92 MYTH AND SCIENCE 



also proper to mean, in whose case it first appears in 

 the indefinite multiplication of fetishes, whatever may 

 be the object venerated, and whatever the form, aspect, 

 and character ascribed to it. This constitutes the 

 primordial impulses, both of religious consciousness 

 and of the spontaneous solution of the problems of 

 the world among all peoples. 



"While the animation of special objects by animals 

 generates actual myths, yet it only occurs in the acts 

 of momentary and transient perception; they are 

 born and die, they arise and are dissolved in the very 

 act of production, and they neither have nor can have 

 retrospective or future influence on the animal. The 

 world, its laws and phenomena, form for him one 

 universal and persistent myth, so far as he feels him- 

 self constrained to vivify and transform them into 

 subjects actuated by will. This consequently is the 

 constant and normal condition of his conscious life 

 with relation to things, and it leads to nothing further ; 

 his mental attitude with respect to myth does not vary 

 from his physical attitude towards the atmosphere, the 

 food and water which nourish and sustain him, and the 

 exercise of his functions are in conformity with it, as 

 though it were his natural and necessary element. 



Man, on the contrary, since he has acquired the 

 power of reflection, which enables him to reconsider 

 past intuitions by an effort of memory, as well as the 

 psychical image which corresponds to them, is not 

 content with this normal and fugitive effect of appre- 



