132 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



Besides, as we have before remarked, the empirical 

 knowledge of things begins and is perfected in the 

 superstitions of fetishes and myths. Ideas are 

 modified and become purer as they converge into 

 types, and the principle and method at once 

 become more rational. Either in the faculty of per- 

 ception and in its elements, or in the inward classi- 

 fication of specific forms, or again in the more 

 perfect empirical knowledge of phenomena, the pro- 

 gress of myth and science go on together, and they 

 are not only developed in a parallel direction, but 

 the form becomes the covering, involucre, matrix, or, 

 as I might say, the cotyledons, by means of which 

 the latter is developed and nourished. Even in 

 more rational science this faculty, and these elements, 

 necessarily recur, since in every human conception 

 we find the material aspect, or its mental image, the 

 thing and its cause, and, as we shall see, some 

 mythical personality is insensibly identified with it. 



The act which produces myth is therefore the 

 same from which science proceeds, so that their 

 original source is identical. The same process which 

 constitutes the fetish and myth also constitutes 

 science in its conditions and form, and here we find 

 the unique fact which generates them both ; science, 

 like myth, would be impossible without apprehension, 

 without the individuation of ideas, and the classifica- 

 tion and specification of types. 



Before going further I must briefly recapitulate 



