320 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



voice are incapable. When instrumental music was 

 released from all servitude to other arts, as well 

 as from all positive sense of religious emotions or 

 mythical and symbolic prejudice, thought was able 

 to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself 

 a special aim and meaning. 



We have thus reached the term of our arduous 

 and fatiguing journey. We flatter ourselves that a 

 truth has been gleaned from it, and this conviction 

 is not due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, 

 but on the conscientious honesty of our researches, 

 combined with a great yet humble love of truth. 

 Others, who are better endowed with genius and 

 learning will judge of our success, and we shall 

 willingly submit to their criticism and correction, so 

 long as they are fair and unprejudiced and only aim 

 at the truth. From animal perception, and the 

 mental and physical fact into which it is to be 

 resolved, we have traced the root which in man's 

 case grows into a mighty tree ; the first germ of all 

 the mythical ideas of every people upon earth. The 

 subjectivity of which animals and man are spon- 

 taneously conscious in every internal and external 

 phenomenon, the subsequent entification of ideas, 

 even after thought has attained to these more rational 

 forms, are the great factors of myth in all its forms, of 

 superstitions, of religions, and also of science. We 

 have reduced all the normal and abnormal sources 

 of these fanciful ideas to that single source which we 



