CHAPTER III
PRIMITIVE MAN AND THE CREATION OF MYTHS
We come now to a unique period in the history of the development of the imagination—its golden age. In primitive man, still confined in savagery or just starting toward civilization, it reaches its full bloom in the creation of myths; and we are rightly astonished that psychologists, obstinately attached to esthetics, have neglected such an important form of activity, one so rich in information concerning the creative imagination. Where, indeed, find more favorable conditions for knowing it?
Man, prior to civilization, is a purely imaginative being; that is, the imagination marks the summit of his intellectual development. He does not go beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as in animals, nor a transitory phase as in the civilized child who rapidly advances to the age of reason; it is a fixed state, permanent and lasting throughout life.[48] It is there revealed to us in its entire spontaneity: it has free rein; it can create without imitation or tradition; it is not imprisoned in any conventional form; it is sovereign. As primitive man has knowledge neither of nature nor of its laws, he does not hesitate to embody the most senseless imaginings flitting through his brain. The world is not, for him, a totality of phenomena subject to laws, and nothing limits or hinders him.
This working of the pure imagination, left to itself and unadulterated by the intrusion and tyranny of rational elements, becomes translated into one form—the creation of myths; an anonymous, unconscious work, which, as long as its rule lasts, is sufficient in every way, comprehends everything—religion, poetry, history, science, philosophy, law.
Myths have the advantage of being the incarnation of pure imagination, and, moreover, they permit psychologists to study them objectively. Thanks to the labors of the nineteenth century, they offer an almost inexhaustible content. While past ages forgot, misunderstood, disfigured, and often despised myths as aberrations of the human mind, as unworthy of an hour's attention, it is no longer necessary in our time to show their interest and importance, even for psychology, which, however, has not as yet drawn all the benefit possible from them.
But before commencing the psychological study of the genesis and formation of myths considered as an objective emanation of the creative imagination, we must briefly summarize the hypotheses at present offered for their origin. We find two principal ones—the one, etymological, genealogical, or linguistic; the other, ethno-psychological, or anthropological.[49]
The first, whose principal though not sole champion is Max Müller, holds that myths are the result of a disease of language—words become things, "nomina numina." This transformation is the effect of two principal linguistic causes—(a) Polynomy; several words for one thing. Thus the sun is designated by more than twenty names in the Vedas; Apollo, Phaethon, Hercules are three personifications of the sun; Varouna (night) and Yama (death) express at first the same conception, and have become two distinct deities. In short, every word tends to become an entity having its attributes and its legends. (b) Homonomy, a single word for several things. The same adjective, "shining," refers to the sun, a fountain, spring, etc. This is another source of confusion. Let us also add metaphors taken literally, plays upon words, wrong construction, etc.
The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths, words represent scarcely five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without value for psychology: it is neither true nor false—it does not solve the question; it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would change. Moreover, Max Müller himself has recently recognized this.[50]
The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing, penetrates further to psychological origins—it leads us to the first advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the imagination.
Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both schools agree on one point important for us—that the material for myths is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the great events of human life: birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the nature of human imagination—this is the subjective factor. We can not deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon and stars, winds and storms, have their effect also, we may suppose, on monkeys, elephants, and other animals supposedly the most intelligent. Have they inspired myths? Just the opposite: "the surprising monotony of the ideas that the various races have made final causes of phenomena, of the origin and destiny of man, whence it results that the numberless myths are reduced to a very small number of types,"[52] shows that it is the human imagination that takes the principal part and that it is on the whole perhaps not so rich as we are pleased to say—that it is even very poor, compared to the fecundity of nature.
Let us now study the psychology of this creative activity, reducing it to these two questions: How are myths formed? What line does their evolution follow?
I
The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the work that causes its rise, may theoretically, and for the sake of facilitating analysis, be regarded as two principal moments—that of creation proper, and that of romantic invention.
a. The moment of creation presupposes two inseparable operations which, however, we have to describe separately. The first consists of attributing life to all things, the second of assigning qualities to all things.
Animating everything, that is attributing life and action to everything, representing everything to one's self as living and acting—even mountains, rocks, and other objects (seemingly) incapable of movement. Of this inborn and irresistible tendency there are so many facts in proof that an enumeration is needless: it is the rule. The evidence gathered by ethnologists, mythologists, and travelers fills large volumes. This state of mind does not particularly belong to long-past ages. It is still in existence, it is contemporary, and if we would see it with our own eyes it is not at all necessary to plunge into virgin countries, for there are frequent reversions even in civilized lands. On the whole, says Tylor, it must be regarded as conceded that to the lower races of humanity the sun and stars, the trees and rivers, the winds and clouds, become animated creatures living like men and beasts, fulfilling their special function in creation—or rather that what the human eye can reach is only the instrument or the matter of which some gigantic being, like a man, hidden behind the visible things, makes use. The grounds on which such ideas are based cannot be regarded as less than a poetic fancy or an ill-understood metaphor; they depend on a vast philosophy of nature, certainly rude and primitive, but coherent and serious.
