144 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



difference, there was no radical and substantial diver- 

 sity in the genesis of such conceptions, and the 

 fundamental elements of perception were common to 

 both. While the form varied, the primitive law and 

 genesis remained the same. 



"\Ve have shown that the perception of the pheno- 

 menon, as it affects the inner and external conscious- 

 ness, necessarily involves the form of the subject, and 

 the causative power which animates that form, and 

 this becomes the intellectual source of special and 

 specific myths. These myths, whether they are 

 derived from physical or moral phenomena, are sub- 

 sequently so completely impersonated as to be resolved 

 into a perfectly human form. In the case of the 

 abstract conceptions necessary in speech, such anthro- 

 pomorphism does not generally occur ; yet we see that 

 sensation and a physiological genesis are inseparable 

 from an abstract conception. Without such sensation 

 of the phenomenon these conceptions would be unin- 

 telligible to the percipient himself and to others. In 

 direct sensation, the phenomenon is external, and 

 when it is reproduced in the mind the same cerebral 

 motions to which that sensation was due are repeated. 



It is an absolute law, not only of the human mind 

 but of animal intelligence, that the phenomenon 

 should generate the implicit idea of a thing and cause, 

 and the necessity of this psychical law is also apparent 

 in the abstract conception of some given quality. If 

 the effect is not identical, it is at any rate analogous. 



