CHAPTER II.
ANIMAL SENSATION AND PERCEPTION.
All animals communicate with each other and with the external world through their senses, and by means of their perception, both internal and external, they possess knowledge and apprehension of one another. In the vast organic series of the animal kingdom, some are better provided than others with methods, instruments, and apparatus fit for effecting such communication. The senses of relation are not found in the same degree in all animals, nor when such senses are the same in number are they endowed with equal intensity, acuteness, and precision. But the fundamental fact remains the same in all cases; they communicate with themselves 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 and assumes with respect to his inner sense in the act of perception or apprehension. Man, and especially man in our days, after so many ages of reflection, and through the influence of contemporary science, is so far removed from the primitive and simple exercise of his psychical life, that he finds it difficult to picture to himself the ancient and spontaneous conditions under which his senses communicated with the world and with himself. And therefore, without further consideration, he thinks and believes that in primeval times everything took place in the same way as it does at present, and, which is a still greater error, as it takes place in the lower animals.
This identification of the complex machinery of human perception with that of animals must not be regarded as an absurd paradox, since, as we have shown in an earlier work, they were originally and in themselves the same.[8] By pursuing an easy mode of observation, divested of prejudice, we may revert to that primeval state of human nature, and may also comprehend with truth and certainty the condition of animals. For the animal nature has not ceased to exist in man, and it may be discerned by those who care to look for it; and careful study, with the constant aid of observation and experiment, will reveal to us the hidden life of sensation and intelligence in the lower animals.
There is a continual self-consciousness in all animals; it is inseparable from all their internal and external acts, from every fact, passion, and emotion; and this is clear and obvious. This fundamental and persistent self-consciousness—persistent in dreams, and even in the calmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation—is the consciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercising his will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousness of an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consists in sensation of greater or less intensity, but always of sensation. Consequently, such a consciousness signifies for the animal a constant apprehension of an active faculty exercised intrinsically in himself, and it makes his life into a mobile drama, of which he is implicitly conscious, 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 be said to invest and modify all the animal's active relations to the external world, which it vivifies and modifies according to its own image. The subsequent act of doubling the faculties which takes place in man does not occur in the animal; a process which modifies through the intellect the spontaneous and primitive act. Consequently, the active and inward sense which is peculiar to the animal is renewed in him by the external things and phenomena of nature which stimulate and excite him.
Two kinds of things present themselves to his perception: other animals, of whatever species, and the inanimate objects of the world. As far as the other animals are concerned, which are obvious to his perception, it is perfectly evident that upon these he will project his whole internal life of consciousness and emotions, and will feel their identity with himself by his implicit and intuitive judgment. And in fact, the movements, sounds, gestures, and forms of other animals necessarily cause this sense of inward psychical identity, whence arises the implicit notion of an animated and personal subject. Any one who observes, however superficially, the conduct of animals to each other when they first meet, cannot doubt this truth for an instant.
Although the external form and character of the animal perceived are important factors of the implicit notion of an animated personal subject, this belief is even more due to the animal's inward consciousness of himself as a living subject which is reflected in the extrinsic form of the other and is identified with it. The spontaneous and personal psychical effort does not decompose the object perceived into its proper elements by means of reflex attention, but it is immediately projected on those phenomena which assume a form analogous to the sentient subject.
The fact of this law must never be forgotten in the analysis of animal intelligence and sensation. All those who do not keep clearly in view the real and genuine character of the sentient and intelligent faculty in animals are liable to error.
In addition to the perceptions we have mentioned, animals have a perception of inanimate things, that is, of various bodies and phenomena of nature. Although the form, motion, and gestures of an analogous and personal subject are wanting in these cases, so that they do not cause extrinsically the same implicit idea, neither do they remain, as with a cultivated and rational man, things and qualities of independent existence, disconnected with the life of the animal which perceives them, exerting no intentional efficacy, and governed by necessary laws by means of which they act and exist.
