106 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



that which is specific, infusing anthropomorphic life 

 into the whole of nature, and into his own sensations, 

 emotions, and conceptions, he has pursued an art 

 virtually the same as that w r hence science is generated. 

 The instrument, both with respect to the formation 

 of myths and to the formulation of science, is in fact 

 identical, and the process also is the same. Science, 

 like myth, observes, analyzes, and classifies observa- 

 tions, and gradually rises to a conception of the 

 specific type, and hence to a unit} 7 which becomes 

 ever more complete and universal. 



In the composition and mythical animation of the 

 world, whether by special personifications or by those 

 which are typical, and by the sensations corresponding 

 to them, man makes a fanciful classification of phe- 

 nomena, he observes and studies their beneficial or 

 injurious effects on himself, and in this empirical 

 way is able to estimate their value. On the other 

 hand, he rises in the social scale by means of his 

 superstitious and religious feelings, which act as a 

 stimulus and symbol, so far as he subjects his animal 

 and perverse instincts to the deliberate precepts which 

 he imagines to be expressed by these myths. 



In so far as the empirical observation of things is 

 irrational, and obedience is paid to the fanciful 

 precepts of oracles, it is not the result of an explicit 

 moral law, yet there is on the one side some know- 

 ledge of the qualities, habits, and periods of things, 

 and on the other a civil and human order which is 



