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.
In the composition and mythical animation of the world, whether by
special personifications or by those which are typical, and by the
sensations corresponding to them, man makes a fanciful classification of
phenomena, he observes and studies their beneficial or injurious effects
on himself, and in this empirical way is able to estimate their value.
On the other hand, he rises in the social scale by means of his
superstitious and religious feelings, which act as a stimulus and
symbol, so far as he subjects his animal and perverse instincts to the
deliberate precepts which he imagines to be expressed by these myths.
In so far as the empirical observation of things is irrational, and
obedience is paid to the fanciful precepts of oracles, it is not the
result of an explicit moral law, yet there is on the one side some
knowledge of the qualities, habits, and periods of things, and on the
other a civil and human order which is gradually formed and developed.
In fact, in the case of the higher historical races it is important to
make a more explicit and accurate study of the fetish religion, that is,
of the mythical animation of any special phenomenon or thing. Although
the scope of such religion is superstitious veneration, or abject fear,
yet it is impossible that it should not induce a more precise and less
confused notion of the relative condition of things. In this way
observation becomes more accurate, and the intrinsic use of the thing is
often recognized. By the gradual exercise of such analysis in the case
of all or most phenomena, man obtains a clearer knowledge of his
environment.
While a juster estimate of the empiric value of special objects is
obtained in this manner, the subsequent, though sometimes mistaken
classification of their specific types enables the mind to arrange his
knowledge of natural things in a more synthetic and orderly way, and by
such classification man is always tending towards a more universal
unity: he places the general forms of phenomena in an ideal harmony,
which fancifully symbolizes their laws.
In the succeeding chapters we shall see how this process is
accomplished, and how it leads up to the explicit exercise of the
reason. A more definite empiric knowledge, and the harmonious
classification of specific types with a view to unity, are a proof of a
relatively greater improvement, both in civilization and morality. This
is abundantly shown in all those peoples who have attained to an
altogether anthropomorphic polytheism, either among the Aryans, prior to
their dispersion, in the Vedic period in India, among the Celts,
Graeco-Latins, Germans, Slavs, or in the Finnish races, Mongols, Chinese,
Assyrians, Egyptians, Mexicans, and Peruvians, as well as among the
barbarous peoples of modern times.
The imagination, the faculty which creates and excites phantasms in man,
is not, as is erroneously supposed, the primary source of myths, but
only that which in a secondary degree elaborates and perfects their
spontaneous forms; and precisely because it is near akin to this
primordial mythical faculty, it goes on to organize and classify these
polytheistic myths. By a moral and necessary development an
approximation is made, if not to truth itself, at any rate to its
symbols; whence reason is afterwards more easily infused into myth on
the one side, and on the other it is resolved into rational ideas and
cosmic laws. It was in this way that poets perfected myth in its
influence on virtue and civilization, and by them it was directed into
the paths of science and of truth.
As Dr. Zeller has well said in his lecture on the development of
monotheism in Greece herself, the great Greek poets were her first
thinkers, her sages, as they were afterwards called. They sang of Zeus,
and exalted him as the defender of righteousness, the representative of
moral order. Archilocus says that Zeus weighs and measures all the
actions of good and evil men, as well as those of animals. He is, said
Terpandros somewhat later, the source and ruler of all things. According
to Simonides of Amorgos, the principle of all created things rests with
him, and he rules the universe by his will. Thus, as time went on, Zeus
became, in the general conception, the personification of the world's
government, which was delivered from the fatality of destiny and from
the promptings of caprice. Destiny which, according to the early
mythical representation, it was impossible to escape, is resolved into
the will of Zeus, and the other gods which were at first supposed to be
able to oppose him, become his faithful ministers. Such is the teaching
of Solon and of Epicharmos. "Be assured that nothing escapes the eyes of
the divinity; God watches over us, and to him nothing is impossible."
This impulse of the imaginative faculty combined with the process of
reason is most plainly seen in the conceptions of the three great poets
of the fifth century, Pindar, AEschylus, and Sophocles. In the words of
Pindar: "All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals,
whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus: he can draw light
from darkness, and can veil the sweet light of day in obscurity. No
human action escapes him: happiness is found only in the way which leads
to him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone."
We find the same order and manner of thought in AEschylus, although he
remained faithful to the polytheistic creed, which indeed confirms the
truth of our theory. The moral law was gradually developed and purified
by this long succession of poets, and it clearly appears from AEschylus
and his successors how man reaps that which he has sown: he whose heart
and hands are pure lives his life unmolested, while guilt sooner or
later brings its own punishment with it. The Erynnyes rule the fates of
men, and may be said to sap the vital forces of the guilty; they cleave
to them, excite and stimulate them to madness until death comes. The
ancient and mysterious mythical tradition of the strife between the old
gods and the new was astutely used by AEschylus to teach us how the
terrible vengeance of the Eumenides gradually gave place to a gentler
and more humane law; just as the primitive despotism of Zeus was
gradually transformed into a providential and moral rule of the
universe.
Sophocles attained to a higher degree of perfection in the paths of
gentleness. No ancient poet has spoken more nobly of the Deity, although
his language is altogether polytheistic. He shows the highest reverence
to the gods, whose power and laws rule all human life. On them all
things depend, both good and evil, nor could any one violate with
impunity the eternal order of things. No act or thought escapes the
gods; they are the source of wisdom and happiness. Man must meekly
comply with their precepts, and must offer up his pains and sorrows to
Zeus.