A cultivated and rational man, by the reflex and calm examination of things, can correctly distinguish these two classes of subjects and phenomena, and cannot as a rule be deceived as to their real and relative value with respect to them and to himself. But when he forgets his primary intellectual condition, and does not perfectly understand the permanent condition of animals, he believes that their faculties are identical, and that things, qualities, and phenomena present the same appearance to the human and the animal perception. Yet the actual nature of the thing, so far as it is estimated by our perception as an object different from ourselves and from any other animal, cannot be so apprehended by animals which lack the analytical faculty in the perennial flow of their perceptions; the actual and inanimate thing is presented to them only by the intrinsic, peculiar, personal, and psychical quality of the animal itself.
If form, and characteristic and deliberate action, are wanting to the substances and phenomena of inanimate nature, qualities which more readily arouse in animals the idea of a subject resembling and analogous to themselves, yet there always remains the apprehension of some sort of form in which—not distinguished from the others by reflex action—the inward faculty of sensation and emotion is repeated and impersonated by the perceiving animal. Thus every form, every object, every external phenomenon becomes vivified and animated by the intrinsic consciousness and personal psychical faculty of the animal itself. Every object, fact, and phenomenon of nature will not merely appear to him as the real object which it is, but he will necessarily perceive it as a living and deliberating power, capable of affecting him agreeably or injuriously.
Every one is aware of the jealous, suspicious nature of animals, and that they are not only inquisitive about other animals, but about every material object which they see unexpectedly, which moves in an unusual way, or which interferes with or injures them.
It must have been often observed how they turn against any object which has chanced to hurt them, or which has annoyed them by regular and repeated motions, how they start at the sudden appearance or oscillation of some unlooked-for thing, at an unusual light, a colour, a stone, a plant, at the fluttering of branches, of clothes, or weathercocks, at the rush of water, at the slightest movement or sound in the twilight, or in the darkness of night. They look about, and consider all things and phenomena as subjects actuated by will, and as having an immediate influence 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 they transfuse into everything their own personality and their intrinsic consciousness. This is the case with the whole animal kingdom, at least with those whose internal emotion can be gathered from their external movements and gestures.
An animal is sometimes aware that an enemy which may lie in wait for and destroy him has approached the neighbourhood of his haunts, or at any rate may interfere with the freedom of his ordinary life, and he withdraws as far as he can from this new peril or injury, and seeks to defend himself from the malice of his enemy by special arts. In this case, the external subject or thing is what his own objective sense conceives it to be, and his inward perception corresponds to an actual cosmic reality.
Suppose that instead of this, the neighbourhood of a fierce fire, or violent rain and hail, or a stormy wind, or some other natural phenomenon, surprises or injures such creatures; these facts do not affect them as if they were merely occurrences in accordance with cosmic laws, 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 in a wild and domestic state, and under every variety of conditions and circumstances, 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 of reason. Since animals have no conception of the purely cosmic reality of the phenomena and laws which constitute nature, it follows that such a reality must appear to their inner consciousness in its various effects as a subject vaguely identical with their own psychical nature. Hence they regard nature as if she were inspired with the same life, will, and purpose, as those which they themselves exercise, and of which they have an immediate and intrinsic consciousness.
It is true that after long experience animals become accustomed to regard as harmless the phenomena, objects, and forces by which they were at first sympathetically excited and terrified. Of this we have innumerable examples both among wild and domestic animals; but although suspicion and anxiety are subdued by habit and experience, yet these objects and phenomena are not thereby transformed into pure and simple realities. In the same way, if they are at first frightened by the sight and companionship of some other species or object, habit and experience gradually calm their fears and suspicions, and the association or neighbourhood may even become agreeable to them. I have often observed that different species, both when at liberty and in confinement, are affected by the most lively surprise and perturbation when some new phenomenon has startled them; they act as if it were really a living and insidious subject, and then they gradually become calm and quiet, and regard it as some indifferent or beneficent power.
