated andpresided over the arts. The greatest poets and philosophers of antiquityretained a sincere belief in the inspiration of every creation of art;and this was only a more noble and intellectual form of the first rudeand indefinite conception by which the arts were embodied in a materialshape. 

Of all the Aryan peoples, Greece represented her Olympus in the mostglorious mythical form, set forth by all the arts of description. Fromthe polytheistic point of view, nothing can be æsthetically more perfectthan the myths of Apollo and the Muses, which personify harmony ingeneral, and whatever is peculiar to the arts. Such conceptions, bywhich the arts of speech, song, vocal and instrumental music wereembodied in myths, did not disappear as time went on, but wereperpetuated in another form. Music, which was always becoming moreelaborate, continued to be the highest inspiration, a divine power, anexternal and harmonious manifestation of celestial beings, of eternallife, and the order of the world. This conception was shadowed forth inthe Pythagorean theory of the mythical harmony of the spheres: thatschool regarded the world as a musical system, an harmonious dance ofplanets. 

The fetishtic and mythical origin common to all the arts is clearlyshown by the fact that at a period relatively advanced, but still veryremote, they were formulated in the temple, a symbolic representation oftheir deities, to be found even among the most primitive peoples. Theevolution of the arts towards a more rational conception, divested ofmythical and religious influence, took the form of releasing each artfrom bondage to the temple, and enabling it to assume a more distinct, free, and secular personality, an evolution which was however somewhatdifficult and slow in the case of vocal and instrumental music. Althoughin our own time it has achieved a field for itself, yet in oratorios andecclesiastical music the old conception remains. 

The joys of the Elysian fields and of Paradise, as rewards of the goodand faithful after death, varying in details with the moral and mythicalbeliefs of various peoples, were heightened by concerts and musicalsymphonies, as, owing to natural evolution and the introduction ofOriental ideas, if appears even in the Christian conception of Paradise. For the great majority of believers, earthly music is only an echo ofthat celestial music, and participates in its divine efficacy. In theChristian Paradise there were saints to preside over the instruments, the singing, and music; the visions of the ecstatic, the hallucinationsof the mystic, and the precious memories and images of the dead, areoften combined with sweet and heavenly music, and this completes thefetishtic idea which enters into every phenomenon with which man has todo. For if inanimate objects and instruments were supposed by theprimitive savage to have a soul which followed the shade of the dead maninto the mythical abode beyond the grave, in modern religions theearthly instruments, the fanciful idols of the common people and ofmystics, also resound in Elysium and the heavens, touched and inspiredby choirs of angels and by seraphic powers. 

The deep and sonorous music of bells, of organs, and otherecclesiastical instruments, the chants which resound through vaultedroofs amid the assembled worshippers, ecclesiastical lights, and thefumes of incense, inspire many Christians with a deep and æsthetic senseof the divine presence; and at such moments their vivid faith joinsheaven and earth in the same harmonious emotion. The music, chants, andharmony, combined with other solemn rites, are unconsciously embodiedby us, entering into our hearts as they circle round the church, andthey become the mysterious language of celestial powers. We are oncemore immersed in the world of fancy and of myth, purified however by theevolution it has undergone. This exalted state of mind is alsoexperienced by those who listen to profane music, since the harmony andmodulation of sound, and the expression given to it by the combinationof various instruments, immediately affect the soul of the listener as awhole, without the aid of reflection, and a substantial entity whichdeliberately fulfils its spontaneous cycle of development is thuscreated; in a word, the harmonies they hear are unconsciouslypersonified. Any one who makes a deep and careful analysis of his statesof consciousness in these circumstances will admit the truth of thisassertion. 

The ordinary modes of expression respecting music, which are in use notonly among uneducated people, but among those who are educated andcivilized, display the earlier and innate belief in the mythicalrepresentations of this art. The expressions may be often heard: Whatdivine music! What angelic harmony! This song is really seraphic! andthe like. Such expressions not only bear witness to the old mythicalsentiment, and to the ultimate development of its form, but they alsoindicate the actual sentiments of the speaker. The personifying power ofthe human intelligence is such as to recur spontaneously, even in onewho has abandoned these ancient illusions, if he surrenders himself fora while to his natural instinct. It has often happened that a man wholistens to a melodious and beautiful piece of music is gradually arousedand excited by its sweet power, so as to be carried away into a world ofnew sensations, in which all our sentiments and affections, our deepest, tenderest, and dearest aspirations blossom afresh in our memory, and arefused into and strengthened by these harmonies; we seem to betransported into ethereal regions, and unconsciously surrender ourselvesto their influence. This kind of natural ecstasy is not produced merelyby the physiological effects of music on the organism, by the educationof our sense of beauty, and of our reminiscences of earlier mythicalemotions, but also by the innate impulse which still persists, leadingus to idealize and vivify all natural phenomena, and also our ownsensations. 