The second operation of the mind, inseparable, as we have said, from the first, attributes to these imaginary beings various qualities, but all important to man. They are good or bad, useful or hurtful, weak or powerful, kind or cruel. One remains stupefied before the swarming of these numberless genii whom no natural phenomenon, no act of life, no form of sickness escapes, and these beliefs remain unbroken even among the tribes that are in contact with old civilizations.[53] Primitive man lives and moves among the ceaseless phantoms of his own imagination.[54]
Lastly, the psychological mechanism of the creative moment is very simple. It depends on a single factor previously studied—thinking by analogy. It is a matter first of all—and this is important—of conceiving beings analogous to ourselves, cast in our mould, cut after our pattern; that is, feeling and acting; then qualifying them and determining them according to the attributes of our own nature. But the logic of images, very different from that of reason, concludes an objective resemblance; it regards as alike, what seem alike; it attributes to an internal linking of images, the validity of an objective connection between things. Whence arises the discord between the imagined world and the world of reality. "Analogies that for us are only fancies were for the man of past ages real" (Tylor).
b. In the genesis of myths, the second moment is that of fanciful invention. Entities take form; they have a history and adventures: they become the stuff for a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do not reach the second period. Thus, the religion of the Romans peopled the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act, no detail, but had its own presiding genius. There was one for germinating grain, for sprouting grain, for grain in flower, for blighted grain; for the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism arrested at its first stage; abstraction has killed imagination.
Who created those legends and tales of adventure constituting the subject-matter of mythology? Probably inspired individuals, priests or prophets. They came perhaps from dreams, hallucinations, insane attacks—they are derived from several sources. Whatever their origin, they are the work of imaginative minds par excellence (we shall study them later) who, confronted with any event whatever, must, because of their nature, construct a romance.
Besides analogy, this imaginative creation has as its principal source the associational form already described under the name "constellation." We know that it is based on the fact that, in certain cases, the arousing of an image-group is the result of a tendency prevailing at a given instant over several that are possible. This operation has already been expounded theoretically with individual examples in support.[55] But in order to gauge its importance, we must see it act in large masses. Myths allow us to do this. Ordinarily they have been studied in their historical development according to their geographical distribution or ethnic character. If we proceed otherwise, if we consider only their content—i.e., the very few themes upon which the human imagination has labored, such as celestial phenomena, terrestrial disturbances, floods, the origin of the universe, of man, etc.—we are surprised at the wonderful richness of variety. What diversity in the solar myths, or those of creation, of fire, of water! These variations are due to multiple causes, which have orientated the imagination now in one direction, now in another. Let us mention the principal ones: Racial characteristics—whether the imagination is clear or mobile, poor or exuberant; the manner of living—totally savage, or on a level of civilization; the physical environment—external nature cannot be reflected in the brain of a Hindoo in the same way as in that of a Scandinavian; and lastly, that assemblage of considerable and unexpected causes grouped under the term "chance."
The variable combinations of these different factors, with the predominance of one or the other, explain the multiplicity of the imaginative conceptions of the world, in contrast to the unity and simplicity of scientific conceptions.
II
The form of imagination now occupying our attention by reason of its non-individual, anonymous, collective character, attains a long development that we may follow in its successive phases of ascent, climax, and decline. To begin with, is it necessarily inherent in the human mind? Are there races or groups of men totally devoid of myths? which is a slightly different question from that usually asked, "Are there tribes totally devoid of religious thoughts?" Although it is very doubtful that there are such now, it is probable that there were in the beginning, when man had scarcely left the brute level—at least if we agree with Vignoli[56] that we already find in the higher animals embryonic forms of animism.
In any event, mythic creation appears early. We can infer this from the signs of puerility of certain legends. Savages who could not know themselves—the Iroquois, the Australian aborigines, the natives of the Andaman Islands—believed that the earth was at first sterile and dry, all the water having been swallowed by a gigantic frog or toad which was compelled, by queer stratagems, to regurgitate it. These are little children's imaginings. Among the Hindoos the same myth takes the form of an alluring epic—the dragon watching over the celestial waters, of which he has taken possession, is wounded by Indra after a heroic battle, and restores them to the earth.
