160 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



This theory, true as to the principal forms which 

 myth successively assumes, is iiot accurate with 

 respect to the stages of development, and it is also 

 erroneous in some particulars of the actual history 

 of the various mythologies of different peoples. 



In the early chapters of this work we have briefly 

 touched on such a development, and the reader must 

 pardon us for returning to the subject, now that we 

 have to give an historical account of the process of 

 evolution. In fact, the fetish, in the general sense 

 of the term, is not the first form of myth which is 

 revealed in the dawn of human life. In order to 

 estimate its positive value, it is necessary to analyze 

 such a conception with greater accuracy, and then 

 to verify it historically with the help of the science of 

 ethnology. 



The first manifestations of mythical ideas must be 

 considered in man as an animal ; that is, as the result 

 of his spontaneous intercourse with the world, in- 

 dependently of the psychical faculty peculiar to him- 

 self, after he had acquired by subsequent evolution 

 of mind and body the faculty and habit of reflection. 

 This first stage does not involve any definite fetish, 

 that is, an immediate belief in a special object which 

 exerts its influence on the human soul, even when 

 it is remote and unseen : such a fetish is a secondary 

 stage in human development. The first mythical 

 representations of animals, and of man, so far as his 

 animal nature is concerned, are not confined to fixed 