But if among the common people, the devout, and occasionally also amongpeople of culture, this highest art is not divested of its mythicalenvironment, which still persists, although in a more ideal form, yet ithas followed and still follows the general evolution of human ideas. Theart of music was identified with song and with the mythical personalityascribed to it, of which these instruments were the extrinsic andharmonious echo; at first, like the other arts, it, was a religiousconception and entity pertaining to the Church, but it graduallyassumed a character of its own, was dissociated from the Church, andbecame a secular art, diverging more and more from the mythical ideaswith which it had before been filled. When instruments increased innumber, and became more perfect in quality; when harmony, strictly socalled, was developed and became more efficient, instrumental musicstill continued to be the servant of vocal music, and was employed togive emphasis, relief, warmth, and colour to the art of song, whichcontinued to be supreme. Song had its peculiar musical character, andthe human voice, alone or in a chorus, might be regarded as the type ofinstrumental music, rendered more effective by the words which expressedthe ideas and sentiments of such songs by harmonizing the various vocalinstruments in accordance with their tones and varying _timbre_. Instrumental music, by the melodious harmony of artificial sounds, hadhowever a vast field peculiar to itself, and an existence independent ofthe human voice. This was and is, in addition to its release from thebonds of myth, the necessary result of the evolution of this highestart. 

Instrumental music, considered in itself, with the symphony as itshighest expression, has been declared by a learned writer to be thegrandest artistic creation, and the ultimate form of art in which thevast cycle of all things human will find its development. A symphony isan architectural construction of sounds, mobile in form, and notabsolutely devoid of a literary meaning. Yet we must not seek ininstrumental music for that which it cannot afford, such as the ideascontained in words. Any one must admit the futility of the attempt togive a dramatic interpretation or language to instrumental music, whoreads the description attempted by Lenz and other writers of some ofBeethoven's sonatas. Instrumental music does not lend itself to theseinterpretations, since it is an art with an independent existence. Wehave observed that in its first development it was used as anaccompaniment to the voice, or associated with the movements of thebody, or with the dance, and consequently had not the independence whichwas gradually achieved, until it culminated in the symphony. Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, nor to the expression ofideas and sentiments, but in it pure music consists, and it is the veryessence of the art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order ofideas and emotions; music is only able to afford musical ideas andsentiments. Instrumental music has its peculiar province as the supremeart which composes its own poems by means of the order, succession, andharmony of sounds; it delights, ravishes, and moves us by exciting theemotional part of our nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas whichmay be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the powerful means at itsdisposal, produce effects of which instruments merely used foraccompanying the voice are incapable. When instrumental music wasreleased from all servitude to other arts, as well as from all positivesense of religious emotions or mythical and symbolic prejudice, thoughtwas able to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself a specialaim and meaning. 

We have thus reached the term of our arduous and fatiguing journey. Weflatter ourselves that a truth has been gleaned from it, and thisconviction is not, due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, but onthe conscientious honesty of our researches, combined with a great yethumble love of truth. Others, who are better endowed with genius andlearning will judge of our success, and we shall willingly submit totheir criticism and correction, so long as they are fair andunprejudiced and only aim at the truth. From animal perception, and themental and physical fact into which it is to be resolved, we have tracedthe root which in man's case grows into a mighty tree; the first germ ofall the mythical ideas of every people upon earth. The subjectivity ofwhich animals and man are spontaneously conscious in every internal andexternal phenomenon, the subsequent entification of ideas, even afterthought has attained to these more rational forms, are the great factorsof myth in all its forms, of superstitions, of religions, and also ofscience. We have reduced all the normal and abnormal sources of thesefanciful ideas to that single source which we have just indicated. Penetrating below the kingdom of man into that of animals, we have therediscovered where the germ was formed, and this completes the doctrine ofevolution and bears witness to its truth. The evolution of myth wentthrough the regular process, by which it was formulated and simplified, until it was resolved into all the sciences and rational arts, and wasthus transformed into a positive science, passing through an ulteriorstage of myth and science before it took the definitive form of a purelyintellectual conception. 

