138 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



Wnile the mythical intelligence continues as 

 before to give its habitual mythical interpretation 

 of many natural phenomena, the use is gradually 

 acquired of special and generic symbols which ex- 

 press special and specific ideas, and these no longer 

 include a personification of the individual thing or 

 idea. Without this intrusion of rational ideas any 

 progress would be impossible, as well as the power of 

 expressing all which time and education present to 

 the mind, and gradually enable it to comprehend; 

 the fanciful image is fused in a rational conception, 

 which is, however, not yet definite and explicit. 



What are commonly termed abstract ideas arise 

 from this necessity, as the result of the perfection 

 and development of speech, but these were not at 

 first abstract, although they made use of the abstract 

 idea. Unconscious abstraction is certainly one of 

 the primary acts of the intelligence, since abstraction 

 follows from the consideration of a part or of some 

 parts of a w T hole, which are themselves presented as 

 a whole to the perception. But this primitive ab- 

 straction was so far a concrete fact for the percep- 

 tion, in that each act of the apprehension constituted 

 a phenomenon of which the apparent character 

 was abstracted from the other parts which formed 

 a whole, and was transformed into a living subject, 

 as we have already shown at length. The really 

 explicit abstraction, to which man only attained after 

 many ages, consisting in the simple representation 



