204 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



beginning with the real and primitive image, sub- 

 jectively effecting their peculiar meaning. Hence we 

 see how the intrinsic law of myth is evolved in every 

 human act in diverse ways, but always with the same 

 results. 



In fact, before articulate speech, for which man 

 was adapted by his organs and physiological con- 

 ditions, was formulated into words for things and 

 words for shape, man like animals thought in images ; 

 he associated and dissociated, he composed and de- 

 composed, he moved and removed images, which 

 sufficed for all individual and immediate operations 

 of his mind. The relations of things were felt, or 

 rather seen through his inward representation of them 

 as in a picture, expressing in a material form the re- 

 spective positions of figures and objects which, since 

 they are remote from him, can only be expressed by 

 such words as nearer, lower or higher, faint or clear, 

 by more vivid or paler tints, such as we see in a 

 running stream, in the forms of clouds, in the reci- 

 procal relations of all objects represented in painting. 



In order to understand the primeval process of 

 thought by means of images, it is necessary to 

 conceive such a picture as living and mobile, and 

 constantly forming a fresh combination of parts. 

 Animals have not, and primeval man had not, the 

 phonetic signs or words which give an individual 

 character to the images, and so represent them that by 

 combining these images in an articulate form, thought 



