122 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



The faculty and elements of apprehension are 

 precisely similar in man and animals, since extrinsic 

 things present the same appearance to both alike, 

 and the perceptive power acts in the same way. We 

 cannot, indeed, go back to our first beginnings, and it 

 is difficult for those who are not accustomed to such 

 researches to discover the primitive facts of their own 

 being, which have been so much modified by exercise 

 and the intrinsic use of reflection for many ages ; yet 

 some certain signs remain, nor would it be now im- 

 possible to reproduce them. No one can doubt that 

 man also began to communicate with the world and 

 with himself by his perception of a phenomenon, of 

 some extrinsic quality or form. From this he directly 

 apprehended the thing and its cause. No intelligent 

 person can believe that man had any direct intuition 

 of the thing in itself, independently of the extrinsic 

 phenomenon by which it was presented to his percep- 

 tions : he could not by the sudden apprehension of all 

 natural objects intuitively grasp the Idea. This will 

 be more fully shown in the following chapter. 



In accordance with this statement, man, who still 

 retains his animal nature, has exercised the same 

 faculty of apprehension by the synthetic process of 

 the three elements which compose it in the case of 

 animals ; he attains therefore to the same results, that 

 is, he animates the object of perception, and considers 

 it as an efficient cause. This identical faculty of per- 

 ception in man and animals was only differentiated 



