72 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most 

 civilized European nations of modern times, how 

 much mythology still lingers in the lower classes, 

 both in cities and the country. It flourishes in pro- 

 portion to the ignorance and want of culture of the 

 people, as those know who have really studied the 

 intellectual conditions of all classes in our time.* 



In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, 

 and to talk, and even at a later age, in cases in which 

 the reflective faculty is weak, and when it 'approxi- 

 mates more to the psychical and organic conditions 

 of animals, such a projection of self and personifica- 

 tion of surrounding objects is evident to all. For 

 this reason a child transforms all which it seizes 

 or plays with into a person or animal, and when 

 alone with them it talks, shouts, and laughs, as if 

 such objects could really feel, act, and obey; in 

 short, as if they were real persons or animals. So 

 strong is the childish instinct, or, as I might say, 

 the law of its being to project and transfuse itself 

 into objects, that it is apt to speak of itself in 

 the third person. A child seldom say r s, " I will," 

 or "I am hungry," but "Louis wants," "Louis is 

 hungry," or whatever his name may be. This pheno- 

 menon reappears in the second childhood of old age, 

 when the power of reflection is weakened, and there 

 is a reversion to the primitive animal condition. The 



* S.c WuHko, Drutfdter Vollisabcrglauber ; Tylor, Primitive 

 Culture ; Hanusch, Kochholz, and others. 



