MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



CHAPTEE I. 



THE IDEAS AND SOUKCES OF MYTH. 



MYTH, as it is understood by us, and as it will be 

 developed and explained in this work, cannot be 

 denned in summary terms, since its multiform and 

 comprehensive nature embraces and includes all 

 primitive action, as well as much which is con- 

 secutive and historical in the intelligence and feelings 

 of man, with respect to the immediate and the reflex 

 interpretation of the world, of the individual, and of 

 the society in which our common life is passed. 



"We hold that myth is, in its most general and 

 comprehensive nature, the spontaneous and imagina- 

 tive form in which the human intelligence and human 

 emotions conceive and represent themselves and 

 things in general; it is the psychical and physical 

 mode in which man projects himself into all those 



