CHAPTER VI. 



THE INTRINSIC LAW OF THE FACULTY OF APPREHENSION. 



WE have now carefully considered the acts and 

 dyna-mic activity of human thought. We have seen 

 in what animal and human perception consists, and 

 how it acts ; how the subjects developed in our 

 imagination are gradually united in specific forms 

 or types, and are arranged in a system, whence 

 follow the first symbolic representations of science. 

 But our task is not yet accomplished, since much 

 more is needed to display all that this fact involves, 

 so that we may fully understand the inward evolu- 

 tion of myth and science in history and in our race, 

 and not merely in the individual man. 



The faculty and its effects, which could primarily 

 be reduced to this unique and indivisible fact, do not 

 exclusively belong to primordial ages, but go on 

 through all time, our own included, while assuming 

 divers forms and fresh aspects as the faculty of the 

 intellect becomes more developed. It is an indis- 

 putable truth that the influence of myth on thought 

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