We have seen that the source of myth is the same as that of science, since perception is the condition of both, and the process pursued isidentical, although the subject on which the faculty of thought isexercised is changed. Therefore the problem of myth, which includesevery achievement of the human understanding, and fills all sociology, is transformed into the problem of civilization. Thought has run itscourse in the vast evolution from myth to science, which is renderedpossible by the permanence and duration of a powerful and vigorous race, and hence came the gradual transition from the illusions which involvethe ignorance and servitude of the majority of the people to truth andliberty, since these are released from their earlier wrappings, and thehuman race rises to a sense of its nobility and highest good. We haveconsidered this evolution as a whole and in its details, and have seenthat every achievement of the human understanding passes through thesame phases, and reaches the same goal. We have adduced witnesses toconfirm our own observation from history and ethnography in general, apart from any bias for a religious and scientific system. We believethat in this way alone there can be any true progress in the sciencewhich we have undertaken to consider in this essay. 

The result of the inquiry shows that by a slow yet inevitable evolutionman rose from his primeval condition of error, illusion, and servitudeto his fellow man, to that degree of truth and liberty of which he iscapable: he was so made that he necessarily advanced to the grand heightwhich has been attained by the most laborious and intelligent of thehuman race. He rises higher, and is more sensible of his own dignity, inproportion as he becomes, within the limits of his nature, the artificerof his own greatness and civilization. While many peoples have becomeextinct, others have, owing to their natural incapacity, remained in asavage and barbarous condition, while others again have attained to acertain amount of civilization, but their mental evolution has stoppedshort. Our own race, originally, as I believe, Aryo-Semitic, for it ispossible that these two powerful branches were derived from a commonstock, has persisted without interruption in spite of many adversitiesand revolutions, and has displayed in successive generations theprogress of general civilization, and the goal which man is able toreach in his highest perfection of mind and body, favoured by thephysical and biological conditions of climate. In this race, whetherwith respect to myth and science or to civilization, the theory ofevolution has practically been carried out in all its phases anddegrees. 

Science and freedom were the great factors of civilization, or ofprogress in every kind of conceptions, sentiments, and socialconditions: the first dissolved and destroyed the matrix of myth inwhich the intelligence was at first enveloped, and liberty, which waswholly due to science, made steady progress a matter of certainty. Sothat it may be said that the whole web of human history, so far as itconsists in civilization or the progress of all good things, of thearts, and of every intellectual and material achievement, was theconflict of science, and her offspring freedom, against ignorance, andthe despotism which results from ignorance, under all the social formsin which they are manifested. So that all good and wise men, sincerelovers of the dignity of mankind and of the welfare of society and ofthe individual, ought to feel a deep reverence and love for these twopowers, and to be ready to give up their lives to them. For if--which inthe present condition of the world is an impossible hypothesis--theywere to fail, the human race would be irretrievably lost, since theseare our real liberators from barbarism, which have upheld mankind in thestruggle against it, under whatever name these principles haveappeared. 

I am aware that my theory will meet with many obstinate and zealousopponents in Italy, since I use the simple terms of reason and science, unqualified by other arguments, and I maintain the absolute independenceof free thought. Opposition is the more likely since science and freedomhave been held responsible for sectarian intemperance, for thedisturbances of the lower orders, for the inevitable disasters, thesocial and intellectual aberrations both of the learned and of thecommon peoples: science and freedom are held to have repeated the wilesof the serpent in Eden. But I am not uneasy at the thought of suchopposition, since the progress of the human race has been owing to thefact that men convinced of the truth took no heed of the superstitiousand interested war waged against them, sometimes from ignorance ofthings in general and of the law which governs civilization, sometimesfrom honest conviction. 

The falsity of the accusation so generally made against science andfreedom will appear if we consider that all the benefits we now enjoy, civil, scientific, and material, and which are especially enjoyed by themen who inveigh most strongly against these two factors, are solelyderived from science and freedom. Without them we should be in thecivil, intellectual, and material condition of the kingdom of Dahomey, and in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive peoples. If themisunderstanding of truth or an imperfect science is injurious, it mustnot therefore be rejected. Science is the constant and vigilantgenerator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy ofthe tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whetherit take a religious or secular form. Since sharp instruments arepowerful aids to civilization and material prosperity, they are not tobe altogether set aside because some persons die miserably by them. As Ihave always maintained, and now repeat with still stronger conviction, science and freedom, the ever watchful guardians of the human race, areand must always remain the sole remedies for the evils which threatenus. I do not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combinedwith these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if sciencewere eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitudeand ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws ofscience and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declarescience and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be aswidely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthylife is open to all men. It is a blasphemy against heaven and earth topresume, in the so-called interest of civil order, to keep the majorityof the people in the ignoble servitude of ignorance, and men do notperceive that they thus become ready for any disturbance, and the toolsof rogues and agitators. 