I must adduce some observations and experiments from the many I have made on this subject. It may be objected that if animals in their spontaneous perception personify the object in question, they would give signs of this fact with respect to all the objects with which they come in contact, and among which they live, and yet they remain indifferent to many of them, which is a proof that they distinguish the animate from the inanimate. In fact it cannot be disputed that a vast number of the phenomena and objects of nature are regarded by animals with indifference; they are perceived by them, but it does not appear that they suppose these things to be endowed with life. It is, however, necessary in the first place to distinguish two modes and stages in this animation of things, one of which we may term static, and the other dynamic. In the first instance, the sentient subject remains tranquil at the very moment when he vivifies the phenomenon or the thing perceived; while the act is accomplished with so much animating force, and with an implicit and fugitive consciousness, it exerts no immediate and sudden influence on the perceiving animal, and consequently he gives no external signs of the personifying character of his perception. In the second instance, which we have termed dynamic, that is, when the phenomenon or object has a direct and sudden effect on the animal himself, he expresses by his movements; gestures, cries, and other signs, how instantaneously he considers and feels the object in question to be alive, for he behaves in exactly the same way towards real animals.
Animals are accustomed to show such indifference towards numerous objects that it might be supposed that they have an accurate conception of what is inanimate; but this arises from habit, from long experience, and partly also from the hereditary disposition of the organism towards this habit. But if the object should act in any unusual way, then the animating process which, as we have just said, was rendered static by its habitual exercise, again becomes dynamic, and the special and permanent character of the act is at once revealed. We have experience of this fact in ourselves, although we are now capable of immediately distinguishing between the animate and the inanimate, and man alone has, or can have, a rational conception of what are really cosmic objects or things. Yet if we suddenly and unexpectedly see some object move in a strange way, which we know from experience to be inanimate, the innate inclination to personify it takes effect, and for a moment we are amazed, as if the phenomenon were produced by deliberate power proper to itself.
I have kept various kinds of animals for several years, in order to observe them and try experiments at my convenience. I have suddenly inserted an unfamiliar object in the various cages in which I have kept birds, rabbits, moles, and other animals. At first sight the animal is always surprised, timid, curious, or suspicious, and often retreats from it. By degrees his confidence returns, and after keeping out of the way for some time, he becomes accustomed to it, and resumes his usual habits. If then, by a simple arrangement of strings already prepared, I move the object to and fro, without showing myself, the animal scuttles about and is much less easily reconciled to its appearance. I have tried this experiment with various animals, and the result is almost always the same.
In the cage of a very tame thrush, I made a movable bottom to his feeding trough, so arranged that by suddenly pulling a cord, the food which it contained could be raised or lowered. When everything remained stationary in its place the thrush ate with lively readiness, but as soon as I raised the food he nearly always flew off in alarm. When the experiment had been often repeated, he did not like to come near the feeding trough, and—which is a still stronger proof that he imagined the food itself to be endowed with life—he often refused to approach, or only approached in fear the sopped bread which was placed outside the trough. I tried the same experiment with other birds, and nearly always with the same result.
On another occasion I repeatedly waved a white handkerchief before a spirited horse, bringing it close to his eyes; at first he looked at it suspiciously and shied a little, but without being much discomposed, and I continued the experiment until he became accustomed to its ordinary appearance. One day I and a friend went out driving with this horse, and I directed a man, while we were passing at a moderate pace, to wave the same handkerchief, attached to a stick, in such a way that his person on the other side of the hedge was invisible. The horse was scared and shied violently, and even in the stable he could not see the handkerchief without trembling, and it was difficult to reconcile him to the sight of it. I repeated the experiment with slight variations on other horses, and the issue was always more or less the same.
