MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



images, in the fervour of emotion and under the 

 stimulus of excitement, appear to be actually alive, 

 although only presented to the inward psychical 

 consciousness. 



In the natural man, in whom the intellectual 

 powers were very slowly developed, the animation 

 and personification effected by his mind and con- 

 sciousness were threefold : first, of the objects them- 

 selves as they really existed, then of the idea or image 

 corresponding to them in the memory, and lastly of 

 the specific types of these objects and images. There 

 was within him a vast and continuous drama, of 

 which we are no longer conscious, or only retain a 

 faint and distant echo, but which is partly revealed 

 by a consideration of the primitive value of words 

 and of their roots in all languages. The meaning of 

 these, which is now for the most part lost and un- 

 intelligible, always expressed a material and concrete 

 fact, or some gesture. This is true of classic tongues, 

 as is well known to all educated people, and it recurs 

 in the speech of all savage and barbarous races. 



la ran is used to express all in the Marquesas 

 Isles. Rau signifies leaves, so that the ^erm implies 

 something as numerous as the leaves of a tree. Ran- 

 is also now used for sound, an expression which includes 

 in itself the conception of all, but which originally 

 signified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, 

 and it was felt as such in the ancient speech in 

 which it was used in this sense. So again in Tahiti 



