It may be clearly seen from these examples how the specific myth was gradually developed. We have said that in addition to the myth which referred to types constructed from special and manifold suggestions, alike or analogous in extrinsic circumstances, others were formed from definite natural objects, in their relations to men and to their acquaintance with cosmic facts in those very early times. These, however, although definite, assumed anthropomorphic forms, like those which were specific. The cause of this identity of construction is to be found in the influence exerted upon them by the earlier myths. By a necessary equilibrium and spontaneous symmetry of mental creations, these were also modified by the gradual formation of contemporary images. In this way the solar myths were elaborated and developed among the Aryan peoples and other races; their aspects became much more anthropomorphic and anthropopathic in proportion as the typical myths assumed a human form.
The primitive myths of the secondary form were at first grouped round physical and external phenomena, because these were originally the most obvious to man. But the specific moral types had their origin by reaction, and by a more strictly intellectual process, and these were personified in the same way, although in this second stage they were not so numerous. Yet their appearance and creation were inevitable, since the same faculty and classifying process had to be carried out in the intellectual and moral order as in that which was extrinsic and cosmic; since the mind and consciousness and intrinsic faculty of the intelligence are identical. And when once these ultimate types were formed, the same necessity impelled their animation and personification in anthropomorphic images. Of this we have abundant instances in all the traditions of nearly all the peoples of the world.
CHAPTER IV.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.
In the preceding chapters we have considered and, as we hope, demonstrated the origin and genesis of myth in general, an origin and genesis which had their first impulses and causes in the animal kingdom as a whole, since these beginnings were the necessary result of the psychical exercise of the perception and intelligence. We next discovered in man, as he issued from a simply animal condition and attained the power of reflection, the origin of the special myth or fetish, which was a higher evolution of that which is proper to animals; hence the origin of the specific myth was altogether anthropomorphic, whether physical or moral; and hence came also the development and ramification of all mythologies, and of universal polytheism.
It may be seen from the reality and truth of this theory how much mistaken those men are who hold, owing to their religious prejudices or to their systems of logic and history, that monotheism was the first intuition of man, or at any rate of the privileged races. This is altogether impossible, since such an opinion is opposed to the genuine development of the intelligence, to its primitive constitution and progress, and to the essential solidarity of human and animal nature.
In the case of animals as well as of man the implicit act and psychical process of communication between the world and themselves consist in the individual and concrete animation of the thing or phenomenon perceived; whence they are resolved into conscious subjects, acting with a given purpose; the difference in man's case, due to his power of reflection, consists in the fact that he ascribes to the fetish distinct mental characteristics, regarding it as a subject, actuated by will, and invested with an external form. Hence it is impossible that man should have had any primitive intuition of a perfectly rational and universal Idea, since his intelligence is so constituted that it is slowly developed from the animal condition into a humanity which is mythically reflex, and he rises from the single to the specific, from phenomena to the type which more or less exactly corresponds to them.
We are convinced that by these researches, we have eradicated the previous misconception, which cannot be revived or maintained except with the weapons of sophism, and by defying evidence and the very nature of things.
While man has risen from the individual myth to that which is specific, infusing anthropomorphic life into the whole of nature, and into his own sensations, emotions, and conceptions, he has pursued an art virtually the same as that whence science is generated. The instrument, both with respect to the formation of myths and to the formulation of science, is in fact identical, and the process also is the same. Science, like myth, observes, analyzes, and classifies observations, and gradually rises to a conception of the specific type, and hence to a unity which becomes ever more complete and universal.