THE IDEAS AND SOURCES OF MYTH. 41 



development, composition, and integration of a myth, 

 into which others are fused by assimilation, may be 

 said to explain to us the mode in which systems of 

 philosophy are constituted, and to manifest to us in a 

 fanciful way the underlying mode in which human 

 thought is exercised. 



Nor do the effects and importance of these studies 

 end here ; they are also the necessary foundation of 

 true and rational sociology. In fact, the relations of 

 the individual to the world, the manifold conditions 

 caused by the relations of persons to each other, the 

 constitution of all social order, and the various modifi- 

 cations of that order ; all these are resolved into the 

 primitive thought, and into the emotional impulses of 

 mythical prejudices and fancies, and in these they 

 have also their natural sanction, and the cardinal 

 point on which they rest and revolve. There is no 

 society, however rude and primitive, in which all 

 these relations, both to the individual and to society 

 at large, are not apparent, and these are based on 

 superstitious and mythical beliefs. Take the Tas- 

 manians, for example, one of the peoples which has 

 recently become extinct, and regarded as one of the 

 most debased in the social scale, and we have in 

 a small compass a picture of the acts and beliefs to 

 be found in their embryonic association. 



In every society, however rudimentary, these are 

 held to be important facts : the birth of individuals, 

 which is their entrance into the society itself, and 