Cosmogonies, Lang remarks, furnish a good example of the development of myths; it is possible to mark out stages and rounds according to the degree of culture and intelligence. The natives of Oceania believe that the world was created and organized by spiders, grasshoppers, and various birds. More advanced peoples regard powerful animals as gods in disguise (such are certain Mexican divinities). Later, all trace of animal worship disappears, and the character of the myth is purely anthropomorphic.[57] Kühn, in a special work, has shown how the successive stages of social evolution express themselves in the successive stages of mythology—myths of cannibals, of hunters, of herders, land-tillers, sailors. Speaking of pure savagery, Max Müller[58] admits at least two periods—pan-Aryan and Indo-Iranian—prior to the Vedic period. In the course of this slow evolution the work of the imagination passes little by little from infancy, becomes more and more complex, subtle and refined.
In the Aryan race, the Vedic epoch, despite its sacerdotal ritualism, is considered as the period par excellence of mythic efflorescence. "The myth," says Taine, "is not here (in the Vedas) a disguise, but an expression; no language is more true and more supple: it permits a glimpse of, or rather causes us to discern, the forms of mist, the movements of the air, change of seasons, all the accidents of sky, fire, storm: external nature has never found a mode of thought so graceful and flexible for reflecting itself thereby in all the inexhaustible variety of her appearances. However changeable nature may be, the imagination is equally so."[59] It animates everything—not only fire in general, Agni, but also the seven forms of flame, the wood that lights it, the ten fingers of the sacrificing priest, the prayer itself, and even the railing surrounding the altar. This is one example among many others. The partisans of the linguistic theory have been able to maintain that at this moment every word is a myth, because every word is a name designating a quality or an act, transformed by the imagination into substance. Max Müller has translated a page of Hesiod, substituting the analytic, abstract, rational language of our time for the image-making names. Immediately, all the mythical material vanishes. Thus, "Selene kisses the sleeping Endymion" becomes the dry formula, "It is night." The most skilled linguists often declare themselves unable to change the pliant tongue of the imaginative age into our algebraic idioms.[60] Thought by imagery cannot remain itself and at the same time take on a rational dress.
The mental state that marks the zenith of the free development of the imagination, is at present met with only in mystics and in some poets. Language has, however, preserved numerous vestiges of it in current expressions, the mythic signification of which has been lost—the sun rises, the sea is treacherous, the wind is mad, the earth is thirsty, etc.
To this triumphant period there succeeds among the races that have made progress in evolution, i.e., that have been able to rise above the age of (pure) imagination, the period of waning, of regression, of decline. In order to understand it and perceive the how and why of it, let us first note that myths are reducible to two great categories:
a. The explicative myths, arising from utility, from the necessity of knowing. These undergo a radical transformation.
b. The non-explicative myths, resulting from a need of luxury, from a pure desire to create: these undergo only a partial transformation.
Let us follow them in the accomplishment of their destinies.
a. The myths of the first class, answering the various needs of knowing in order afterwards to act, are much the more numerous.... Is primitive man by nature curious? The question has been variously answered; thus, Tylor says yes; Spencer, no.[61] The affirmative and negative answers are not, perhaps, irreconcilable, if we take account of the differences in races. Taking it generally, it is hard to believe that he is not curious—he holds his life at that price. He is in the presence of the universe just as we are when confronted with an unknown animal or fruit. Is it useful or hurtful? He has all the more need for a conception of the world since he feels himself dependent on everything. While our subordination as regards nature is limited by the knowledge of her laws, he is on account of his animism in a position similar to ours before an assembly of persons whom we have to approach or avoid, conciliate or yield to. It is necessary that he be practically curious—that is indispensable for his preservation. There has been alleged the indifference of primitive man to the complicated engines of civilization (a steamboat, a watch, etc.). This shows, not lack of curiosity, but absence of intelligence or interest for what he does not consider immediately useful for his needs.
His conception of the world is a product of the imagination, because no other is possible for him. The problem is imperatively set, he solves it as best he can; the myth is a response to a host of theoretical and practical needs. For him, the imaginative explanation takes the place of the rational explanation which is yet unborn, and which for great reasons can not arise—first, because the poverty of his experience, limited to a small circle, engenders a multitude of erroneous associations, which remain unbroken in the absence of other experiences to contradict and shatter them; secondly, because of the extreme weakness of his logic and especially of his conception of causality, which most often reduces itself to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Whence we have the thorough subjectivity of his interpretation of the world.[62] In short, primitive man makes without exception or reserve, and in terms of images, what science makes provisionally, with reserves, and by means of concepts—namely, hypotheses.
