Myth and Science Part 3

Of this the testimony remaining in the most ancient verses of the first Veda is a sufficient proof. At the epoch of their composition the human race had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet we find that psychical human life was transfused and projected into everything: man personified each phenomenon and force of nature in accordance with his own image.

For example, fire in general was personified and identified with humanity in _Agni_; even the shape taken by the flames, all which was required to light the fire, the whole process of the sacrifice, even the doors of the altar-railing, the prayer and oblation to the G.o.d.[9]

We also learn from the solemn and ancient songs of the Rig-Veda that all terrestrial, meteorological, and celestial phenomena were more or less vaguely personified. These facts recur in all the earliest recollections of civilized peoples. If we turn from these to observe the savage races of modern times, and the most barbarous tribes still extant in continents and isles far removed from culture and science, we shall again find the same beliefs. The range of absurd personifications, degenerating into the most trivial and varied forms of fetish wors.h.i.+p, becomes wider, and its influence deeper, in proportion to the rude and barbarous condition of the tribe or stock in which they appear.

Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized European nations of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lower cla.s.ses, both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion to the ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who have really studied the intellectual conditions of all cla.s.ses in our time.[10]

In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, and even at a later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak, and when it approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions of animals, such a projection of self and personification of surrounding objects is evident to all. For this reason a child transforms all which it seizes or plays with into a person or animal, and when alone with them 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. So strong is the childish instinct, or, as I might say, the law of its being to project and transfuse itself into objects, that it is apt to speak of itself in the third person. A child seldom says, "I will," or "I am hungry," but "Louis wants," "Louis is hungry," or whatever his name may be. This phenomenon reappears in the second childhood of old age, when the power of reflection is weakened, and there is a reversion to the primitive animal condition. The same phenomenon also occurs in idiots, in whom there is a morbid defect of reflective power.

This fact of the personification of the objects of perception is therefore evident and constant in the primitive man of civilized races, in the barbarous condition of modern savages, in the ignorant mult.i.tude, and in children--intellectual conditions which approach most closely to the condition of animals--and conversely it is plain that it belongs in the highest degree to the intellectual life of animals, and that myth, into which such a personification and animation of things must be resolved, has its original and innate necessity in animal life. We think that this is a new scientific fact, which throws much light on the history 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, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess."[11]

This fact, indicated by M'Lennan and by all who have devoted themselves to anthropological researches with respect to the origin of religions, and of myth in general, is now recognized as certain; but it seems to me that the interpretation and explanation of it are altogether implete.

They suppose it to be simply the effect of psychological laws as far as man is concerned, whereas we have shown that it forms, in the ultimate causes by which it is produced, the very essence of animal perception.

They ascribe it to man as a rational hypothesis to explain the primitive order of things, whereas it is a spontaneous and primary intuition of the animal intelligence.

Alger, although he is also mistaken as to the true causes of myth in general, expresses himself better when he a.s.serts that the brain of a savage is always dominated by the idea that all objects whatsoever have a soul precisely similar to that of man. The custom of burning and burying various things with the dead body was, he thinks, in many cases prompted by the belief that every such object had its _manes_.[12]

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

The real origin of reflection is not to be found in what may be called the mythical creation of nature, which is the necessary result of the spontaneity of the intelligence, both in man and animals; it is developed after long duration of barbarism and ignorance. M'Lennan and others have shown how the era of reflection and hypothesis begins in the evolution of human intelligence. Sekesa, an intelligent Kaffir, said to Arbrousset,[13] "For twelve years I have shepherded my flock. It was dark, and I sat down upon a rock and asked myself such questions as these, sad questions, since I was unable to answer them. Who made the stars? What supports them? Do the waters never grow weary of flowing from morning to evening, from evening to morning, and where do they find rest? Whence come the clouds, which pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s, and dissolve in rain? Who sends them? Our diviners certainly do not send rain, since they have no means of making it, nor do I see them with my eyes going up to 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 I know how the corn grows. Yesterday there was not a blade of gra.s.s in my field, and to-day it is green; who gave to the earth the wisdom and power to bring forth?" Again, there is a pa.s.sage in the Rig-Veda, in which it is said, "Where do the fixed stars of heaven which we see by night go by day?"