These utterances of the ancient poets never go beyond the range of
polytheism, yet they show how far intrinsic morality and truth were
developed, even by the imaginative and mythical faculty of the human
mind, during the gradual historical evolution of the race. The plurality
of gods appears to be the manifestation of the divine principle; their
action on the world lost almost all trace of arbitrary power and of
their former versatility and caprice. The superstition of polytheism
remained, but it had an inward tendency to more rational conceptions and
principles.
From this brief notice, as well as from the remarks which preceded it,
it appears how the evolution of myth, from its beginning and in its
historic course, led to a more perfect, although empiric acquaintance
with the world, and with the moral principles and civilization of
peoples. The logical faculty by which the development is gradually
effected is the same by which from another point of view science becomes
possible.
We have clearly demonstrated the indisputable fact that the absolute
condition of intrinsic animal perception, and consequently of the
primary perception of man, was the animation and vivification of the
things and phenomena perceived. This primary acquaintance with things
depended on their spontaneous resolution into active and personal
subjects. Nor could it be otherwise. Although the scientific idea or
notion of objective reality in itself could not be grasped by simple
animal intelligence, the impression of the thing perceived was
necessarily that of a subjectivity resembling that of the observer, not
indeed in outward form and figure but in intrinsic power, whatever might
be the extrinsic form and figure of the object or phenomenon.
The original condition of animals, and of man himself in his primordial
life and consciousness, is and was the intrinsic personification of the
things perceived: from this source the human intellect slowly and with
difficulty attained to science, by virtue of that psychical
reduplication which has been so often mentioned.
The motive or subject of myth may be external, cosmic, or it may be
internal, intellectual, and moral, but in each case the cause and
faculty at work are the same. Just as the primary condition of
observation, and consequently the motive principle of science, consists
in the primitive exercise of the intelligence, which leads to empirical
and rational knowledge, so myth and science have a common origin in the
immediate transformation of natural objects and phenomena into living
subjects, and they flow from the same deep source. The object in view is
different, but their constructive faculty is the same, and they are, up
to a certain point in their long historic course, evolved in the same
way. Science, therefore, from one point of view, is the gradual
exhaustion and dissolution of myth into the objects which are
scientifically investigated, and this will appear more clearly in the
sequel.
The series of various phenomena, whether of light, of meteors, of water,
of vegetable and animal forms, which were the first subjects of myths,
became so interwoven as finally to be represented in an anthropomorphic
personality, and were thus gradually lost and evaporated in the ideal
symbol. As time went on, by the exercise of the intelligence, and by the
aid of the observations and collateral experiments naturally connected
with them, man ended where he had begun; released from myth, he only
recognized the facts and laws of the world. This clearly shows, not only
the formation of myths, but the process of evolution by which they pass
into science, in which they find their termination.
If, however, myth and science have the same origin, and start from a
common fact, a fundamental principle is necessary, and an internal human
act, which is at once the cause and genesis both of myth and science.
And although the source is one, myth and science vary in their aspects
and effects, and have different fields of historic activity, so that it
is necessary to trace the cause of this diversity in their progress and
results, to enable us to make a scientific definition of the nature of
myth and science, their respective sources and objects.
If on the one side we continually see the birth of fresh myths, which
ramify into many fertile sources of superstitions, of religions, of
poetry and aestheticism; on the other side we see almost simultaneously a
more or less distinct and lively manifestation of the scientific
faculty, although still in an empirical form. They are like two streams
which issue from the same source and take a parallel course, sometimes
mingling their waters, only to separate anew, and then again to become
united as they fall by a wide mouth into the sea.
In this manner we have ascertained the actual origin of science and of
myth, and have entered on a field perhaps never before attempted nor
contemplated; we have established a firm basis for such researches, and,
which is perhaps still more important, have shown the continuity of the
mythical faculty between man and the animal kingdom. We have
ascertained this fact, in its cosmic necessities, both physiological and
psychical, but without considering the faculty on which it depends; we
have still to decompose the elements of which it consists, and to
consider their nature and number.
This inquiry forms the chief problem we have to solve, and it is
precisely what we have endeavoured to state in this chapter. In the
necessary order of things the fact has its physiological and cosmic
conditions in man; it is therefore necessarily internal and psychical,
and it is accomplished by the special and intrinsic exercise of the
intelligence. We shall be convinced of this truth if we only consider
that science and myth have a common origin.
It is evident that there are great difficulties in such an inquiry; for,
putting aside other extrinsic difficulties, we have to reduce to a
single act or fact the origin of the two vast worlds of myth and
science; it is needful to gauge the inmost psychical faculty of the
intelligence, and to discover the continuous yet rapid and delicate
process of its exercise.
If we are able to attain our object and to tear away the veil which
conceals this mysterious act, we shall have a noble recompense in the
laborious path on which we have entered, inasmuch as we shall reveal one
of the most important laws of life, of the exercise of reflex
intelligence and of the genesis of science. Yet we are very sensible how
far we are from being equal to the enormous difficulties of this
inquiry.