136 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



and fancy, a survival from prehistoric ages, still pre- 

 vails among the common people both in town and 

 country, among those who are uncultivated, and even in 

 the higher classes conventionally called good society. 



It is more difficult to trace the occasional exist- 

 ence of the same influence among those who think 

 rationally and investigate the laws of the universe 

 while acquainted with the earlier mythical process ; 

 and yet, as we shall show, the greatest and most 

 able men are not unfettered by it. Myth has 

 hitherto been regarded as a secondary and fanciful 

 product of the psychical human faculty, due to 

 extrinsic impulses, rather than as the primitive and 

 intrinsic necessity of the intelligence a necessity 

 which has its roots in animal intelligence itself ; and 

 the unique fact which generates both myth and 

 science has not been ascertained. If this fact and 

 law had been discovered before, we should have more 

 readily understood religions, philosophic systems, and 

 the successive forms of science, and pure reason 

 would have made more rapid progress. Our theory, 

 besides giving a rational explanation of the different 

 forms assumed by thought in the course of its 

 historic evolution, will, I hope, also account for 

 many psychological phenomena which have hitherto 

 been imperfectly understood, such as dreams, hal- 

 lucinations, the aberrations of insanity, and the like. 

 The primitive fact and its effects reappear in these 

 conditions, and this influence is persistent and 