Again, I placed a scarecrow or bogey in a parti-coloured dress in the spacious kennel of a hound while he was absent from it. When the dog wished to return to his kennel, he drew back at the sight of it, and barked for a long while. After going backwards and forwards, snuffing suspiciously, he decided to enter, but he remained on the threshold of the kennel, anxiously inspecting the bogey. In a few days, however, he became accustomed to it, and was indifferent to its presence. I ought to add that I had taught him on the first day, by punishment and admonition, that he must not destroy the bogey. One day when the dog was lying down I violently moved the puppet's arms by a cord, and he jumped up and ran barking out of the kennel, soon returning to bark as he had done at first. Finally, he again became accustomed to it, but whenever I repeated the movement with greater violence, it took a long while for him to become reconciled to it.
I put into a room various kinds of wild birds, which had been taken in nets after they were full grown. The window, which looked upon a garden, was unglazed, and closed by a wire netting, through which the outer air entered and was constantly renewed. I placed in the middle of the room a pot containing a shrub of some size, on which the birds used to perch. Since they had been reared in the open air they were certainly accustomed to the wind, and to the way in which it moves trees and branches, so that they were not alarmed by a phenomenon which they recognized from experience. I fastened a cord to the head of the shrub which I passed through a hole in the door, making another to look through, and in this way I moved it to and fro as the wind might have done. One day when there was a high wind which could be heard in the room, and when the current of air through the window was perceptible, I tried the experiment when the conditions of resemblance were perfect. And yet when the violent movement and oscillation of the shrub was combined with the noise of the wind, the frightened birds all fluttered about, and after repeating the movement, and then allowing it to subside, 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 toy windmill, of which the vanes were moved by weights. I placed this toy in a cage, so arranged that its motions could be regulated from the outside, and I put into the cage a sparrow, which had been taken from the nest, and which consequently had no experience of the external world. Much patience was needed, since the toy required careful adjustment 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 the cage, and he grew up accustomed to its motions. I then took the sparrow out of the cage and put in a finch, which had also been taken from the nest, but was reared far from such a machine, and he was frightened and did not reconcile himself to it for some time. I exchanged this bird for a goldfinch which had been caught after he was full grown, and his alarm at 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 wooden disk; I surmounted it with a ragged hunting cap, and so arranged the sheet as to give it some resemblance to the human form. When my dog came in as usual, he looked suspiciously at the object, snuffing about and gradually approaching to walk round and observe it. At last he was satisfied, and curled himself up by the skirts of the bogey, where I had placed 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 light enough to distinguish the outline of things, I carried the shapeless bogey into the garden near my room, and placed it among some shrubs and bushes. I went back to the house and called my dog, who followed me quietly until he reached the spot from which he could see the bogey distinctly enough for him to recognize its identity with the one with which he was already familiar. As soon as he saw the apparition he stood still, growling furiously; he began to bark, and when I encouraged him to come on, he turned round and ran back to the house. I shut up the dog in another room, brought back the bogey to its former place, and threw a strong light upon it before recalling the dog. At the first sight of the bogey the dog paused suspiciously for an instant, but when I sat down to the table as usual, he hesitated a little and after snuffing at it went back to his couch.
I have made similar experiments with dogs, rabbits, birds, and other animals. I took long wooden poles, and put them inside their cages or hutches in such a way that the animals got to know and feel reconciled to the sight of them. After some days had elapsed, I contrived, while screened from sight, to take the poles from their usual place and to make them touch and annoy the animals with more or less violence, thus causing them to flutter or scamper about and to shrink away, as if from the 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 forward with little leaps and looked about them, doubtful and excited. I might go on to describe many other experiments made with the same object, and always with the same result, but these are enough to show that I went to work cautiously and conscientiously, that the spontaneous and innate personification of the objects perceived by animals is clearly apparent, and also how we may account for their indifference to those to which they become accustomed.
Among animals the necessity of finding food is the great and unfailing stimulus towards the exercise of their vital functions; food which may, as we all know, be vegetable, animal, or a combination of both kinds. It is evident that in the case of carnivorous animals the object which satisfies this desire is a living subject, of which it is necessary to become possessed by arts, wiles, sometimes by a fierce and cruel conflict. In these cases, animals are in constant communication with an animal world resembling their own, and the objective reality is for the most part resolved into living subjects, endowed with consciousness and will. But neither is the vegetable food of herbivorous, frugivorous, and graminivorous animals regarded by them, as it is by us, as a material and unconscious satisfaction of their wants; these grasses, grains, and leaves appear to animals to be living powers which it is necessary to conquer, animated subjects endowed with life, but for the most part inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer no resistance.
