

HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 157 



We must briefly describe the evolution of these two 

 mythical and scientific faculties of the mind ; we must 

 investigate the mode and cause of their divergence 

 from a common source, through what transformations 

 they pass, in order to see in what way the one 

 is gradually dried up, while the other increases in 

 volume and force. The reader must forgive us if 

 we use some repetition in developing a subject on 

 which we have already touched, since without such 

 repetition the present historical explanation would 

 be obscure. 



The first stage of knowledge consists in the obser- 

 vation of the things which surround us, and this first 

 stage, which is necessary also in science, is the 

 common property of animals. Their observation .of 

 themselves and of external things is psychologically and 

 physiologically the same as that of man, and in both 

 cases there is a subjective animation of the phenomena 

 themselves. The primitive source of science in its 

 observation of phenomena was the same as that of 

 myth and of the special fetish; without such obser- 

 vation it would have had no existence. 



In immediate succession to this primitive fact, 

 which is common to the whole animal kingdom, there 

 arose if we consider the general process without 

 the limitations of circumstances, places, time, and a 

 thousand accidents two kinds of faculties which were 

 identical in form, although they had different effects, 

 and produced opposite results. For in the case of 