I hope and pray that reverence for science and freedom may everincrease in Italy. It will be an evil day for her if such reverence belost, and she will become with every other people in like case awretched spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to becomethe laughing-stock of every civilized nation. It will be understood thatI do not erect science and liberty into fetishes to be generally adored:they are only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to enable mento practise and not merely to apprehend the truth, which in other wordsis goodness. Science and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach, persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and others; to exerciseevery private and public virtue; to claim only what is due to ourselves, while making the needful sacrifice to the common good; to have a respectfor humanity, and to venerate knowledge only so far as it is combinedwith virtue; to attempt in every way to alleviate the miseries ofothers, to deliver their minds from ignorance and error; to do right forits own sake without coveting rewards in heaven or on earth; to submitto no dictation but that of truth and goodness. 

With these sacred objects in view, whatever may be said to the contrary, we shall, in addition to the ineffable fruition of truth for its ownsake, ever draw nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time willcome when an apparent Utopia shall be actually realized, in accordancewith the mode and process of growing civilization. Not by excesses, tumults, and folly, but by unshaken firmness and tenacity we shallpromote science and freedom. If this modest essay has done anything toshow the necessity of such culture, and in what way science and freedom, and these two factors only, have brought forth fruit throughout thehistory of the human race, my labour will be richly rewarded, and I maysay with satisfaction--_dies non perdidi!_

FOOTNOTES. 

[1] Simrock wrote: "Myth is the earliest form in which the mind ofheathen peoples recognized the universe and things divine. "

[2] _Kumaríla_, in reply to the opponents who inveighed against theimmorality of his gods, wrote that the fable relates how Prajâpati, thelord of creation, violated his own daughter. But what does this signify?Prajâpati is one name for the sun, so called because he is the lord oflight. His daughter Ushas is the dawn, and in declaring that he fell inlove with her, it is only meant that when the sun rises, it follows thedawn. So also, when it is said that Indra seduced Ahalyâ, we are not tosuppose that God committed such a crime, but Indra is the sun, andAhalyâ is the night; and so we may say that the night is seduced andconquered by the morning sun. This, and other instances may be found inMax Müller's _History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature_. Other instancesmight be given. 

[3] Vico writes: "The human mind is naturally inclined to project itselfon the object of its external senses. " And again, "Common speech oughtto bear witness to ancient popular customs, celebrated in times when thelanguage was formed. " So again: "Men ignorant of the natural causes ofthings assign to them their own nature.... " In another place: "Thephysical science of ignorant men is a kind of common metaphysics, bywhich they assign the causes of things which they do not understand tothe will of the gods. " Again: "Ignorant and primitive men transform allnature into a vast living body, sentient of passions and affections. "

[4] See, among other authorities for the most important phenomena ofanimals in their natural associations, the profoundly learned work bythe well-known A. Espinas: _Des sociétés animales: étude de Psychologiecomparée_, Paris, 2nd edit. , 1879. 

[5] I stated in my former essay on the fundamental law of theintelligence in the animal kingdom that philosophy was only the researchinto the psychical manifestations of the animal kingdom, and into thosepeculiar to man, in connection with the respective organisms in whichthey act, and with the estimate of their power as cosmic factors in thegeneral harmony of the forces of the world. 

[6] See, with respect to the primitive unity of the Aryan and Semiticraces, the works of the great philologist, T. G. Ascoli, and others. 

[7] "Although it (psychology), still makes some show, yet the oldpsychology is condemned. Its conditions of existence have disappeared inits new environment. Its methods no longer suffice for the increasingdifficulties of the task and the larger requirements of the scientificspirit. It is constrained to live upon its past. Its wisestrepresentatives have vainly attempted a compromise, loudly assertingthat facts must be observed, and that a large part should be assigned toexperience. Their concessions are unavailing, for however sincerelymeant, they are not actually carried out. As soon as they set to workthe taste for pure speculation again possesses them. Moreover, no reformof what is radically false can be effectual, and ancient psychology is abastard conception, doomed to perish from the contradictions which itinvolves. "--Ribot, _Psychologie Allemande Contemporaine_. Paris, 1879. 