It is in this intellectual condition that ignorant and savage man really begins the spontaneous yet reflective research into the causes of things, and it is in this condition only that he hypothetically interprets the order of phenomena through myths, which have then become _secondary_, and are no longer _primitive_. The true origin of the primitive myth which animates and personifies the universe is not to be found in this condition; its origin is of much earlier date in the history of man, and indeed it has its roots, as we have shown, in animal life.

Certainly when we compare the two intellectual periods, there is a wide difference between the age in which Sekesa could be perplexed by such inquiries, and that of more primitive peoples, which still believe without question in the soul and informing spirit or shade of stones, sticks, weapons, food, water, springs--in short, of every object and phenomenon. This is still the case with the Algonquins, the Fijians, the Karens, the Caribbees, the negroes of Guinea, the New Zealanders, the Tongusians, the Greenlanders, the Esthonians, the Australians, the Peruvians, and a host of other savage and barbarous peoples. They not only animate and personify material objects, but even diseases and their remedies.

The incubus, for example, termed _Mara_ in Northern mythology, was the spirit which tormented sleepers. This is the _Mar_ of the German proverb: _Dich hat greitten der Mar_. The word is derived from _Mar_, a horse, and becomes _nightmare_ in English, _Cauchemar_ in French, [Greek: Ephialtes] in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another. So with epilepsy, which signifies the act of being seized by any one; it was, like all nervous diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and those afflicted by it were supposed to be possessed. Insanity was regarded in the same way, as we see in the Bible where Saul's melancholy is said to be an evil spirit sent from G.o.d. A furious madman was supposed to have been carried off by a demon, and in Persia the insane were said to be G.o.d's fools. In Tahiti they were called _Eatooa_, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were wors.h.i.+pped as men into whom a divinity had entered. In German the _plica polonica_ is called _Alpzopf_, or hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that the malign beings which animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the a.s.saults of evil spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the most absurd sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their _manitu_, in order to be safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by fear rather than by grat.i.tude.

Tanner mentions, in his "Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians,"

that he once heard a convalescent patient reproved for his imprudence in exposing himself to the air, since his shade had not altogether come back to abide within him. For this purpose, and in conformity with such ideas, when the sorcerer _Malgaco_ wishes to cure a sick man, he makes a hole 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 is supposed to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil spirit of sickness. The Greek-word, _prophylake_ signifies the arrangements of outposts. _Agonia_ is the hottest moment of conflict, and _krisis_ the decisive day of battle, as we see in Polybius, liii., c. 89. Medicine was from the earliest times confounded with magic, which is only the primitive form of the conception of nature. The Aryan rulers in India in ancient times believed that the savage races were autochthonic workers of magic who were able to a.s.sume any form they pleased.[14] The negro priests of fetish wors.h.i.+p believe that they can p.r.o.nounce on the disease without seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anything which belongs to him.[15] The superst.i.tion of the evil eye recurs in Vedic India, as well as among many other peoples. In the Rig-Veda the wife is exhorted not to look upon her husband with an evil eye. There was the same belief among the ancient Greeks, and it is also found in the _oculus fascinus_ of the Romans, and the German _boses Auge_. The early German _Rito_, or fever, was a spirit (_Alb_) which rode upon the sick man. A pa.s.sage in the Rig-Veda states that demons a.s.sume the form of an owl, c.o.c.k, wolf, etc.[16] Such was the primitive att.i.tude of the transfusion of individual psychical life into things, and consequently of general metamorphosis. Kuhn identifies the Greek verb [Greek: iaomai]

with the Sanscrit _yavayami_, to avert, and in the Rig-Veda this verb is used in connection with _amiva_, disease; so that it was necessary to drive away the demon, as the cause of sickness. A physician, according to the meaning of the old Sanscrit word, was the exorciser of disease, the man who fought with its demon. We find the practice of incantations as a remedy for disease in use among the ancient Greeks, the Romans, and all European nations, as well as among savages in other parts of the world.

