HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 209 



tion. Mitchell states that the Australians possess 

 the same power. 



This fact also applies to the languages of ex- 

 tremely rude and savage peoples. Some American 

 Indians, for instance, help out their sentences and 

 make them intelligible by contortion of their features 

 and other gesticulations, and the same observation 

 was made by Schweinwurth of an African tribe. The 

 language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs 

 to make the meaning of their words intelligible 

 that it cannot be understood in the dark. These 

 facts partly explain the natural genesis of human 

 languages. 



AVe have learned from our earlier observations 

 that phenomena appear to the perceptive faculty of 

 primitive man as subjects endowed with power. The 

 subjectivity of these phenomena, their intrinsic con- 

 ditions and actions are fused into speech, which is 

 their living and conscious symbol ; and it is clear 

 that the evolution of language from the concrete to 

 the symbolical, and hence to the simple sign of the 

 object, divested of its original power, is analogous to 

 that of myth. 



This law of evolution also applies to the art of 

 writing, which is at first only the precise copy of the 

 image ; it is next transformed into an analogous 

 symbol, and then into an alphabetical sign, which 

 serves as the simple expression of the conception, 

 divested of its originally representative faculty. 