Thus, the explicative myths are as we see, an epitome of a practical philosophy, proportioned to the requirements of the man of the earliest, or slightly-cultured ages. Then comes the period of critical transformation: a slow, progressive substitution of a rational conception of the world for the imaginative conception. It results from a work of depersonification of the myth, which little by little loses its subjective, anthropomorphic character in order to become all the more objective, without ever succeeding therein completely.
This transformation occurs thanks to two principal supports: methodical and prolonged observation of phenomena, which suggests the objective notion of stability and law, opposed to the caprices of animism (example: the work of the ancient astronomers of the Orient); the growing power of reflection and of logical rigor, at least in well-endowed races.
It does not concern the subject in hand to trace here the fortunes of the old battle whereby the imagination, assailed by a rival power, loses little by little its position and preponderance in the interpretation of the world. A few remarks will suffice.
To begin with, the myth is transformed into philosophic speculation, but without total disappearance, as is seen in the mystic speculations of the Pythagoreans, in the cosmology of Empedocles, ruled by two human-like antitheses, Love and Hate. Even to Thales, an observing, positive spirit that calculates eclipses, the world is full of daemons, remains of primitive animism.[63] In Plato, even leaving out his theory of Ideas, the employment of myth is not merely a playful mannerism, but a real survival.
This work of elimination, begun by the philosophers, is more firmly established in the first attempts of pure science (the Alexandrian mathematicians; naturalists like Aristotle; certain Greek physicians). Nevertheless, we know how imaginary concepts remained alive in physics, chemistry, biology, down to the sixteenth century; we know the bitter struggle that the two following centuries witnessed against occult qualities and loose methods. Even in our day, Stallo has been able to propose to write a treatise "On Myth in Science." Without speaking at this time of the hypotheses admitted as such and on account of their usefulness, there yet remain in the sciences many latent signs of primitive anthropomorphism. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people believed in several "properties of matter" that we now regard as merely modes of energy. But this latter notion, an expression of permanence underneath the various manifestations of nature, is for science only an abstract, symbolical formula: if we attempt to embody it, to make it concrete and representable, then, whether we will or no, it resolves itself into the feeling of muscular effort, that is, takes on a human character. To produce no other examples, we see that so far as concerns the last term of this slow regression, the imagination is not yet completely annulled, although it may have had to recede incessantly before a more solid and better armed rival.
b. In addition to the explanatory myths, there are those having no claim to be in this class, although they have perhaps been originally suggested by some phenomenon of animate or inanimate nature. They are much less numerous than the others, since they do not answer multiple necessities of life. Such are the epic or heroic stories, popular tales, romances (which are found as early as ancient Egypt): it is the first appearance of that form of esthetic activity destined later to become literature. Here, the mythic activity suffers only a superficial metamorphosis—the essence is not changed. Literature is mythology transformed and adapted to the variable conditions of civilization. If this statement appear doubtful or disrespectful, we should note the following.
Historically, from myths wherein there figure at first only divine personages, there arise the epics of the Hindoos, Greeks, Scandinavians, etc., in which the gods and heroes are confounded, live in the same world, on a level. Little by little the divine character is rubbed out; the myth approaches the ordinary conditions of human life, until it becomes the romantic novel, and finally the realistic story.
Psychologically, the imaginative work that has at first created the gods and superior beings before whom man bows because he has unconsciously produced them, becomes more and more humanized as it becomes conscious; but it cannot cease being a projection of the feelings, ideas, and nature of man into the fictitious beings upon whom the belief of their creator and of his hearers confers an illusory and fleeting existence. The gods have become puppets whose master man feels himself, and whom he treats as he likes. Throughout the manifold techniques, esthetics, documentary collections, reproductions of the social life, the creative activity of the earliest time remains at bottom unchanged. Literature is a decadent and rationalized mythology.
III
Does the mythic activity of ancient times still exist among civilized peoples, unmodified as in literary creation, but in its pure form, as a non-individual, collective, anonymous, unconscious, work? Yes; as the popular imagination, when creating legends. In passing from natural phenomena to historic events and persons, the constructive imagination takes a slightly different position which we may characterize thus: legend is to myth what illusion is to hallucination.
