POWELL. ] STAGES OF MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY. ~ 29 
A cough.—A man coughs. In explanation the Ute philosopher would 
tell us that an u-ni-pits—a pygmy spirit of evil—had entered the poor 
man’s stomach, and he would charge the invalid with having whistled 
at night; for in their philosophy it is taught that if a man whistles at 
night, when the pygmy spirits are abroad, one is sure to go through the 
open door into the stomach, and the evidence of this disaster is found 
in the cough which the w-ni-pits causes. Then the evil spirit must be 
driven out, and the medicine-man stretches his patient on the ground 
and searifies him with the claws of eagles from head to heel, and while 
performing the scarification a group of men and women stand about, 
forming a chorus, and medicine-man and chorus perform a fugue in 
gloomy ululation, for these wicked spirits will depart only by incantations 
and scarifications. 
In our folk-lore philosophy a cough is caused by a “cold,” whatever 
that may be—a vague entity—that must be treated first according to 
the maxim “eed a cold and starve a fever,” and the “cold” is driven 
away by potations of bitter teas. 
In our medical philosophy a cough may be the result of a clogging of 
the pores of the skin, and is relieved by clearing those flues that carry 
away the waste products of vital combustion. 
These illustrations are perhaps sufficient to exhibit the principal char- 
acteristics of the two methods of philosophy, and, though they cover 
but narrow fields, it should be remembered that every philosophy deals 
with the whole cosmos. An explanation of all things is sought—not 
alone the great movements of the heavens, or the phenomena that startle 
even the unthinking, but every particular whichisobserved. Abstractly, 
the plane of demarkation between the two methods of philosophy can 
be sharply drawn, but practically we find them strangely mixed; myth- 
ologic methods prevail in savagery and barbarism, and scientfic meth- 
ods prevail in civilization. Mythologie philosophies antedate scientific 
philosophies. .The thaumaturgic phases of mythology are the embry- 
onic stages of philosophy, science being the fully developed form. With- 
out mythology there could be no science, as without childhood there 
could be no manhood, or without embryonic conditions there could be no 
ultimate forms. 
MYTHOLOGIC PHILOSOPHY HAS FOUR STAGES. 
Mythologie philosophy is the subject with which we deal. Its method, 
as stated in general terms, is this: All phenomena of the outer objective 
_ world areinterpreted by comparison with those ofthe inner subjective world 
Whatever happens, some one does it; that some one has a will and 
works as he wills. The basis of the philosophy is personality. The 
persons who do the things which we observe in the phenomena of the 
universe are the gods of mythology—the cosmos is a pantheon. Under 