The objects and phenomena obvious to perception are therefore supposed by primitive man, as well as by animals, to be conscious subjects in virtue of their const.i.tution, and of the innate character of sensation and intelligence. So that the universal personification of the things and phenomena of nature, either vaguely, or in an animal form, is a fundamental and necessary fact, both in animals and in man; it is a spontaneous effect of the psychical faculty in its relations to the world. We think that this truth cannot be controverted, and it will be still more clearly proved in the course of this work.

Such a fact, considered in its first manifestation and in the laws which originally govern it in animals, and in man as far as his animal nature is concerned, a.s.sumes a fresh aspect, and is of two-fold force when it is studied in man after he has begun to reason, that is, when his original psychical faculty is doubled. The animation and personification of objects and phenomena by animals are always relative to those of the external world; that is, animals transfuse and project themselves into every form which really excites, affects, alarms, allures, or threatens them; and the spontaneous psychical faculty which such a vivifying process always produces necessarily remains within the sphere of their external perceptions and apprehensions. In a word, they live in the midst of the objective nature, which they animate with consciousness and will, and their internal power is altogether absorbed in this external transformation.

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

When this spontaneous faculty of man has been developed within him, his observation of the similarities, a.n.a.logies, differences, and ident.i.ties which are to be found in all things and phenomena, in sentiments and emotions, necessarily induces him to collect and simplify them in special forms, to combine these various intuitions in a h.o.m.ologous type; this type corresponds with an external or internal congeries of similar, identical, or a.n.a.logous images or ideas, out of which the species and genera of the intellect are formed. In this way, for instance, arose the mental cla.s.sification 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, the generic conceptions of all natural phenomena, as well as of psychical sentiments and emotions.

Animals, for example, perceive a given plant or tree, as a thing presented at the moment to their individual consciousness, and by infusing this consciousness into the object in question, they animate and personify it, especially if its fruits or leaves are attractive, or if it is moved by the wind. We have seen that all things are necessarily personified by animals, for if they meet with any material obstacle, they do not ascribe the sudden impediment to the impenetrability of matter, or to superior force, but rather to an intentional opposition to their aim or progress. We often see that animals not only exert mechanical force to break through or destroy the material barriers intended to keep them in confinement, but they act in such a way as to show rage and fury towards a hostile and malevolent subject.

To return to our example; if an animal vivifies and animates some special plant specially presented to him, he does not go beyond this vivifying act; when he goes on his way, and no longer perceives the concrete phenomenon, the animation at the same time disappears and ceases. Man, however, by means of the cla.s.sifying faculty we have noticed, after repeatedly perceiving various plants similar or a.n.a.logous to the first, is able by spontaneous reflection, and by the automatic exercise of his intelligence, to refer them to a single type, and in this way the specific idea of a tree is evolved in his mind and fixed in his memory. The same thing gradually takes place with respect to flowers, animals, springs, rivers, and the like. These ideal types are not wholly wanting even among the most barbarous peoples, in the most concrete and dissimilar languages, since without them any language would be impossible.

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

For this reason the process of necessary and spontaneous personification is at first two-fold; namely, the personification of individual and external 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, specific types, or the cla.s.sification of things, were not ordered and determined with scientific precision; they were undefined and confused, running more or less into each other, so as to be easily lost, or constantly diverging more widely. This internal movement of images and undefined conceptions was a stimulus to active and mobile life, and an abundant source of vivid or obscure myths, and of the sentiments corresponding to them.

These specific primordial types were openly referred to external phenomena, and were based upon the life of nature, since rational or scientific ideas had not yet made their appearance, or only very spa.r.s.ely. In any case, the reality of these types and their animation are facts, as all the earliest records attest, whether among civilized or savage races.

The personification of specific types, which are in general the most obvious--those, namely, which refer to animals, vegetables, minerals, and meteors, things useful or injurious to man--is the origin of the subsequent belief in fetishes, genii, demons, and spirits, and these led to the vivification of the whole of nature, her laws, customs, and forces. Man's personification of himself, his projection of himself as a living being into external things, was the result of reflection. In fact, the impersonation of the winds took place in very early times, since they most frequently and universally excited the attention and anxiety of man and animals, whether beneficially or otherwise, and by their mechanical action, their whistling and other sounds, they readily struck the mobile fancy of primitive men, and also of savage and ignorant peoples in our day.

