222 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



that such types were really ideal, as in fact they had 

 unconsciously been from the first : that is, that it 

 was simply a logical conception of species and genera 

 which is natural to human thought ; a conception 

 necessary for the spontaneous as well as for the 

 reflex and scientific processes of thought. From the 

 type, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea 

 of each special object was easy, since each object has 

 its psychical representation in the mind. Special 

 and specific ideas were then arranged in a certain 

 order, and those which are more general in a con- 

 centric and systematic classification ; this had been 

 also the case in the earlier polytheistic system, since 

 the process of the intelligence naturally arranges all 

 its representations. But he did not stop here, nor 

 indeed was it possible for him to do so. 



A\ c know that the intelligence does not only under- 

 stand objects, but their relations to each other, by 

 means of its comparative faculty; these relations 

 were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively 

 perceived by direct observation and the alternate and 

 reciprocal motion of the images, and they were first 

 presented to the imagination and then embodied in 

 speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that 

 in primitive thought these relations involved an active 

 entity, and were in a word entified. Plato, pursuing 

 his intellectual process of reasoning, and the re- 

 ciprocal properties of ideas, noted the ideality of these 

 relations so far as they are a psychical representation, 



