284 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



angelic visions. Ultimately this would lead to the 

 vast drama of celestial hallucinations described for 

 us in the accounts of many ecstatic visions. They do 

 not only occur in modern religions, but in those of the 

 old heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of 

 savages. The ethnography of the most savage peoples 

 of our time teaches us that the origin of very many 

 myths is to be found in normal and abnormal hallu- 

 cinations, and in the luminous visions which conform 

 to their mental conditions. Persons subject to ner- 

 vous affections, from simple epilepsy to madness and 

 idiocy, were and still are supposed to be inspired, and 

 endowed with the power of prophesying and working 

 miracles ; they are also venerated for relating the 

 strange visions presented to them in the crisis of their 

 disorder. Africa, barbarous Asia, America, Oceania, 

 and the ignorant and superstitious people in Europe 

 itself, abound with such facts ; they have occurred 

 and are likely to recur in civilized peoples of all times, 

 including our own, as we know only too well. 



We have thus reduced the primitive origin of myth, 

 of dreams, of all illusions, of normal and abnormal 

 hallucinations, to one unique fact and genesis, to a 

 fundamental principle ; that is, to the primitive and 

 innate entification of the phenomenon, to whatever 

 sensation it may be referred. This fact is not exclu- 

 sively human in its simple expression and genesis, 

 since it occurs in the lower animals ; evidently in 

 those which are nearest to man, and by the necessary 



