THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. 3D 



and of the anthropological conditions of the various 

 myths is necessary to enable us to understand their 

 psychical phenomena, together with the hidden laws 

 of the exercise of thought. The learned and illus- 

 trious Eihot has justly said that psychology, dis- 

 sociated from physiology and cognate sciences, is 

 extinct, and that in order to bring it to life it is 

 necessary to follow the progress and methods of all 

 other contemporary sciences.* The genesis of myth, 

 its development, the specification and integration of 

 its beliefs, as well as the several intrinsic and ex- 

 trinsic sources whence it proceeds, will assign to it 

 a clearer place among the obscure recesses of psy- 

 chical facts ; they will reveal to us the connection 

 between the facts of consciousness and their ante- 

 cedents, between the world and our normal and 

 abnormal physiological conditions ; they will show 

 what a complex drama is performed by the action 

 and reaction between ourselves and the things within 



* "Although it (psychology) still makes some show, yet the old 

 psychology is condemned. Its conditions of existence have disappeared 

 in its new environment. Its methods no longer suffice for the in- 

 civasing difficulties of the task and the larger requirements of the 

 scientific spirit. It is constrained to live upon its past. Its wisest 

 representatives have vainly attempted a compromise, loudly asserting 

 that facts must be observed, and that a large part should be assigned 

 to experience. Their concessions are unavailing, for however >incerely ' 

 mi-ant, they are not actually carried out. As soon as they set to work 

 the taste for pure speculation again possesses them. Moreover, no 

 reform of what is radically false can be effectual, and uncieut psy- 

 chology is a bastard conception, doomed to perish from the con- 

 tradictions which it involves." Eibot, Pt-ycltoloyie Allemande Cm/- 

 temporaine." Paris, 1879. 

 3 



