THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 113 



betore as the mythopoeic tendency. This, per- 

 haps, should be called, in Weismann's phrase, 

 a " bye-product " of the human mind. Reflec- 

 tion about the adaptation of means to ends for 

 the purpose of everyday life is undoubtedly 

 useful to the savage ; but reflection on these 

 subjects makes reflection possible on other 

 subjects also, subjects quite unprofitable at first, 

 such as " What makes the thunder ? " " Why is 

 the sea salt?" "Why do the flowers come up in 

 the spring-time ? " and so on. And language, 

 being useful for the communication of practical 

 projects, serves also to hand down even "use- 

 less " myths and legends. Yet are they useless ? 

 They serve to cement the bond between man 

 and man, and thus have not been crushed out in 

 the struggle for existence till they come to be a 

 direct hindrance to progress ; and then they dis- 

 appear before the growth of scientific ideas, ex- 

 cept where they linger on as old wives' fables or 

 children's fairy tales. Yet the crudest mythology 

 is primitive science and primitive philosophy. 



" The peculiar faculty of wit and humour," 

 which " appears sporadically in a very small 

 percentage of the population," 1 is, we may 

 1 Darwinism, p. 472. 



D.P. I 



