HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE. 227 



ideas, since in this the advance made by Plato in the 

 evolution of myth really consists, and it marks a very 

 definite stage which had and still has a powerful 

 influence on subsequent and modern thought. 



We have already shown how, by the logical power 

 of thought, this phase in the ideal evolution of myth 

 was reached, and we have traced it in an inchoate 

 form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ulti- 

 mate modification in Plato. In his writings it takes 

 the form of a complete, vast, and organic theory. 

 The logical conceptions and representative ideas, 

 idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first in- 

 volved in fetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are 

 now divested of their earlier wrappings, and are 

 classified as the intellectual ideas which they really 

 are, and which they have become by the innate and 

 reflex exercise of human thought. But on account 

 of the faculty which ever governs our immediate 

 perception of internal and external things they could 

 not in Plato's time, nor indeed in that of many sub- 

 sequent philosophers, remain as simple intellectual 

 signs of the process of reason. This faculty influenced 

 these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether 

 particular, specific, or general, and they became living 

 subjects, like phenomena, objects, shades, images in 

 dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations. Thus 

 the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoreti- 

 cally, entities with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, 

 and absolute essences. Bat the fetish, the anthropo- 