Observe the way in which an herbivorous or graminivorous animal becomes excited and angry when the branch or the ear of corn obstinately adheres to the ground, or offers any other difficulty to his immediate desire of obtaining food; he acts like one who has to do with a resisting power. Observe how, when they are quietly stripping the bough, picking out the grains, or eating the grass, they become suspicious, or fly away if there should be any unusual movement in the bough, the ears of corn, or the grass. In one way or another their food is regarded as a subject endowed with sympathetic and deliberate consciousness. And every one must have observed that animals at play act towards inanimate objects as if they were conscious and endowed with will.
Every object of animal perception is therefore felt, or implicitly assumed, to be a living, conscious, acting subject. This is due to the external reflection and projection of the intrinsic and sentient faculty, and therefore—since an animal has not the duplex faculty of deliberate and reflex attention—he cannot attain to the conception of simple external reality, of cosmic things and phenomena. Every object, every phenomenon is for him a deliberating power, a living subject, in which consciousness and will act as they do in himself. There are undoubtedly in the vast series of beings which compose the order of nature, and which he is able to perceive, degrees, differences, and varieties of energy, power, and efficacy with respect to himself and to the normal exercise of his life. But he transfuses into all, in proportion to the effects which result from them, his own nature, and modifies them in accordance with the intrinsic form of his consciousness, his emotions, and his instincts.
The external world appears to animals to be a great and mighty movement and congeries of living, conscious, deliberating beings, and the value of the phenomenon or thing is great in proportion to its effect on the animal itself. The objective and simple reality, as it appears to man, has no existence for animals; from the nature of their intelligence they cannot attain to any explicit conception of it, so that this reality is resolved and modified into their own image. The eternal and infinite flux, by which all things come and go in obedience to laws which are permanent and enduring, appears to animals to be a vast and confused dramatic company in which the subjects, with or without organic form, are always active, working in and through themselves, with benign or malignant, pleasing or hurtful influence. It is for this reason, and this reason only, that their life of consciousness and of relation is so deeply seated and so readily excited. Nor do animals ever believe themselves to be alone among inanimate things; even when not surrounded by allied or different species, they have the sense of living amid the manifold forms of conscious and deliberating life which the world contains.
This constant and deliberate animation of all the objects and phenomena of nature is spontaneous and necessary owing to the psychical and organic constitution of the animal kingdom, and it resolves itself into a universal personification of the phenomena themselves. In fact, the animal's intrinsic psychical personality is infused and transformed into each of them with more or less intensity and vigour; the phenomena are perceived by each individual just as far as he assimilates them, and he is constantly assimilating himself to them. His communication with the external world is in proportion with its internal reflection on himself, and he understands just as much as his own nature enables him to grasp.
A careful consideration therefore shows that the conditions of animal knowledge consist in endowing the phenomena and objects of nature with consciousness and will. I think that this truth will prove a certain guide and beacon in the interpretation of the origin of myth and science in man.
CHAPTER III.
HUMAN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION.
In man, as it has been clearly proved, sensations and perceptions occur both physiologically and psychically just as they do in animals. If science and the 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 due to this duplication, is very slowly developed and exercised, and in its origin, as an effort of the intelligence, it does not differ from that of animals.
It is true that the internal act of the higher faculty of reflection has hardly taken place before man unconsciously enters on a new and vast apprenticeship, which soon distinguishes him from and exalts him above the animal kingdom; 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. We must therefore begin by considering the nature of this primitive human perception, in some degree identical with that of animals, so that they may be estimated to be 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 this consciousness in common with all other animals, and especially with those superior orders which are nearest to himself. The further perception 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 and projection of himself into everything which he perceives; whence it follows that he regards these things as living, conscious, and deliberating subjects; and this is also the case with man, who animates and endows with life all which surrounds him and which he perceives.
