CHAPTER IV. 



STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM. 



IN the preceding chapters we have considered and, as 

 we hope, demonstrated the origin and genesis of nryth 

 in general, an origin and genesis which had their 

 first impulses and causes in the animal kingdom as 

 a whole, since these beginnings were the necessary 

 result of the psychical exercise of the perception and 

 intelligence. We next discovered in man, as he issued 

 from a simply animal condition and attained the power 

 of reflection, the origin of the special myth or fetish, 

 which was a higher evolution of that which is proper 

 to animals ; hence the origin of the specific myth was 

 altogether anthropomorphic, whether physical or moral; 

 and hence came also the development and ramifica- 

 tion of all mythologies, and of universal polytheism. 



It may be seen from the reality and truth of this 

 theory how much mistaken those men are who hold, 

 owing to their religious prejudices or to their systems 

 of logic and history, that monotheism was the first 

 intuition of man, or at any rate of the privileged races. 



