194 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



ternatic arrangement of facts in which it begins, nor 

 in their combination into general and comprehensive 

 laws ; the sequence of causes and effects must also 

 be understood, and it is not enough to classify the 

 fact without explaining its genesis and cause. We 

 have seen that the innate faculty of perception in- 

 volved the idea of a cause in the supposition that the 

 phenomenon was actuated by a subject, and while 

 thought classified fetishes and idols in a mythical 

 way, an inherent power for good or evil was ascribed 

 to them, not only in their relation to man, but in 

 their effects on nature. What Vico has called "the 

 poetry of physics " consisted in the explanation of 

 natural phenomena by the efficacy of mythical and 

 supernatural agents. From this point of view again, 

 myth and science pursue identically the same method 

 and the same general form of cognition. 



Nor is this all. Science is, in fact, the de-personi- 

 fication of myth, arriving at a rational idea of that 

 which was orignally a fantastic type by divesting 

 it of its wrappings and symbols. In the natural 

 evolution of myth, man passes from the extrinsic 

 mythical substance to the intrinsic ideal by the same 

 intellectual process, and when the types have become 

 ideas, he carries on intrinsically the cntifying process 

 which he first applied to the material and external 

 phenomena. 



In this case also the process is gradual ; by 

 attempting a more rational explanation of physical 



