THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. 23 



his deliberate will, which does not only immediately 

 command his body and his manifold relative functions, 

 but also the complex range of his psychical acts. 

 This fact, which as I believe has not been observed 

 before, is of great importance. It is manifest that 

 the difference between man and other animals does 

 not consist in the diversity or discrepancy of the 

 elements of the intelligence, but in its reflex action 

 on itself ; an action which certainly has its conditions 

 fixed by the organic and physiological composition 

 of the brain. 



If it should be said that the traditional opinion of 

 science, as well as the general sentence of mankind, 

 have always regarded reflection as the basis of the 

 difference between animals and man, so that there 

 is no novelty in our principle, the assertion is 

 erroneous. Eeflection, as an inward psychical fact, 

 has certainly been observed by psychologists and 

 philosophers in all civilized times, and instinctively 

 by every one ; nor could it be otherwise, since 

 reflection is one of the facts most evident to human 

 consciousness. But although the fact, or the in- 

 trinsic and characteristic action of human thought 

 has been observed, and has often been discussed and 

 analyzed in some of its elements, yet its genesis has 

 not been declared, nor has its ultimate cause been 

 discovered. We propose to discover this ultimate 

 cause, and we refer it to the exercise of the will over 

 all the elements and acts which constitute human 



