ause and consider this act, since it is, even in man, the source and foundation of the origin of myth, and in it we shall find the causes, elements, and action by which such a

used into it by the animal. Supposing any other animal to be the object perceived, these three elements are self-evident; since the phenomenon perceived in a given form causes the immediate assumption that it is a subject, actuated by a purpose of offence or defence, and hence f

t into an animated subject, and ultimately into an actively offensive or defensive power, or into one which satisfies his appetites. Such a fact, and such elements of the fact, recur in the whole animal kingdom, even among those

d 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 single intuition. When this external pre

evident, may appear simple to those who seek truth from the clouds, or by means of logical or tortuous artifice, yet such are the characteristics of tru

ssible only so far as they are able to infuse their own consciousness and psychical power into every object of nature, since they are unable to comprehend the thing or phenomenon except as an objective reality, without reference to its real cosmic importance. Since this is necessarily the case,

e have already shown, by experiment, the exciting cause of his alarm and suspicion. The sudden fluttering of the cloth in the wind was a phenomenon perceived by the horse, and since he regarded this phenomenon as an animated subject, and consequently as a real power, it is eviden

cases the apprehension takes place in the same way, and consists of the same elements, namely, of a phenomenon, a living subject, and a real power. The exercise of animal apprehension is the rapid, necessary, and perpetu

rceives and feels them, are concerned; and they are perceived just so far as we and as animals are able to communicate by means of our senses with the world and with ourselves. A phenomenon and an intrinsic form signify, at the moment of perception, the thing, the object which the conditions of our senses enable us to perce

the extrinsic relations of beings and forces are subjectively reciprocal; there is the given form of a phenomenon, and, intrinsically, it consists of a

perception, followed by the immediate and implicit assumption of a subject, and consequently of a possible and indefinite causality. This internal and psychical proces

tive and cosmic cause; because it animates the phenomenon with its own personality, which has assumed the external form of this phenomenon, it is conscious of a cause, like itself, transfused into the objec

wn being, which have been so much modified by exercise and the intrinsic use of reflection for many ages; yet some certain signs remain, nor would it be now impossible to reproduce them. No one can doubt that man also began to communicate with the world and with himself by his perception of a phenomenon, of some extrinsic quality or form. From this he directly

in the case of animals; he attains therefore to the same results, that is, he animates the object of perception, and considers it as an efficient cause. This identical faculty of perceptio

nnate illusion; we often act towards things as if we lived in the early days of our race

process of differentiation generated all kinds of myths, he, like animals, was directly and implicitly conscious of the living subject, and in it of an active cause. Although in man the fetish retains its personality in his memory, and becomes the cause of hopes and fears throughout his life, while its effect on the anima

ht of some extraordinary phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one acting with a given purpose, and hence of an actual fetish. A man will sometimes address the things which surro

guing as usual from the appearance to the thing itself. Nor must it be said that experience is necessary to correct these errors. The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to experience, which only becomes possible by means of this faculty. The elements of this faculty unconsciously

ss the milk. If much in this operation might be ascribed to reflex movements, yet in association with them, supplementing and rendering them possible, there is an implicit perception of the external phenomenon through the sense of touch, and he becomes conscious of the object, and of its causative power; such power consist

ers insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholy and unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We say that some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable, that well cultivated ground is no longer wild, that in a good season the whole landscape smiles and leaps for joy. A river is called malevolent, and a

the sea, a tongue of land, the mouth of a sea-port, of a cave, or crater. So again we ascribe teeth to mountains, a front (fronte, forehead) to a house; there is the eye-brow (ciglio) of a ditch, the eye

stion, the leading idea, the body of doctrines, the members of a philosophic system; we infuse new blood into thought. Truth becomes palpable, a theme is eviscerated, thought is lame, science is childish. History speaks clearly; there is an embryo of knowledge, a vacillating science; the infancy, youth, maturity, and death of a theory; morality i

ots, it appears to what a vast extent man originally projected himself, his consciousness, emotions, and purposes into inanimate things; and ho

hem to his mind, this faculty with its constituent elements is brought into action. In fact, when the image is recalled to the mind, it is represented like the external phenomenon; and consequently it involves and generates the thing of which the phenomenon is the external vest, that is, its causative power; and

in the reality of things seen in a dream or in moments of hallucination. This appears in the history of all peoples past and present, whence it is certain that primitive man not only formed personifications of external objects and of his own emotions, but also of their imag

inward and ideal world of specific representations, as if these were causative powers, informing the multitude of analogous and similar phenomena in which they are manifested. These specific types, which are more strongly present to the fancy in the p

th, and which are subsequently perfected and embodied in human form. For the consciousness of the external form always exists in the first vague and nebulous conception of the phantasm which gradually appears and formulates itse

onstantly becoming formed and again decomposed, the primitive mythologies of all

e those also of the specific and intrinsic phenomena. Just as man, in the primitive conditions of his existence, by the psychical and physiological law of his perception, which he has in common with animals, transformed the world and its phenomena into subjects endowed with conscious life; so by his psychical faculty of reduplication he personified the mental images of these sam

extrinsic and intrinsic perception, the specification of types, and their modification into a unity which was always becoming more comprehensive, are the conditions and method of science itself, which is only devel

or in the inward classification of specific forms, or again in the more perfect empirical knowledge of phenomena, the progress of myth and science go on together, and they are not only developed in a parallel direction, but the form becomes the covering, involucre, matrix, or, as I might say, the cotyledons, by means

constitutes the fetish and myth also constitutes science in its conditions and form, and here we find the unique fact which generates them both; s

an inward fetish, by the same law, and consisting of the same elements as that which is only extrinsic. These phantasms are, moreover, personified by the classifying process of types, they are transformed into human images, and arranged in a hierarchy, and to this the various religions and mythologies of the world owe their origin. Since such a process is also the condition and form of knowledge, the source of myth and science is fundamentally the same, for they are generated by the same psych

acts and laws of the psychical human faculty, and that of animals which necessarily preceded it. No science can be constituted without such solidarity; this great truth was