ination are gradually united in specific forms or types, and are arranged in a system, whence follow the first symbolic representations of science. But our task is not yet accomplished, since muc

, while assuming divers forms and fresh aspects as the faculty of the intellect becomes more developed. It is an indisputable truth that the influence of myth on thought and fancy, a surviv

intrinsic necessity of the intelligence-a necessity which has its roots in animal intelligence itself; and the unique fact which generates both myth and science has not 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 made more rapid progress. Our theory, besides giving a rational explanatio

the universal mythical forms.[26] But the necessities of human speech, which is however involved in mythical representations, from the very beginning essentially reflex, require other terms than those of individual and specific animations. It is clear th

idual and specific types, and thus obtained a place in the thoughts and language of primitive man. The gradual intrusion of specific rational ideas is natural to t

cial and specific ideas, and these no longer include a personification of the individual thing or idea. Without this intrusion of rational ideas any progress would be impossible, as well as the power of

. But this primitive abstraction was so far a concrete fact for the perception, in that each act of the apprehension constituted a phenomenon of which the apparent character was abstracted from the other parts which formed a whole, and was transformed into a living subject, as we have already shown at length. The really explicit abstraction, to which man only attained after many ages, consisting in the simple representation of a quali

thought, and are the conditions by which we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical type may take the place of the general type in the logical exercise of thought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the system

analogy, unless there is already in the mind a conception which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of similar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but it primarily assumes a concrete form. I cannot say that anything is white or heavy, until by repeti

her is it a real thing, but rather an ideal reality, not a pure abstraction of the spirit, extracted, so to speak, from the material substance. The conception of whiteness formed by the comparative ju

previously generated by our external senses in a concrete form. Although, therefore, the idea is generic, the sensation itself is represented to the mind in the form of a concrete perception. It is not concrete in the sense of belonging to a special object or definite form, as it

of this quality is instantly formed in our minds, in the generic type which was gradually constituted by primitive

h gave rise to it; for although the representation is indefinite or generic, that is, not obvious to the external senses, yet it is not physiologic

intellectual acts, remote from every physiological process of fact and sense. An actual physiological fact (colour in this instance) corresponds to the idea in the nervous centres, and reprodu

d the ethereal modifications which took place when the sensations, perceptions, and acts first occurred. If the cells vibrate, and the organs of the brain are affected by the recollection of past ideas and acts, just as when they actu

on, and it is transformed into apprehension by the mental faculty. But the inward consciousness of the quality is actual, psychical, and physical. The abstract conception is a psychical symbol composed o

types which belong to the physical class. Goodness, virtue, love, hatred, and anger must be assigned to the moral class; and equality, identity, number, and quantity, etc., to the intellectual class. Such abstract conceptions, without which human speech

nd had a superstitious influence on the moral and social progress of mankind; the latter were merely the instrument of thought and speech, and were in spontaneous and daily use. But in spite of this difference, the

ed from physical or moral phenomena, are subsequently so completely impersonated as to be resolved into a perfectly human form. In the case of the abstract conceptions necessary in speech, such anthropomorphism does not generally occur; yet we see that sensation and a physiological genesis are inseparable f

pparent in the abstract conception of some given quality. If the effect is not identical, it is at any rate analogous. Primitive man did not take whiteness, for example, considered in itself, to be an ac

s. The sensation of the quality, and consequently of the phenomenon, is reproduced, and the phenomenon generates the implicit idea of a subject, and therefore of a possible cause in given circumstances. If such a law did not p

menon, its distance, and the general laws of gravity; this differential weight was itself believed to be a thing which acted, and sometimes deliberately, acted in different ways on the di

are moral and intellectual. Goodness came to be considered as a type, varying indeed in different peoples, according to their race, and their local, moral, and

bstract conceptions. Hence, in addition to the formation of cosmic, moral, and intellectual myths, fashioned after the pattern of humanity, logical conceptions arose in the mind, necessary for the exercise of human speech and for a man's converse with himself, and these were regarded as having a real existence, manifested in things and persons and in the system of nature. These entities have th

ons of ancient peoples, in the intellectual life of modern savages, and in that of the civilized nations to which we ourselves belong. The historic development does not always follow the regular course we have just described, although these are, in a strictly logical sense, the necessary stages of in

pted to the necessities of speech as to be transmuted into verbs; libare from liber, which perhaps came in its turn from liba, a propitiatory cake, while Libra was the genius who in mythological ages presided over fruitfulness and plenty. So again juvare, from the root jov, after it had already been used for the anthropomorphic Jove. We find in Plautus the verb summanare, from the god Summanus, the nocturnal sky. Not only verbs but adjectives were derived in common speech from th

sation-any one who seeks for the direct meaning of the terms he uses will admit the truth of what I say. We constantly ascribe a real existence to abstract conceptions and qualities, tre

first formed by the actual comparison of things, and therefore by the aid of the senses. Even if we were to assert with some schools of thought that they were formed a priori in the mind, sensation would still be necessary as the occasion of displaying them. When such conceptions are expressed in words there is a physiological recurre

and refining processes of rational science. An educated man will, for example, say or write that identity is a most important principle of logic as well as that of contradiction, although he is perfectly aware that such expressions only imply an abstract form of cognition; he follows the natural and primitive process of the intellect, and for the moment expresses these conceptions as if they were real entities in the organ

the primitive origin of myth, both in man and animals. In the case of animals the fetish or special myth is transitory, appearing and disappearing in accordance with his actual perceptions; while in man there is a persistent image of the fetish in his mind, to which he timidly ascribes the same power as to the thing itself. The specific types of these f

l, or intellectual matters; conceptions necessary for the formulation of human speech. For although primitive languages, of which we have some examples remaining in the language of savage peoples, are almost inconceivably concrete, yet speech is impossible without expressions of form, or abstract conceptions wh

this law is equally constant in the case of animals, in whom, however, it does not issue in a rational conception. The objection of ourselves into nature, the personification of its phenomena and myths in general, are common to all, while they take a more fanciful form in the case of primitive man

essary psychical and physical law as that which produces sensation. That is, men, as well as animals, begin by thinking and feeling in a mythical way, owing to the intrinsic constitution of their intellectual life;

t, at once the product and the cause of perception, and of the spontaneous vi

ception, emotion, or consciousness. If any one should object to this neologism, in spite of its adequate expression of the original function of the intelligence, we reply that the use and necessity of the verb identify have been accepted in the neo-Latin tongues, and therefore entif

ject of sensation, or, in a word, all phenomena. Such entification is the result of spontaneous necessity, by the law of the intrinsic faculty of perception; it is not the r

same source, since the entification of phenomena is proper both to myth and science; the former entifies sensations, and the latter ideas, since science by reversion to law and rational conception finally attains to the primitive ent

uit rerum cogn