THE GENESIS OF MYTHS.
When the preceding pages were nearly all in type, I ordered a copy of the then just published essay entitled "Myth and Science," by Signor Tito Vignoli, in which the gradual development of mythic thought and expression is expounded with great clearness and precision. He says, p. 87-93:
"Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture for ourselves the psychical conditions of primitive men, at a time when the objects of perception and the apprehension of things were presented by an effort of memory to the mind as if they were actual and living things, yet such conditions are not hypothetical, but really existed, as any one may ascertain for himself who is able to realise that primitive state of mind, and we have said enough to show that such was its necessary condition.
"The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and how at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and reply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absent persons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated; the images of these persons and things are, as it were, present and in agitation within him; and these images, in the fervour of emotion and under the stimulus of excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented to the inward psychical consciousness.
"In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowly developed, the animation and personification effected by his mind and consciousness were threefold: first of the objects themselves as they really existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in the memory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images. There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are no longer conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which is partly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words and their roots in all languages. The meaning of these, which is now for the most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material and concrete fact, or some gesture. This is true of classic tongues, and is well known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of all savage and barbarous races.
"Ia Rau is used to express all in the Marquesas Isles. Rau signifies leaves, so that the term implies something as numerous as the leaves of a tree. Rau is also now used for sound, an expression which includes in itself the conception of all, but which originally signified a fact, a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt as such in the ancient speech in which it was used in this sense. So again in Tahiti huru, ten, originally signified hairs; rima, five, was at first used for hand; riri, anger, literally means he shouts. Uku in the Marquesas Isles means to lower the head, and is now used for to enter a house. Kùku, which had the same original name in New Zealand, now expresses the act of diving. The Polynesian word toro at first indicated anything in the position of a hand with extended fingers, whence comes the Tahitian term for ox, puaátoro, stretching pig, in allusion to the way in which an ox carries his head. Toó (Marquesas), to put forward the hand, is now used for to take. Tongo (Marquesas), to grope with extended arms, leads to protongo tongo, darkness. In New Zealand, wairua, in Tahiti varua, signifies soul or spirit, from vai, to remain in a recumbent position, and rua, two; that is to be in two places, since they believed that in sickness or in dreams the soul left the body.[42] Throughout Polynesia, moe signifies a recumbent position or to sleep, and in Tahiti moe pipiti signifies a double sleep or dream, from moe, to sleep, and piti, two. In New Zealand, moenaku means to try to grasp something during sleep; from naku, to take in the fingers.
"We can understand something of the mysterious exercise of human intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We see how everything assumed a concrete, living form, and can better understand the conditions we have established as necessary in the early days of the development of human life. This attitude of the intelligence had been often stated before, but in an incomplete way; the primitive and subsequent myths have been confounded together;" [See ante, p.p. [44], et seq., et [116].] "and it has been supposed that myth was of exclusively human origin, whereas it has its roots lower down in the vast animal kingdom.
"Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the things and phenomena of nature, and their images and specific types, were the great source whence issued superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and, also, as we shall presently see, the scientific errors to be found among all the families of the human race.
"For the development of myth, which is in itself always a human personification of natural objects and phenomena in some form or other, the first and necessary foundation consists, as we have abundantly shown, in the conscious and deliberate vivification of objects by the perception and apprehension of animals. And since this is a condition of animal perception, it is also the foundation of all human life, and of the spontaneous and innate exercise of the intelligence. In fact, man, by a two-fold process, raises above his animal nature a world of images, ideas, and conceptions from the types he has formed of various phenomena, and his attitude towards this internal world does not differ from his attitude towards that which is external. He personifies the images, ideas, and conceptions, by transforming them into living subjects, just as he had originally personified cosmic objects and phenomena.