90 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



external fact. We see how everything assumed a 

 concrete, living form, and can better understand the 

 conditions we have established as necessary in the 

 early days of the development of human life. This 

 attitude of the intelligence has been often stated 

 before, but in an incomplete way ; the primitive and 

 the subsequent myths have been confounded together, 

 and it has been supposed that myth was of exclusively 

 human origin, whereas it has its roots lower down in 

 the vast animal kingdom. We hope, therefore, that it 

 will be granted that we have given the true and full 

 exposition of myth. 



Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the 

 things and phenomena of nature, of their images and 

 specific types, were the great source whence issued 

 superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and also, as 

 we shall presently see, the scientific errors to be found 

 among all the families of the human race. 



For the development of myth, which is in itself 

 always a human personification of natural objects and 

 phenomena in some form or other, the first and 

 necessary foundation consists, as we have abundantly 

 shown, in the conscious and deliberate vivification of 

 objects by the perception and apprehension of animals. 

 And since this is a condition of animal perception, it 

 is also the foundation of all human life, and of the 

 spontaneous and innate exercise of the intelligence. 

 In fact, man, by a two-fold process, raises above his 

 animal nature a world of images, ideas, and concep- 