The psychological mechanism is the same in both cases. Illusion and legend are partial imaginations, hallucination and myth are total imaginations. Illusion may vary in all shades between exact perception and hallucination; legend can run all the way from exact history to pure myth. The difference between illusion and hallucination is sometimes imperceptible; the same is sometimes true of legend and myth. Sensory illusion is produced by an addition of images changing perception; legend is also produced by an addition of images changing the historic personage or event. The only difference, then, is in the material used; in one case, a datum of sense, a natural phenomenon; in the other, a fact of history, a human event.
The psychological genesis of legends being thus established in general, what, according to the facts, are the unconscious processes that the imagination employs for creating them? We may distinguish two principal ones.
The first process is a fusion or combination. The myth precedes the fact; the historical personage or event enters into the mould of a pre-existing myth. "It is necessary that the mythic form be fashioned before one may pour into it, in a more or less fluid state, the historic metal." Imagination had created a solar mythology long before it could be incarnated by the Greeks in Hercules and his exploits. "There was historically a Roland, perhaps even an Arthur, but the greater part of the great deeds that the poetry of the Middle Ages attributes to them had been accomplished long before by mythological heroes whose very names had been forgotten."[64] At one time the man is completely hidden by the myth and becomes absolutely legendary; again, he assumes only an aureole that transfigures him. This is exactly what occurs in the simpler phenomenon of sensory illusion: now the real (the perception) is swamped by the images, is transformed, and the objective element reduced to almost nothing; at another time, the objective element remains master, but with numerous deformations.
The second process is idealization, which can act conjointly with the other. Popular imagination incarnates in a real man its ideal of heroism, of loyalty, of love, of piety, or of cowardice, cruelty, wickedness, and other abnormalities. The process is more complex. It presupposes in addition to mythic creation a labor of abstraction, through which a dominating characteristic of the historic personage is chosen and everything else is suppressed, cast into oblivion: the ideal becomes a center of attraction about which is formed the legend, the romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, the Charlemagne, the Cid of the Middle Age traditions to the character of history.
Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme simplification—which the law of mental inertia or of least effort is sufficient to explain—always persists: Lucretia Borgia remains the type of debauchery, Henry IV of good fellowship, etc. The protests of historians and the documentary evidence that they produce avail nothing: the work of the imagination resists everything.
To conclude: We have just passed over a period of mental evolution wherein the creative imagination reigns exclusively, explains everything, is sufficient for everything. It has been said that the imagination is "a temporary derangement." It seems so to us, although it is often an effort toward wisdom, i.e., toward the comprehension of things. It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it represents a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and well-to-do, and that of a furious madman, or of a man in the delirium of fever.
FOOTNOTES:
[48] Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data and images surpass in importance rational concepts." From this standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough for such a determination; we must also take account of the (comparative) simplicity of the social environment.
[49] Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer, taken up recently by Grant Allen (The Evolution of the Idea of God, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from a single origin—the worship of the dead.
[50] "When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and thought are inseparable." Nouvelles études de Mythologie, p. 51.
[51] Vignoli, Mito e Scienza, p. 27.
[52] Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion.
[53] On this point consult a work very rich in information, W. Crooke's book, Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India, 1897.
[54] "The Indian traversing the Montaña never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. The forest is alive in its depths, has caprices, periods of anger; it avoids the thicket under the tread of the huntsman, or again presses him more closely, drags him into infected swamps, into closed bogs, where miserable goblins exhaust all their witchcraft upon him, drink his blood by attaching their lips to the wounds made by briers. The Indian knows all that; he knows those dread genii by name." Monnier, Des Andes au Para, p. 300.
[55] See Part I, [Chapter IV].
[56] Op. cit., pp. 23-24.
[57] Lang, op. cit., I, 162, and passim.
[58] Max Müller, op cit., p. 12.
[59] Nouveaux Essais, p. 320.
[60] See Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion, I, p. 234, a passage from the Rig-Veda, with four very different translations by Max Müller, Wilson, Benfrey, and Langlois.
[61] On curiosity as the beginning of knowledge, compare the position held by Plato. (Tr.)
[62] On this general subject consult the interesting though somewhat general article by Professor John Dewey, "The Interpretation of the Savage Mind," in the Psychological Review, May, 1903. The author justly criticises the current description of savages in negative terms, and contends that there is general misunderstanding of the true nature of the savage and of his activities. (Tr.)
[63] It is now well accepted that Thales cannot be regarded as propounding a materialistic theory when he declares that everything is derived from water; for with him, "water" stands not merely for the substance that we call chemically "H2O," but for the "spirit that is in water" as well—the water-spirit is the Grundprincip. (Tr.)
[64] Max Müller, op. cit., 39, 47-48, 59-60.