HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 195 



phenomena, man attains to ultimate conceptions which 

 express direct cosmic laws, and he regards these 

 laws as substantial entities, which in their originally 

 polytheistic form were the gods who directed all 

 things. Here the scientific myth really begins, since 

 natural forces and phenomena are no longer per- 

 sonified in anthropomorphic beings ; but the laws 

 or general principles of physics are transformed into 

 material subjects, which are still analogous to human 

 consciousness and tendencies, although the idolatrous 

 anthropomorphism has disappeared. 



The combination of myth and science in the 

 human mind does not stop here, since, as I have 

 said, it goes on to form ideal representations. When 

 thought penetrates more deeply into the physical laws 

 of the universe, and is also more rationally engaged 

 in the psychical examination of man's own nature, 

 ideas are classified in more general types, as in the 

 primitive construction of fetishes, anthropomorphic 

 idols, and physical principles ; and in this way an 

 explicit and purely ideal system is formed, in which 

 the images correspond with the fanciful and physical 

 types which were previously created. 



It usually happens that thought, by the innate 

 faculty of which we have so often spoken, regards the 

 ideas produced by this complex mental labour as 

 material entities endowed with eternal and inde- 

 pendent existence ; and this produced the Platonic 

 teaching, the schools in Greece and Italy, and other 