Just as the act of respiration is a faint wind which goes on whether in sleep or wakefulness, and only ceases with death, so it was with the phenomenon of nature which attracted their attention, and it was invested by them with life. Since the winds of nature had already been animated and personified by a spontaneous act, so our inmost being was certainly first considered as material, and impersonated as breath and air.

This appears from the roots and words of all languages; the Hebrew _nephesh, nshamah, ruach_--soul or spirit--are all derived from the idea of breathing. The Greek word [Greek: anemos], the Latin word _animus_, signify breathing, wind, soul, and spirit. In the Sanscrit _atman_ we have 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 in the Aryan tongues comes from the root _c'i_, and originally meant to collect, to comprehend, in German, _begreifen_, becomes in the Polynesian language, _to talk in the belly_. It is, therefore, an evident historical fact that man first personified natural phenomena, and then made use of these personifications to personify his inward acts, his psychical ideas and conceptions. This was the necessary process, since animals were prior to man, temporally and logically, and external idols were formed before those which were internal and peculiar to himself.[17]

It is true that man unconsciously, that is, without deliberation, not only animates external things and their specific types, but he also, by an exercise of memory, animates the psychical image of these special perceptions. If, for example, the primitive man personifies a stream of water which he has seen to issue from a fissure of the rocks, and ascribes to it voluntary and intentional motion, he also animates the image which reappears in his sphere of thought, and conceives it to have a real existence. He does not merely believe it to be a psychical and what may be called a photographic repet.i.tion of the thing, but rather to have an actual, concrete existence. Thus, among all ancient peoples, 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 it were, his inmost essence, and for this reason the spirits of the dead were in several languages called shades.

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

The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any pa.s.sion, and how at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and reply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absent persons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated. The images of these persons and things are as it were present and in agitation within him; and these images, in the fervour of emotion and under the stimulus of excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented to the inward psychical consciousness.

In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowly developed, the animation and personification effected by his mind and consciousness were threefold: first, of the objects themselves as they really existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in the memory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images.

There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are no longer conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which is partly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words and of their roots in all languages. The meaning of these, which is now for the most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material and concrete fact, or some gesture. This is true of cla.s.sic tongues, as is well known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of all savage 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 as the leaves of a tree. _Rau_ is also now used for _sound_, an expression which includes in itself the conception of _all_, but which originally signified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt as such in the ancient speech in which it was used in this sense. So again in Tahiti _huru, ten_, originally signified _hairs; rima, five_, was at first 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_. _Ruku_, which had the same original meaning in New Zealand, now expresses the act of diving. The Polynesian word _toro_ at first indicated anything in the position of a hand with extended fingers, whence comes the Tahitian term for an ox, _puaatoro, stretching pig_, in allusion to the way in which an ox carries his head. _Too_ (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 or spirit, from _vai_, to remain in a rec.u.mbent position, and _rua_, two; that is, _to be in two places_, since they believed that in sickness or in dreams the soul left the body.[18] Throughout Polynesia _moe_ also signifies a rec.u.mbent 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 during sleep; from _naku_, to take in the fingers.

We can understand something of the mysterious exercise of human intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We see how everything a.s.sumed a concrete, living form, and can better understand the conditions we have established as necessary in the early days of the development of human life. This att.i.tude of the intelligence has been often stated before, but in an incomplete way; the primitive and the subsequent myths have been confounded together, and it has been supposed that myth was of exclusively human origin, whereas it has its roots lower down in the vast animal kingdom. We hope, therefore, that it will be granted that we have given the true and full exposition of myth.

Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the things and phenomena of nature, of their images and specific types, were the great source whence issued superst.i.tions, mythologies, and religions, and also, as we shall presently see, the scientific errors to be found among all the families of the human race.

For the development of myth, which is in itself always a human personification of natural objects and phenomena in some form or other, the first and necessary foundation consists, as we have abundantly shown, in the conscious and deliberate vivification of objects by the perception and apprehension of animals. And since this is a condition of animal perception, it is also the foundation of all human life, and of the 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 various phenomena, and his att.i.tude towards this internal world does not differ from his att.i.tude towards that which is external. He personifies the images, ideas, and conceptions by transforming them into living subjects, just as he had originally personified cosmic objects and phenomena.

