130 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



The same psychical faculty and the same elements 

 are necessary for the personification of such types or 

 idols. The three elements appear in their proper 

 sequence even in the amorphous phantasms which 

 these types first shadow forth, and which are subse- 

 quently perfected and embodied in human form. For 

 the consciousness of the external form always existr 

 in the first vague and nebulous conception of the 

 phantasm which gradually appears and formulates 

 itself in the vivid imagination ; and hence follows the 

 phenomenal vest, which, as usual, generates the 

 corresponding subject, informed with a causative 

 power. This process clearly shows, and in fact con- 

 stitutes, the essence of myth. 



Since the types vary very much, and are indeed 

 unstable from their very nature, constantly becoming 

 formed and again decomposed, the primitive myth- 

 ologies of all people are in like manner very various, 

 indefinite, and subject to constant change. 



It appears in the Yedic mythology, and also in 

 that of the ancient Greeks and Latins, how often the 

 typical myths of Agni, Varuna, Indra, Asvini, and 

 Maruti; and again, of Zeus, Here, Athene, and the 

 rest, are changed and reconstituted. This shows how 

 the same human faculty, the same elements which 

 constitute the perception and primitive personification 

 of external phenomena, are those also of the specific 

 and intrinsic phenomena. Just as man, in the primi- 

 tive conditions of his existence, by the psychical and 



