If we consider the primitive genesis and evolution of myth, confirmed by all the facts of history and ethnography, it will appear that although the matter on which thought was exercised was mythical and fanciful, the form and organizing method were the same as those of science. It is, in fact, a scientific process to observe, spontaneously at first, and then deliberately, the points of likeness and unlikeness between special objects of perception; we must rise from the particular to the general, from the individual to the species, thus ever enlarging the circle of observation, in order to arrive at types, laws, and ultimate unity, or at least a unity supposed to be ultimate, to which everything is reduced. So that the mythical faculty of thought was scientific in its logical form, and was exercised in the same way as the scientific faculty.
But science does not merely consist in the systematic arrangement of facts in which it begins, nor in their combination into general and comprehensive laws; the sequence of causes and effects must also be understood, and it is not enough to classify the fact without explaining its genesis and cause. We have seen that the innate faculty of perception involved the idea of a cause in the supposition that the phenomenon was actuated by a subject, and while thought classified fetishes and idols in a mythical way, an inherent power for good or evil was ascribed to them, not only in their relation to man, but in their effects on nature. What Vico has called "the poetry of physics" consisted in the explanation of natural phenomena by the efficacy of mythical and supernatural agents. From this point of view again, myth and science pursue identically the same method and the same general form of cognition.
Nor is this all. Science is, in fact, the de-personification of myth, arriving at a rational idea of that which was originally a fantastic type by divesting it of its wrappings and symbols. In the natural evolution of myth, man passes from the extrinsic mythical substance to the intrinsic ideal by the same intellectual process, and when the types have become ideas, he carries on intrinsically the entifying process which he first applied to the material and external phenomena.
In this case also the process is gradual; by attempting a more rational explanation of physical phenomena, man attains to ultimate conceptions which express direct cosmic laws, and he regards these laws as substantial entities, which in their originally polytheistic form were the gods who directed all things. Here the scientific myth really begins, since natural forces and phenomena are no longer personified in anthropomorphic beings; but the laws or general principles of physics are transformed into material subjects, which are still analogous to human consciousness and tendencies, although the idolatrous anthropomorphism has disappeared.
The combination of myth and science in the human mind does not stop here, since, as I have said, it goes on to form ideal representations. When thought penetrates more deeply into the physical laws of the universe, and is also more rationally engaged in the psychical examination of man's own nature, ideas are classified in more general types, as in the primitive construction of fetishes, anthropomorphic idols, and physical principles; and in this way an explicit and purely ideal system is formed, in which the images correspond with the fanciful and physical types which were previously created.
It usually happens that thought, by the innate faculty of which we have so often spoken, regards the ideas produced by this complex mental labour as material entities endowed with eternal and independent existence; and this produced the Platonic teaching, the schools in Greece and Italy, and other brilliant illustrations of this phase of thought. Such teaching, the result of explicit reflection, is a rival of the critical science which followed from it. It is always active, while constantly varying and assuming fresh forms; and it not only flourishes in our time in the religions in which it finds a suitable soil, but also, as we shall see, in science itself.
In addition to this complex evolution of myth as a whole, special myths follow similar laws; since they are generated from the same facts, and pass through the same phases, they culminate in a partial ideality, and this involves a simple and comprehensive law of the phenomena in question, and even a moral or providential order. For example, we may trace the Promethean myth to the end of the Hellenic era, and the different phases and final extinction of this particular myth are quite apparent.
The origin of the myth, which was directly connected with the perception of the natural phenomena of light and heat, was due to the same causes as all others, but we will consider it in its Vedic phase, as it may be gathered from tradition, and from the discoveries of comparative philology, and we have a sure guide in this research in the great linguist Kuhn, whose remarks have been enlarged and illustrated by Baudry.
The Sanscrit word for the act of producing fire by friction is manthâmi, to rub or agitate, and this appears from its derivative mandala, a circle; that is, circular friction. The pieces of wood used for the production of fire were called pramantha, that which revolves, and arani was the disc on which the friction was made. In this phase, the fetishes are, according to our theory, in the second stage. The Greeks and Romans, and indeed almost all other peoples, knew no other way of kindling a fire, and in the sacred rites of the Peruvians the task was assigned to the Incas at the annual festival of fire. The wood of the oak was used in Germany, on account of the red colour of its bark, which led to the supposition that the god of fire was concealed in it. Tan is called lohe, or flame, in Germany. This primitive mode of kindling a fire was known to the Aryans before their dispersion, and friction with this object was equivalent to the birth of the fire-god, constraining him to come down to earth from the air, from thunder, etc.; indeed fire was also called düta, the messenger between heaven and earth. The question arose who had drawn fire from heaven, and developed it in the arani. A resemblance was also traced between the instruments for kindling fire and the organs of generation, a reciprocal interchange of various myths, as we have before observed. Agni is concealed in arani, like the embryo in the womb (Rig-Veda). Thus pramantha is the masculine instrument, arani the feminine, and the act of uniting them is copulation.
Agni had disappeared from earth and was concealed in a cavern, whence it was drawn by a divine person; that is, fire had disappeared and was concealed within the arani, whence it was extracted by the pramantha and bestowed upon man. Mâtariçvan, the divine deliverer, is therefore only the personification of the male organ.