HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 159 



in our own country we have all seen the ideas 

 of Christianity transformed into the earlier fetishes 

 and pagan myths ; the saints are merely substituted 

 for the gods and demi-gods, for the deities of groves, 

 of the sea and of war, as they are found in ancient 

 mythology. The legends of the saints and of Christ 

 himself are grafted on similar legends of the ancient 

 religions of Greece and Borne, and Paradise has 

 assumed the appearance and form of Olympus. The 

 paintings still extant in the catacombs of Eome, which 

 mark the transformation of the old into the new 

 religion, speak plainly enough by their symbols and 

 figures. 



Myth is logically identical with the scientific 

 process in its intrinsic character ; starting from a 

 vague subjectivity which gradually assumes a human 

 shape, the first intellectual vitality is lost, unless it 

 is revived by a higher impulse. Science, on the other 

 hand, which begins in myth, gradually divests this 

 subjectivity of its anthropomorphic character, until 

 pure reason is attained, and with this the power of 

 indefinite progress. 



The theory which has hitherto been generally 

 accepted by mythologists, even by those who profess 

 Comte's great principle of historical evolution, is that 

 man began with special fetishes, that these were com- 

 bined in comprehensive types to form polytheistic 

 hierarchies, and hence he rose by an analogous pro- 

 cess to a more or less vague conception of monotheism. 

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