[8] _Della legge fondamentale della intelligenza nel regno animale. _Milano. Dumolard, 1877. 

[9] See, among other works on the subject, _Die Herabkunft des Feuersund des Gottertranks_, by Adalbert Kuhn; and _Croyances et Légendes del'Antiquité_, by A. Maury. 

[10] See Wuttke, _Deutscher Volksaberglauber_; Tylor, _PrimitiveCulture_; Hanusch, Rochholz, and others. 

[11] _The Worship of Animals and Plants_, Part I. _Fortnightly Review_, 1869. The same argument is generally used; see Tylor, _Early History ofMankind_, 1865; Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, 1870; HerbertSpencer, _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1870; Waitz, _Anthropologie derNaturvölker_; Bastian, _Mensch in der Geschichte_. 

[12] See Alger's _Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_. 

[13] Arbrousset, _The Basutos_. 

[14] Muir, _Sanscrit Texts_. 

[15] Burton, _West Africa_; Tylor, _Primitive Culture_. 

[16] Pictet, Origines Indo-Eoropéennes. 

[17] The Hawaïans, for example, have only one term for love, friendship, esteem, gratitude, benevolence, etc. --_aloha_; while they have distinctwords for different degrees in a single natural phenomenon. Thus_aneane_, gentle breeze; _matani_, wind; _pahi_, the act of breathingthrough the mouth; _hano_, breathing through the nose. See Hale's_Polynesian Dictionary_. All peoples have slowly attained to typicalideas, and many are even now in process of formation. Thus, the Finns, Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for _river_, althougheven the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word toexpress _fingers_ in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger, etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for _pine_, _birch_, _ash_, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for _thumb_ wasafterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for thebay in which they lived came to be used for all bays. See Castren, _Vorlesungen über Finnische Mythologie_. This original confusion in thedefinition of scientific ideas, and the successive alternations by whichthey were re-cast, may be gathered from the analysis of language, andfrom facts which still occur among uncultured and ignorant people. Whenthe inhabitants of Mallculo saw dogs for the first time, they calledthem _brooàs_, or pigs. The inhabitants of Tauna also call the dogsimported thither _buga_, or pigs. When the inhabitants of a small islandin the Mediterranean saw oxen for the first time, they called them_horned asses_. 

[18] See Gaussin's _Langue Polynésienne_. 

[19] This process of the evolution of primitive myth and of fetishes, will be more elaborately considered in Chapter VII. , when we come tospeak generally of the historic evolution of science and of myth. Therepetition is not superfluous, since it is necessary for the completeunderstanding of my theory. 

[20] For example, in ancient Roman mythology the _Fons_ was firstadored, then _Fontus_, the father of all sources, and finally _Janus_, asolar myth, the father of Fontus. Janus, as the sun, was the producer ofall water, which rose by evaporation and fell again in rain. 

