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].