In fact, in man's spontaneous and immediate perception and apprehension of any object or external phenomenon, especially in early life, the innate effects are instantaneous, and correspond with the real constitution of the function; analysis and reflex attention necessarily and slowly succeed to this primitive animal act in the course of human development. Consequently the true character and value of its effect on the perception are the same in man and animals.
If in this psychical and organic fact of perception, man is at first absolutely in the conditions of animals, identical effects must be produced; and this was originally the case, as far as man himself and external things were concerned. The powerful self-consciousness which actuates man 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 evil, and in practice they seek to modify, to encourage, or to avoid such influence. The ultimate effect of this action, assumed to be intentional in all and each of these subjects, will be their personification, either vaguely or definitely, but always as a power active for good or ill.
If we trace back the memories of historic and civilized peoples into the twilight of their origin, at a time when they were still barbarous, and little removed from their primitive savage conditions, we shall find, the further we go back, the more vivid, general, and multiform will the mythological interpretation and conception of the world and its various phenomena appear to be; everything was personified by these primitive peoples in a way common to the animal and human consciousness alike.
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 god.[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 worship, 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 classes, 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 classes 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 multitude, 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 asserts 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 constitution 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 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, 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 grass 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 passage 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, Εφιἁλτης 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 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 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 assaults 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 gratitude.
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, prophylakê 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 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 böses Auge. The early German Rito, or fever, was a spirit (Alb) which rode upon the sick man. A passage in the Rig-Veda states that demons assume the form of an owl, cock, wolf, etc.[16] Such was the primitive attitude of the transfusion of individual psychical life into things, and consequently of general metamorphosis. Kuhn identifies the Greek verb ἱαομαι with the Sanscrit yavayami, to avert, and in the Rig-Veda this verb is used in connection with amivä, 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 constitution, 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, assumes 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 analysis 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, analogies, differences, and identities 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 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 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, 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 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 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 classification 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 sparsely. 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, nshâmâh, ruach—soul or spirit—are all derived from the idea of breathing. The Greek word ανεμος, the Latin word animus, signify breathing, wind, soul, and spirit. In the Sanscrit âtman 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 repetition 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 passion, 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 classic 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. 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 potongo tongo, darkness. In New Zealand, wairua, in Tahiti varua, signifies soul or spirit, from vai, to remain in a recumbent 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 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 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 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 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 superstitions, 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 attitude towards this internal world does not differ from his attitude 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 constitutes 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 attitude with respect to myth does not vary from his physical attitude 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 assumed 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 superstitiously regarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible.
This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishism 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 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, 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 fetishism 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, analogous, 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 superstitious fear, he now adores or fears all objects of the same species, or which, in the imperfect classification 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 substituted 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 assume a specific form, but were still regarded 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 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 assumed 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.
Beginning with the mysterious conception of some particular spring as a malignant or beneficent fetish which, although personified, still retains its concrete form, the classifying action of the intelligence gradually constructs, from its points of resemblance to other springs, a generic type which includes them all. This typical 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 may be said to mould a more indefinite and plastic substance into which he can with spontaneous or facile art incarnate his whole person. Hence this substance will assume an anthropomorphic form, and will issue, not in a mysterious being of extrinsic 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 mythical anthropomorphism was generated, and polytheism, properly so-called; a polytheism which represents in its figures and images 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 conception. The first polytheistic Olympus consisted of natural types, and at a much later period they became moral or abstract, in accordance with the spontaneous evolution of the intelligence itself.
It was in fact in this way that all the specific myths of the general phenomena of nature had their origin, and in our Aryan race we can, starting from the Rig-Veda, follow their splendid development among Græco-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it may also be traced in the memory and historic evolution of other races, and with less distinctness among those which are barbarous and savage.[21]