[21] The Sanscrit word _Vayúnâ_, meaning light, was personified inAurora, and afterwards signified the intelligence, or inward light; asymbolical evolution of myth towards a rational conception. The worshipof heaven and earth, united in a common type, is found among all Aryanpeoples, and among other races. The Germans worshipped _Hertha_, theoriginal form of _Erde_, earth. The Letts worshipped _Mahte_, or_Mahmine_, mother earth. So did the Magyars, and the Ostiaks adored theearth under the Slavonic name of _Imlia_. In China sacrifices to thedivine earth _Heou-tou_ and to the heaven _Tien_ were fundamental rites. In North America the Shawnees invoked earth as their great ancestress. The Comanchi adored her as their common mother. In New Zealand heavenand earth are worshipped as _Rangi_ and _Papi_. (Grey: _PolynesianMythology_. ) The myth of Apollo, light, sun, heat, combined also withserpent worship, is found modified in a thousand ways among all peoples, savages included. See Schwartz, _Urspung der Mythologie_; J. Fergusson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_; Herbert Spencer, _The Origin of AnimalWorship_; Maury, _Religions de la Grèce Antique_. They also appearedamong the Hebrew and kindred races. We find in the book of Job that God"by His spirit had garnished the heavens; His hand has formed thecrooked serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended toimpersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in theGreek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the godwhich agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the windingcourse of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causesthe river water to evaporate, which is symbolized by the dragon'sconflict with Apollo, and the victory of the latter. The monster, asForchhammer observes, is formed during the childhood of Apollo, that is, at a time of year when the sun has not attained his full force. When theserpent's body begins to putrefy, the reptile, in mythical language, takes the new name of Python, or he who becomes putrid. The serpentPython, in accordance with the continual transformations of myth, becomes the Hydra of Lerna, and Hercules, another solar myth, issubstituted for Apollo. This Hydra is transformed again into Typhon, afresh personification of the forces of nature and of the atmosphere, conspiring against heaven. The seven-headed Hydra reappears in anotherform in the Rig-Veda, where the rain cloud is compared to the serpentwhom head rests on seven springs. I have Max Müller's authority for thevigorous alternation of myths in those primitive ages, their extrememobility, their resolution into vivified physical forms, and the slightconsistency of specific types. Aurora and Night are often substitutedfor each other, and although in the original conception of the birth ofApollo and Artemis they were certainly both considered to be children ofthe night, Leto and Latona, yet even so the place or island where, according to the fable, they were born is Ortygia or Delos, or sometimescalled by both names at once. Delos means the land of light, butOrtygia, although the name is given to different places, is Aurora, orthe land of Aurora. (Gerhard, _Griechische Mythologie_. ) Ortygia isderived from _Ortyx_, a quail. In Sanscrit the quail is called_Vartikâ_, the bird which returns, because it is one of the birds toreturn in spring. This name _Vartikâ_ is given in the Veda to one of thenumerous beings which are set free and brought to life by the _Ascini_, that is, by day and night, and _Vartikâ_ is one of several names for thedawn. _Vartikâ's_ story is very short: she was swallowed, but deliveredby the Asvini. She was drawn by them from the wolf's throat. Hence wehave Ortygia, the land of quails, the east; the isle which issuedmiraculously from the floods, where Leto begot his solar twins, and alsoOrtygia, a name given to Artemis, the daughter of Leto, because she wasborn in the east. The _Druh_, crimes and darkness may in theirsubsequent development be contrasted with these ancient myths. Aurora isrepresented by them as driving away the odious gloom of the _Druh_. Thepowers of darkness, the _Druh_ and _Rakshas_ were called _Adeva_, andthe shining gods were called _Adruh_. Kuhn believes that the Germanwords _trügen_ and _lügen_ are derived from _Druh_. 

[22] Michel Bréal: _Hercule et Cacus_. 

[23] We are not here concerned with _a priori_ metaphysics, but with thepsychical and organic dispositions slowly produced by evolution and byconsciousness in its cosmic relations. The organic nature of thesereflex phenomena is due to the fact that in the long course of agestheir exercise has, through physiological evolution, first becomevoluntary or spontaneous, and then unconscious. 

[24] The double meaning is projected into objects. The primitive meaningof _dexter_ was _fitting_, _capable_, and it was then applied to theside of the material body. Sansc. _dacs_, to hasten. Ascoli, _Studilinquistici_. 

[25] A careful reader will not hold this repetition to be unnecessary, since it explains from another point of view the fundamental fact ofperception and its results. It is here considered with reference to thethree elements which constitute this fact. 

[26] This great truth was observed by Vico, the most advanced of modernpsychologists, in his views of primitive psychology. 

[27] In Chinese, for example, and in many other languages, there aremany words to indicate the tail of a fish, a bird, etc. , but no word fora tail in general. Even an intelligent savage does not accuratelydistinguish between the subjective and the objective, between theimaginary and the real; this is the most important result of ascientific education. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_; Steinhauser, _Religiondes Nègres_; Brinton, _Myths of the World_. The objective form ofconceptions and emotions, which are subsequently transformed intospirits, are found among the superior races of our day, in the Christianhierarchy of angels, in popular tradition, and in spiritualism. 

[28] Fetishism may be observed in the civilized Aryan races, but stillmore plainly among the Chinese and cognate races, among the Peruvians, Mexicans, etc. Castren, in his _Finnische Mythologie_ says that we findextraordinary instances of the lowest stage of fetishism among theSamoeides, who directly worship all natural objects in themselves. TheFinns, who are comparatively civilized heathens, have attained to ahigher phase of belief. But numerous examples, in every part of theworld, will occur to the intelligent reader. 

[29] _Numen_ really means the manifestation of power, from _nuere_. Varro makes Attius say: "Multis nomen vestrum numenque ciendo. " InLucretius we have _mentis numen_, and also _Numen Augusti_. Aninscription discovered by Mommsen runs as follows:

 "P. Florus, etc. Dianae numine jussu posuit. "

[30] The illustrious Du Bois Reymond delivered a lecture a few yearsago, in which he made it clear that the Semitic idea of one Almighty Godled to the later and modern conception of the unity of forces and therational interpretation of the system of the universe. This importanttestimony of so able a man confirms the theory set forth some years agoin the work of which I have reproduced a part in the text. 

