Myth and Science / An Essay

by Tito Vignoli

We give these few examples, which apply to all words, since they all follow the same course, beginning with the real and primitive image, subjectively effecting their peculiar meaning. Hence we see how the intrinsic law of myth is evolved in every human act in diverse ways, but always with the same results.

In fact, before articulate speech, for which man was adapted by his organs and physiological conditions, was formulated into words for things and words for shape, man like animals thought in images; he associated and dissociated, he composed and decomposed, he moved and removed images, which sufficed for all individual and immediate operations of his mind. The relations of things were felt, or rather seen through his inward representation of them as in a picture, expressing in a material form the respective positions of figures and objects which, since they are remote from him, can only be expressed by such words as nearer, lower or higher, faint or clear, by more vivid or paler tints, such as we see in a running stream, in the forms of clouds, in the reciprocal relations of all objects represented in painting.

In order to understand the primeval process of thought by means of images, it is necessary to conceive such a picture as living and mobile, and constantly forming a fresh combination of parts. Animals have not, and primeval man had not, the phonetic signs or words which give an individual character to the images, and so represent them that by combining these images in an articulate form, thought may be represented by signs; and in and through these a universal and objective mode of exercising the intellectual faculty of reasoning has been created.

Speech can, by means of reflex memory, produce at will the particular images already classified in the mind, and this makes the process of reasoning possible; since such a process becomes more easy by the use of signs to which the attention can revert. The relative size of objects, and the like qualities, which are at first regarded as so many different intuitions in space, are defined by words or gestures, and are thus subjected to comparative analogy; but in the early stages of language these relations were presented in an extrinsic form by phonetic signs, and became images which in some sort represented one particular state of consciousness with respect to the two things compared. Galton, speaking of the Damaras, tells us that they find great difficulty in counting more than five, since they have not another hand with which to grasp the fingers which represent the units. When they lose any of their cattle, they do not discover the loss by the diminution of the number, but by missing a familiar object. If two packets of tobacco are given to them as the regulation price of a sheep, they will be altogether at a loss to understand the receipt of four packets in exchange for two sheep. Such examples might be multiplied to any extent.

We repeat that when not endowed with speech, or some analogous means, animals and man think in images, and the relations between these images are observed in the simultaneousness and succession of their real differences; these images are combined, associated, and compared by the development of reflex power, and hence arises the estimate of their concrete relations. Of this we have another proof, observed by Romanes in a lecture on the intelligence of animals, and confirmed by myself, in the condition of deaf-mutes before they are educated, in whose case the extrinsic sign and figure takes the place of the phonetic and articulate sign. Where speech is wanting, it is still possible to follow a conscious and imaginative process of reasoning, but not to rise to the higher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. The thought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one who was educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always before thought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who has independently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who has been able without education to form any conception of a supernatural world. R.S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed, before his education, that the Bible had been printed in the heavens by a printing press of enormous power; and Graham Bell speaks of a deaf-mute who supposed that people went to church to do honour to the clergyman. In short, the intellectual condition of uneducated deaf-mutes is on a level with that of animals, as far as the possibility of forming abstract ideas is concerned, and they think in images. There is a well-known instance in the deplorable condition of Laura Bridgman, who from the time she was two years old, was deaf and dumb, blind, and even without the sense of taste, so that the sense of touch was all that remained. By persevering and tender instruction, she attained to an intellectual condition which was relatively high. A careful study of her case showed that she had been altogether without intuitive knowledge of causes, of the absolute, and of God. Howe doubts whether she had any idea of space and time, but this was not absolutely proved, since as far as distance was concerned, she seemed to estimate it, by muscular sensation. Everything showed that she thought in images. Although without any sensation of light or sound, she made certain noises in her throat to indicate different people when she was conscious of their presence or when she thought of them, so that she was naturally impelled to express every thought or sensation, not externally perceived, by a sign; and this shows the tendency of every idea and image towards an extrinsic form. She often conversed with herself, generally making signs with one hand and replying with the other. It was evident that a muscular sign or the motion of the fingers was substituted for the phonetic signs of speech, and in this way ideas and images received their necessarily extrinsic form. The image was embodied in a muscular act and motion, and in this way thought had its concrete representation. The same results would, as far as we know, be obtained from others in the same unhappy conditions as Laura Bridgman.

It is therefore clear that primitive language was only a vocal and individual sign of material images, and it was for a long while restricted to these concrete limits. Since the vocal signs of the relations of things are less easily expressed, these relations were at first set forth by gestures, by a movement of the whole person, and especially of the hands and face. This preliminary action is helped by the imitative faculty with which children and uncultured peoples are more especially endowed, of which we have also instances in the higher animals nearest to man. The negroes imitate the gestures, clothing, and customs of white men in the most extraordinary and grotesque manner, and so do the natives of New Zealand. The Kamschatkans have a great power of imitating other men and animals, and this is also the case with the inhabitants of Vancouver. Herndon was astonished by the mimic arts of the Brazilian Indians, and Wilkes made the same observation on the Patagonians. This faculty is still more apparent in the lower races. Many travellers have spoken of the extraordinary tendency to imitation among the Fuegians; and, according to Monat, the Andaman islanders are not less disposed to mimicry and imitation. Mitchell states that the Australians possess the same power.

This fact also applies to the languages of extremely rude and savage peoples. Some American Indians, for instance, help out their sentences and make them intelligible by contortion of their features and other gesticulations, and the same observation was made by Schweinwurth of an African tribe. The language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs to make the meaning of their words intelligible that it cannot be understood in the dark. These facts partly explain the natural genesis of human languages.

We have learned from our earlier observations that phenomena appear to the perceptive faculty of primitive man as subjects endowed with power. The subjectivity of these phenomena, their intrinsic conditions and actions are fused into speech, which is their living and conscious symbol; and it is clear that the evolution of language from the concrete to the symbolical, and hence to the simple sign of the object, divested of its original power, is analogous to that of myth.

This law of evolution also applies to the art of writing, which is at first only the precise copy of the image; it is next transformed into an analogous symbol, and then into an alphabetical sign, which serves as the simple expression of the conception, divested of its originally representative faculty. Hence it is apparent that the evolution of myth conforms to the general law of the evolution of human thought, of all its products and arts in their manifold ramifications. From the image, the informing subject, from the conception and the myth, the necessary cycle is accomplished in regular phases, wherever the ethnic temperament and capacity and extrinsic circumstances permit it, until the rational idea is reached, the sign or cipher which becomes the powerful instrument of the exercise and generalization of thought. In order to show the efficacy of the mythical and scientific faculty of thought comprised in the systems of ancient and modern philosophy, and its slow progress towards positive and rational science, we will adduce an instance from the people in whom such an evolution was accomplished, aided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication with them. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a time when they first attempted to reduce the earlier and scanty knowledge of nature to a system.

In Greece the historical course of this faculty ramified into two classes of research, which were at that time objective, the Ionic and the Pythagorean schools. In the former, the phenomenon and nature were assumed to be the direct object of knowledge, while in the latter the object in view was the idea and harmony of things. Influenced by earlier and popular traditions, a mythical and philosophic system arose in the Ionic school, which was exclusively devoted to physical speculations. In Lower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the most part Doric, a science was constituted which, although it included physics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their material value, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion of good and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between the Pythagorean philosophy and lyrical music—of which the origin was sought as a clue to explain the world—shows how far this philosophy was consonant with Doric thought. This historic process is quite natural, since the speculations of philosophy are first directed to physical phenomena, as they are displayed in inward and in external life, and then rise to the consideration of specific types, in a word, to the general and the universal.