HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 163 



sometimes active, in which case it may arouse the 

 fear of evil, or the hope of physical pleasures. 



As in man the reflex power slowly and gradually 

 grows although at first in an exclusively empirical 

 form so he slowly and gradually accepts the first 

 form of fetishism, which consists in the permanent 

 and fixed individuation of a phenomenon or object 

 of nature, as a power which he reflectively believes 

 to be the artificer of good or evil. 



In this stage it is no longer the phenomenon 

 actually present which arouses the apprehension of 

 an intentional subjectivity, while its image and 

 efficacy disappear with the sensible object ; the phe- 

 nomenon, or the inanimate or animate form, is reflec- 

 tively retained by the memory, in which it appears as 

 a malignant or benignant power. In a word, the first 

 stage of fetishism, which is the second form of the 

 evolution of myth, is the universal and primitive 

 sense of myth in nature, which man alone is capable 

 of applying permanently to some given phenonemon, 

 such as wind, rain, and the like, or lakes, volcanoes, 

 and rocks, and these remain fixed in the mind as 

 powers of good or evil. In the earlier stage of myth 

 the scene is constantly changing, while in the latter, 

 certain objects or phenomena remain fixed in the 

 memory, exciting the same emotions whether they 

 are present or absent, and to this consciousness 

 we may trace the dawn of worship. 



Ethnography affords plain proofs of the fetishism 



