146 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



as something which existed independently of the 

 bodies in which its properties were manifested. 



This estimate of gravity, as an abstract quality or 

 property, might be repeated of all other physical pro- 

 perties, as well as of those abstract conceptions which 

 are moral and intellectual. Goodness came to be con- 

 sidered as a type, varying indeed in different peoples, 

 according to their race, and their local, moral, and civil 

 conditions, but as a type which corresponded to the 

 mutual relations of men, and to their superstitions 

 and religious beliefs as to the nature of things. 



In this case also the abstract conception of the 

 good, the fitting, the useful, which constantly recur in 

 popular speech are regarded, not as mythical powers 

 personified in a human form, but as having a real 

 existence in nature, as something extrinsic to the 

 person or thing in which they are manifested, and as 

 acting upon them as a living and causative power. 

 The same may be said of all other abstract concep- 

 tions. Hence, in addition to the formation of cosmic, 

 moral, and intellectual myths, fashioned after the 

 pattern of humanity, logical conceptions arose in the 

 mind, necessary for the exercise of human speech 

 and for a man's converse with himself, and these 

 were regarded as having a real existence, mani- 

 fested in things and persons and in the system of 

 nature. These entities have their origin in the same 

 faculty as the others ; in every conception presented 

 to the mind and reproducing the primitive sensation 



