124 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



stances which produced the momentary personification 

 of natural objects. The sight of some extraordinary 

 phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one 

 acting with a given purpose, and hence of an actual 

 fetish. A man will sometimes address the things 

 which surround him, and act towards them as if they 

 possessed consciousness and will. Children, who are 

 still without experience and reflection, will often 

 invest external objects with solidity. 



A child, as soon as it can guide its own motions, 

 will grasp anything which is pliant and yielding as 

 firmly as if it were solid, thus implicitly judging the 

 thing from its appearance. In the same way, a child 

 confidently relies on any support, however weak and 

 insufficient it may be, arguing as usual from the 

 appearance to the thing itself. Nor must it be said 

 that experience is necessary to correct these errors. 

 The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to 

 experience, which only becomes possible by means 

 of this faculty. The elements of this faculty uncon- 

 sciously fulfil and pursue their office in the child, 

 aided by the reflex motions which are cerebro-spinal 

 and peripheral, as they have been produced and 

 organized in the species by evolution; but they, as 

 well as these reflex physiological motions, are prior 

 to the same temporary experience.* 



* We are not here concerned with a priori metaphysics, Vmt with 

 the psychical and organic dispositions slowly produced by evolution 

 and by consciousness in its cosmic relations. The organic nature of 