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

The deliberate intention to be beneficent or malign, useful or injurious, which is ascribed to any external object, thus transforming it 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 physical evolution of the species. It is for the same reason also proper to man, in whose case it first appears in the indefinite multiplication of fetishes, whatever may be the object venerated, and whatever the form, aspect, and character ascribed to it. This const.i.tutes the primordial impulses, both of religious consciousness and of the spontaneous solution of the problems of the world among all peoples.

While the animation of special objects by animals generates actual myths, yet it only occurs in the acts of momentary and transient perception; they are born and die, they arise and are dissolved in the very act of production, and they neither have nor can have retrospective or future influence on the animal. The world, its laws and phenomena, form for him one universal and persistent myth, so far as he feels himself constrained to vivify and transform them into subjects actuated by will. This consequently is the constant and normal condition of his conscious life with relation to things, and it leads to nothing further; his mental att.i.tude with respect to myth does not vary from his physical att.i.tude towards the atmosphere, the food and water which nourish and sustain him, and the exercise of his functions are in conformity with it, 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 content with this normal and fugitive effect of apprehending the personified object 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 mind even when it is absent and remote, and it recurs in the vivid and personified form in which it was first perceived.

Hence come the following psychical facts. On the one side the actual object which he has a.s.sumed to be invested with the faculty of will still remains to exert the same external influence; on the other, its personified image is also present to his mind, so that he can regard it with the vivid quickness of the fancy, and invest it, by its manifold relations to other and various phenomena, with efficacy, force, and mysterious purposes. It follows from this inward action and emotion that while in the case of animals the beneficent or malignant object is only invested with life at the moment of perception, and has no more efficacy after its disappearance, man on the contrary retains the same personified object in his memory, and recalls it at pleasure, so that its special efficacy persists, and it continues to be the object of hopes and fears either in the past or in the future. In a word, the natural myth of animals is transformed by man into a fetish, whether this object or its corresponding image in his mind be superst.i.tiously regarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible.

This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetis.h.i.+sm among all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and conscious life to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears, the adoration, the guardians.h.i.+p of, or abhorrence for some given species of stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual natural object. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms, had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of the fetish, the internal duplication of the external animation and personification of objects.

It is evident that fetis.h.i.+sm in its earliest and most primitive form was always inspired by special objects, since the external perception of animals and of man is special and concrete. But we have seen how our intelligence, by a spontaneous and innate process, was led to form types from the immense variety of special things and phenomena, and these types are the specific forms of such things as are alike, a.n.a.logous, or identical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of the psychical faculty, which is not inconsistent with the fundamental process of animal intelligence, man animates and personifies these specific types, just as he had animated the special perceptions whence they were generated 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 the animal kingdom. Instead of investing the special fetish of a given object with superst.i.tious fear, he now adores or fears all objects of the same species, or which, in the imperfect cla.s.sification of primitive times, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a common example, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the first form of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and of the snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He next supposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a single power, manifesting itself in this shape in various times and places. In the same way, according to the natural evolution of this law, the individual, concrete plant will no longer be the fetish or object of myth, but all those of the same species, or which nearly resemble it. It will no longer be a given spring, but all springs, no longer one particular grove, cave, or mountain, but all groves, caves, and mountains; in a word, the species will be subst.i.tuted for the individual, the type for the fact.[20]

In this second stage to which myth spontaneously attained, it must be observed that all fetishes could not be reduced to a specific or typical image, since in nature, and in ages and conditions when the intelligence was still rude and uncultured, all phenomena or objects could not a.s.sume a specific form, but were still regarded as individuals. In this cla.s.s are the sun, the moon, certain stars and constellations, as well as some other natural phenomena, volcanoes, hot springs, and the like; since these were unique within the range of country inhabited by the savage hordes, they could not become specific. Hence, while all other objects and their respective fetishes followed the natural evolution into a specific type, and through these into the simplest form of polytheism, the special fetish which referred to unique things or phenomena remained special, although it was modified, as we shall see, so as to harmonize with the aspect commonly a.s.sumed by other typical images.

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

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