rational process of the interpretation of things have their origin and are evolved in us by the duplication of our faculties, such a function, which is du

m; science has already put forth its first germ. But the reasoning and simply animal faculties were so mingled, that for a long while they were confounded together in their effects and results, as well as in their natural methods.

ception of extrinsic things and phenomena occurs after the same manner and in accordance with the same physiological and psychical laws. By the intrinsic law of animal nature, as it is adapted to his cosmic environment, we see the cause and necessity of the transfusion an

are instantaneous, and correspond with the real constitution of the function; analysis and reflex attention necessarily and slowly succeed to this primitiv

an and animals alike is projected on the objects or phenomena perceived, and they see them transformed into living, deliberating subjects. In this way the world and all which it contains appears to be a congeries of beings, actuated by will and consciousness, and powerful for good or e

their primitive savage conditions, we shall find, the further we go back, the more vivid, general, and multiform will the mythological interpretation and conception

osition the human race had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet we find that psychical human life was t

e shape taken by the flames, all which was required to light the fire, the whole process o

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 o

ngers in the lower classes, both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion to the ignorance and want of c

ys 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

hildren-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 su

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

savage is always dominated by the idea that all objects whatsoever have a soul precisely similar to that of man. The custom of burning an

ing 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

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 pass and re-pass, and dissolve in rain? Who sends them? Our diviners certainly do not send rain, since they have no means of making it, no

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 an

l 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 Ne

cted 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 God. A furious madman was supposed to have been carried off by a demon, and in Persia the insane were said to be God's fools. In Tahiti they were called Eatooa, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men into whom a divinity had entered. In German

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 assume any form they pleased.[14] The negro priests of fetish worship believe that they can pronounce on the disease without seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anything which belongs to him.[15] The superstition 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 b?ses Auge. The early German Rito, or fever, was a spirit (Alb)

nsation 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 ma

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 su

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 on

ms, 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 and genera of the intellect are formed. In this way, for instance, arose the mental class

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 op

the classifying faculty we have noticed, after repeatedly perceiving various plants similar or analogous 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

cific 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

ensations and emotions. It must be observed that at this early stage of man's history, specific types, or the classification of things, were not ordered and determined with scientific precision; they were undefined and confused, running more or less into each o

nce rational or scientific ideas had not yet made their appearance, or only very sparsely. In any case, the reality of

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

phenomenon of nature which attracted their attention, and it was invested by them with life. Since the winds of nature had already been anima

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 fac

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 repetition of the thing, but rathe

f 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, a

k 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

d 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 a

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 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, puaátoro, stretching pig, 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

everything assumed 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 attitude of the intelligence has been often stated before, but in an incomplete way; the primitive and th

pecific types, were the great source whence issued superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and also

f 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 h

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

ial, 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 multip

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, an

t 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 benefic

ther 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 mem

adoration, the guardianship 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, th

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, analogous, or identical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of t

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 n

ed as individuals. In this class 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 r

es; 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 rega

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 ima

l conception, personified in its turn, next represents a unique power, of which all the individual and accidental springs are only manifestations. Thus it is clear that man, in the personification of this type or specific conception, is no longer bound to the actual form of the special object which first represented it, but he m

ages the humanization and personification of specific types. These afterwards diverge into specifications which vary with the number of phenomena that are united in a single idea or conceptio

can, starting from the Rig-Veda, follow their splendid development among Gr?co-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it may also be tr

quent interweaving of myths and duplication of images, she kept and guarded the souls of new-born infants. This early conception by progressive specification gave birth to those of the Nornas, of Valkuria, Undine, and others. The primitive fetish, or fetishes of waters out of which the specific type, afterwards personified, was evolved and formed, were at first so bound to the concrete form of the phenomenon, that although animated, it could not assume a human aspect and form. But when the specific type which ideally represented the p

pecial instances, extended even to the form of his arms, his bow and arrows, and to the place of his habitation at Delphos. He was a

h his great bow of fire sends forth trees as darts against his enemies; while fighting, he stands erect upon a

erbolt, and leads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. This myth gradually assumed in the Vedic hymns more splendid and artistic forms, and more amazing personifications. The original motive of the myth, as it has been interpreted even by Indian commentators, was the storm with all its alternations which bursts forth w

en and to their acquaintance with cosmic facts in those very early times. These, however, although definite, assumed anthropomorphic forms, like those which were specific. The cause of this identity of construction is to be found in the influence exerted upon them by the earlier myths. By a necessary equilibrium and spontaneo

same way, although in this second stage they were not so numerous. Yet their appearance and creation were inevitable, since the same faculty and classifying process had to be carried out in the intellectual and moral order as in that which was extrinsic and cosmic; since the mind and conscious