[31] Some Jewish Christians of the Semitic race took refuge in adistrict of Syria, and retained their primitive faith without furtherdevelopment, under the name of Nazarenes or Ebionites. In the fourthcentury, Epiphanius and Jerome found these primitive Christians constantto the old dogma, while Aryan Christianity had made gigantic strides, both in its ideas and social organization. Among the Semites, even whenthey have partially accepted the dogma, it was and is unproductive. 

[32] Aristot. , _De anima_; Cic. , _De legibus_; Diog. , Lae. 

[33] A new thought entered my mind, whence others, differing from thefirst, arose; and as I roamed from one to another I was tempted to closemy eyes, and thought was changed into a dream. 

[34] See the theory by Lotze of local signs in the formation of the ideaof space, completed and modified by Wundt and others. 

[35] Sometimes the name of a person, or of some part of the human form, has been bestowed on a natural object without reference to theiranalogy, but in this case the epithet has the converse effect of leadingus to imagine that it possesses the features or limbs of the human form. And this is of equal value for our present inquiry. 

[36] While these sheets were passing through the press, I was informedof Berg's work on the Enjoyment of Music. ("_Die Lust an der Musik. _"Berlin, 1879. ) Berg, who is a realist, inquires what is the source ofthe pleasure we experience from the regular succession of sounds, whichhe holds to be the primary essence of music. He finds the cause in someof Darwin's theories and researches. Darwin observes that the epoch ofsong coincides with that of love in the case of singing animals, birds, insects, and some mammals; and from this Berg concludes that primitivemen, or rather anthropoids, made use of the voice to attract theattention of females. Hence a relation was established between singingand the sentiments of love, rivalry, and pleasure; this relation wasindissolubly fused into the nature by heredity, and it persisted evenafter singing ceased to be excited by its primitive cause. This appliesto the general sense of pleasure in music. We have next to inquire whythe ear prefers certain sounds to others, certain combinations toothers, etc. Berg holds that it depends on negative causes, that the eardoes not select the most pleasing but the least painful sounds. Herelies on Helmholtz's fundamental theory of sounds. It seems to me thatalthough Helmholtz's theory is true, that of Berg is erroneous, since heis quite unable to prove his assertion that the effect produced by musicis a negative pleasure. Moreover, the Darwinian observations to which hetraces the origin of the enjoyment of music, not only rely on anarbitrary hypothesis, but do not explain why males should derive anyadvantage from their voice, nor what pleasure and satisfaction femalesfind in it. And this, as Reinach justly observes in the _RevuePhilosophique_, is the point on which the problem turns. 

Clark has recently suggested in the American Naturalist another theoryworthy of consideration. A musical sound is never simple but complex; itconsists of one fundamental sound, and of other harmonic sounds at closeintervals; the first and most perceptible intervals are the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Each of the simple sounds which, taken together, constitute the whole sound, causes the vibration of a special group offibres in the auditory nerve. This fact, often repeated, generates akind of organic predisposition which is confirmed by heredity. If fromany cause one of these groups is set in motion, the other groups willhave a tendency to vibrate. Therefore, if a singing animal, weary ofalways repeating the same note, wishes to vary its height, he willnaturally choose one of the harmonic sounds of the first. The ultimateorigin of the law of melody in organized beings is therefore only thesimultaneous harmony, realized in sounds, of inorganic nature. Thistheory is confirmed by the analysis which has been often made of thesong of some birds: the intervals employed by these are generally thesame as those on which human melody is founded, the 8th, 5th, 4th, and3rd major. Reinach, however, observes that Beethoven, who in hisPastoral Symphony has reproduced the song of the nightingale, thecuckoo, and the quail, makes their melodies to differ from thoseassigned to them by Clark. 

The method and direction of the theories proposed by these authors areexcellent; but I do not believe that they have discovered the realorigin of the sense of music and dancing. I think that the suggestiongiven in the text, although it requires development, is nearer thetruth. Consciousness of the great law by which things exist in aclassified form seems to me to be the cause of the sense of graduatedpleasure, which constitutes the essence of all the arts. 

[37] See Beauquier's "_Philosophie de la Musique_. "

[38] Serv. On the Æneid. What the oracles sang was termed _carmentis_:the seers used to be called _carmentes_, and the books in which theirsayings were inscribed were termed _carmentorios_. 

