114 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



If on the one side we continually see the birth 

 of fresh myths, which ramify into many fertile 

 sources of superstitions, of religions, of poetry and 

 sestheticism ; on the other side we see almost 

 simultaneously a more or less distinct and lively 

 manifestation of the scientific faculty, although still 

 in an empirical form. They arc like two streams 

 which issue from the same source and take a parallel 

 course, sometimes mingling their waters, only to 

 separate anew, and then again to become united as 

 they fall by a wide mouth into the sea. 



In this manner we have ascertained the actual 

 origin of science and of myth, and have entered on a 

 field perhaps never before attempted nor contem- 

 plated ; we have established a firm basis for such re- 

 searches, and, which is perhaps still more important, 

 have shown the continuity of the mythical faculty 

 between man and the animal kingdom. We have 

 ascertained this fact, in its cosmic necessities, both 

 physiological and psychical, but without considering 

 the faculty on which it depends ; we have still to 

 decompose the elements of which it consists, and to 

 consider their nature and number. 



This inquiry forms the chief problem we have to 

 solve, and it is precisely what we have endeavoured 

 to state in this chapter. In the necessary order of 

 things the fact has its physiological and cosmic con- 

 ditions in man; it is therefore necessarily internal 

 and psychical, and it is accomplished by the special 



