2 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



phenomena which he is able to apprehend and 

 perceive.* 



We do not propose to consider in this treatise the 

 myths peculiar to one people, nor to one race ; we do 

 not seek to estimate the intrinsic value of myths at 

 the time when they were already developed among 

 various peoples, and constituted into an Olympus, 

 or special religion ; we do not wish to determine the 

 special and historical cause of their manifestations 

 in the life of any one people, since we now refrain 

 from entering on the field of comparative mythology. 

 It is the scope and ohject of our modest researches 

 to trace the strictly primitive origin of the human 

 myths as a whole ; to reach the ultimate fact, and 

 the causes of this fact, whence myth, in its necessary 

 and universal form, is evolved and has its origin. 



We must therefore seek to discover wiiether, in 

 addition to the various causes assigned for myth in 

 earlier ages, and still more in modern times by our great 

 philologists, ethnologists, and philosophers of every 

 school causes which are for the most part extrinsic 

 there be not a reason more deeply seated in our 

 nature, which is first manifested as a necessary and 

 spontaneous function of the intelligence, and which is 

 therefore intrinsic and inevitable. 



In this case myth will appear to us, not as an 

 accident in the life of primitive peoples varying in 



* Simrock wrote : " Myth is the earliest form in which the mind 

 of heathen peoples recognized the universe and things divine." 