[39] See Girard de Rialle: _Mythologie Comparée_. Vol. I. Paris, 1878. Avaluable and learned work. 

[40] The intense character of the worship of groves in Italy appearsfrom Quintilianus, who says, in speaking of Ennius: "_Ennium sicutsacros vetustate lucos adoremus_. "

INDEX. 

 A priori ideas, their definition, 7, 8; the source of myth, 9 Abstraction, unconscious and explicit, 138; its degrees, 139-150. Æschylus, 110 Alger on the doctrine of a future life, 74 Animals and man, their intimate connection, 19; their embryogenic evolution, 19; their complete identity, 22; their self-consciousness, 50; the projection of themselves on other animals and phenomena, 51, 53, 54, 55, 161; experiments on, 60-64. Animation of extrinsic phenomena, 28, 58-65, 111, 125-128 Anthropomorphism, 90, 97, 106, 181 Apprehension, act of, 116; by animals, 118; psychical law of, 119; three elements of, 120; by a man, 122-127 Arbrousset on the Basutos, 75 Aristotle, his teaching, 231 Aryan family, its primitive unity with the Semitic, 31; its mythology, 179, 197, 219; its conception of Christianity, 184-192

 Bridgman, Laura, 207

 Christ, the apotheosis of man, 187 Christianity, its diffusion, 178-192; its anthropomorphism, 181

 Dead, the worship of, 15 Demoniacal beliefs, 77, 78, 79 Descartes, 234 Doric school, 211 Dreams, 253, 259, 270

 Entification, the term, 153; of speech, 310 Eleatic school, 211 Epicarmos, 109 Evolution, of monotheism, 151; of the faculties of myth and science, 157; of language, 201-204; of writing, 209; of music, 295-303 Experiments on animals, 60-64

 Fetish worship, 78, 94-97, 163, 168, 291, 311 Finns, their mythology, 101

 Galileo, 235 Greece, her philosophy, 210-217; her mythology, 99, 130

 Hallucinations, 272, 281 Hawaïans, their concrete language, 86

 Ionic school, 210

 Kant, 233

 M'Lennan on the worship of plants and animals, 73 Man, his intimate connection with animals, 19-23; his psychical force, 26; estimated according to his absolute value, 35; his power of reflection, 23, 52, 163; his connection with the universal system, 36 Mannhardt, his _Deutsche Mythologie_, 100 Max Müller, his theory of myth, 11, 99 Mara, incubus, 77 Monotheism, not the first intuition of man, 104 its evolution, 151 Multiplicity of souls, believed by various races, 165 Myth, the spontaneous form of human intelligence, 1; its persistence, 3, 33, 136; its germ interchangeable with that of science, 9, 131, 132; its problem unsolved, 12; its gradual disappearance, 33; its constant forms, 40; its origin in reflex power, 91; its second form, 95; its evolution into science, 113; its various stages, 160-174 Mythology, Indian, 10; Finnish, 101; Vedic, Greek, and Latin, 130, 198; its historic results, 175-192; Aryan, 179, 196, 219; Pagan, 184 Music, its evolution, 295-305

 New Zealand, original meaning of words, 89

 Perception, primitive human, 69; identical in man and in animals, 133; the product and cause of myth, 153 Personification, by animals, 66; by man, 80; of internal perceptions, 81; of homologous types, 81; of specific types, 84; Pindar, 199 Platonic school, 220-230 Polynesian language, 89 Polytheism, its origin, 98 Pythagorean school, 214-217

 Reflex power in man, 23, 52; its slow growth, 163 Ribot, his _Psychologie Allemande_, 39 Roman mythology, 95

 Sanscrit roots, 201 Science, a factor of intellectual life, 4; its germ interchangeable with myth, 9, 131, 132; as a whole, revealed in its several parts, 35; its effect on myth, 112, 194 Semitic idea, 177; race, 191 Social life based on the order of nature, 38 Societies, the genesis of, 30 Sociology, its foundation in the study of myth, 41, 45 Sophocles, 110 Spencer, his Sociology, 14

 Tahiti, 89 Tasmanians, their customs, 42-44 Thales, his teaching, 212 Transmigration of souls, 166 Tylor on Primitive Culture, 14, 16; his theory of animism, 16

 Veda, the personification of phenomena, 71; Vedic mythology, 76, 98, 130, 219; Vedic hymn, 217 Victory of the natural sciences, 237

 Zeller on monotheism, 108

 THE END.