The deliberate intention to be beneficent or malign, useful or injurious, which is ascribed to any external object, thus transforming it into an intelligent subject, is the first and simplest stage of myth, and the innate form of its genesis. In this case, it is always special, extrinsic, and concrete, and belongs implicitly to the animal kingdom, although more or less vividly in proportion to the mental and physical evolution of the species. It is for the same reason also proper to man, in whose case it first appears in the indefinite multiplication of fetishes, whatever may be the object venerated, and whatever the form, aspect, and character ascribed to it. This constitutes the primordial impulses, both of religious consciousness and of the spontaneous solution of the problems of the world among all peoples.
While the animation of special objects by animals generates actual myths, yet it only occurs in the acts of momentary and transient perception; they are born and die, they arise and are dissolved in the very act of production, and they neither have nor can have retrospective or future influence on the animal. The world, its laws and phenomena, form for him one universal and persistent myth, so far as he feels himself constrained to vivify and transform them into subjects actuated by will. This consequently is the constant and normal condition of his conscious life with relation to things, and it leads to nothing further; his mental attitude with respect to myth does not vary from his physical attitude towards the atmosphere, the food and water which nourish and sustain him, and the exercise of his functions are in conformity with it, as though it were his natural and necessary element.
Man, on the contrary, since he has acquired the power of reflection, which enables him to reconsider past intuitions by an effort of memory, as well as the psychical image which corresponds to them, is not content with this normal and fugitive effect of apprehending the personified object presented to him. The psychical image of his actual perception, which he has ascertained from experience to be beneficent or malignant, or which has been interpreted as such by his fancy, recurs to the mind even when it is absent and remote, and it recurs in the vivid and personified form in which it was first perceived.
Hence come the following psychical facts. On the one side the actual object which he has assumed to be invested with the faculty of will still remains to exert the same external influence; on the other, its personified image is also present to his mind, so that he can regard it with the vivid quickness of the fancy, and invest it, by its manifold relations to other and various phenomena, with efficacy, force, and mysterious purposes. It follows from this inward action and emotion that while in the case of animals the beneficent or malignant object is only invested with life at the moment of perception, and has no more efficacy after its disappearance, man on the contrary retains the same personified object in his memory, and recalls it at pleasure, so that its special efficacy persists, and it continues to be the object of hopes and fears either in the past or in the future. In a word, the natural myth of animals is transformed by man into a fetish, whether this object or its corresponding image in his mind be superstitiously regarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible.
This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishism among all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and conscious life to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears, the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhorrence for some given species of stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual natural object. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms, had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of the fetish, the internal duplication of the external animation and personification of objects.
It is evident that fetishism in its earliest and most primitive form was always inspired by special objects, since the external perception of animals and of man is special and concrete. But we have seen how our intelligence, by a spontaneous and innate process, was led to form types from the immense variety of special things and phenomena, and these types are the specific forms of such things as are alike, analogous, or identical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of the psychical faculty, which is not inconsistent with the fundamental process of animal intelligence, man animates and personifies these specific types, just as he had animated the special perceptions whence they were generated in his mind.[19]
The second form of myth next occurs, if considered as it exists in man, but the third form of myth, if regarded in his solidarity with the animal kingdom. Instead of investing the special fetish of a given object with superstitious fear, he now adores or fears all objects of the same species, or which, in the imperfect classification of primitive times, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a common example, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the first form of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and of the snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He next supposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a single power, manifesting itself in this shape in various times and places. In the same way, according to the natural evolution of this law, the individual, concrete plant will no longer be the fetish or object of myth, but all those of the same species, or which nearly resemble it. It will no longer be a given spring, but all springs, no longer one particular grove, cave, or mountain, but all groves, caves, and mountains; in a word, the species will be substituted for the individual, the type for the fact.[20]
In this second stage to which myth spontaneously attained, it must be observed that all fetishes could not be reduced to a specific or typical image, since in nature, and in ages and conditions when the intelligence was still rude and uncultured, all phenomena or objects could not assume a specific form, but were still regarded as individuals. In this class are the sun, the moon, certain stars and constellations, as well as some other natural phenomena, volcanoes, hot springs, and the like; since these were unique within the range of country inhabited by the savage hordes, they could not become specific. Hence, while all other objects and their respective fetishes followed the natural evolution into a specific type, and through these into the simplest form of polytheism, the special fetish which referred to unique things or phenomena remained special, although it was modified, as we shall see, so as to harmonize with the aspect commonly assumed by other typical images.