THE ANIMAL AND HUMAN EXERCISE OF THE INTELLECT IN THE PERCEPTION OF
THINGS.
Apprehension is the act, both in animals and in man, by which the
spontaneous and immediate animation of things and of phenomena is
accomplished. It is therefore necessary to pause and consider this act,
since it is, even in man, the source and foundation of the origin of
myth, and in it we shall find the causes, elements, and action by which
such a genesis is effected. This fact is so evident that the necessity
of making such an inquiry might almost be taken for granted, since the
truth can be ascertained in no other way.
In the case of animal perception, which we have already considered, the
external perception of an object is composed of three elements: the
phenomenon perceived, the living subject with which this phenomenon is
animated, and the vague yet real power involved in the life thus infused
into it by the animal. Supposing any other animal to be the object
perceived, these three elements are self-evident; since the phenomenon
perceived in a given form causes the immediate assumption that it is a
subject, actuated by a purpose of offence or defence, and hence follows
the apprehension of a power capable of affecting him, which has in this
case a real existence. Phenomenon, subject, effective power, follow in a
rapid and inevitable sequence, and are instantly combined in the
integral image formed of the object apprehended by the senses.
In fact, an animal which fights with another, which seizes on his food
as a prey, or which is in dread of some enemy or unfamiliar object,
recognizes either the species or the individual from its external form,
and constitutes it into an animated subject, and ultimately into an
actively offensive or defensive power, or into one which satisfies his
appetites. Such a fact, and such elements of the fact, recur in the
whole animal kingdom, even among those which only apprehend external
things by the sense of touch. As we ascend higher in the scale of
animals to those who possess other senses and a more elaborate organism,
we find the same fact in a more perfect and distinct form.
Those animals which, since they are without the sense of sight, have no
perception of distance, wait until their prey touches their antennae,
mouths, or claws, and yet the same distinct act is accomplished in these
three specified elements. They would not lie in wait for their prey,
unless they had already formed a conception of its possible image,
consisting of a form, subject, and effective force, combined in a single
intuition. When this external prey is presented to the senses, the
phenomenon, subject, and effective power arise in rapid succession, and
are united in one unique consciousness. This truth appears from the
animal's efforts not to let his prey escape destruction.
From the reciprocal apprehension of animals, these three elements which
constitute it may be clearly seen. Although such a truth, precisely
because it is evident, may appear simple to those who seek truth from
the clouds, or by means of logical or tortuous artifice, yet such are
the characteristics of true science. For the new facts which she
interprets and classifies appear old as soon as they are understood,
although they have never before been explained.
Although such a fact is manifest in the case of reciprocal animal
perceptions, it may appear more difficult to verify it with respect to
perceptions which do not refer to other animals, but to natural
phenomena, or to inanimate, unconscious things. We have shown that all
animal perception is possible only so far as they are able to infuse
their own consciousness and psychical power into every object of nature,
since they are unable to comprehend the thing or phenomenon except as an
objective reality, without reference to its real cosmic importance.
Since this is necessarily the case, the object perceived, even when it
is not an animal, is always transformed into a living subject, acting
deliberately. And although this is sometimes done in a vague way, when
the object in question has not the external form and movements of an
animal, yet it is always regarded as a real power.
When a well broken horse, for example, goes on his way quietly,
perceiving nothing which strongly attracts nor alarms him, the sudden
flutter of a cloth, the flaring of a lamp, the rush of water, or some
violent noise will cause him to stop, to plunge and kick, or to bolt
away. We have already shown, by experiment, the exciting cause of his
alarm and suspicion. The sudden fluttering of the cloth in the wind was
a phenomenon perceived by the horse, and since he regarded this
phenomenon as an animated subject, and consequently as a real power, it
is evident that his fear was caused by the sudden appearance of a living
form, and the direct apprehension of a subject which might possibly be
hurtful or dangerous. In this way, the circle is completed and combined
in one unique phantasm; a phenomenon, a living subject, and a real
power.
In this instance, the psychical law is so clear that it can hardly be
disputed. But if we consider any other animal perceptions, we find that
the law still holds good, as we have already shown in various instances.
In all cases the apprehension takes place in the same way, and consists
of the same elements, namely, of a phenomenon, a living subject, and a
real power. The exercise of animal apprehension is the rapid, necessary,
and perpetual concentration into a single image of the phenomenon,
subject, and cause; that is, given the perception of a phenomenon, the
animal endows it, with respect to himself, with consciousness, and
consequently with real power.
In fact, the faculty of perception cannot be exercised in any other way,
nor can it consist of any other elements. In nature, the sensible
qualities of things are all resolved into general and special phenomena,
appearances, and extrinsic forms, as far as animal and human intuition,
and the character of the subject which perceives and feels them, are
concerned; and they are perceived just so far as we and as animals are
able to communicate by means of our senses with the world and with
ourselves. A phenomenon and an intrinsic form signify, at the moment of
perception, the thing, the object which the conditions of our senses
enable us to perceive, and the intrinsic power of this phenomenon
implies a cause. Natural phenomena and beings are thus reciprocally
linked together as causes and effects, an effect becoming in its turn
the cause of a subsequent fact; that is, when we consider things in
themselves, and not relatively to the animal or man who apprehends them.
If, therefore, there are in animal consciousness and intelligence three
elements of apprehension, afterwards fused into a single fact, it
follows that the extrinsic relations of beings and forces are
subjectively reciprocal; there is the given form of a phenomenon, and,
intrinsically, it consists of an active power, eternally at work, since
there is no being nor form which stands still and is not reproduced in
the infinite evolution of the universe.
Since, to the percipient, the extrinsic form, whatever it may be,
remains the same as that which was first presented to him, the
phenomenon is bounded by his faculty of perception, followed by the
immediate and implicit assumption of a subject, and consequently of a
possible and indefinite causality. This internal and psychical process
of the animal corresponds with the actual condition of things, as they
appear and really are; a correspondence which is in itself a powerful
confirmation of the truth.
Since an animal is devoid of the explicit and reflex process of the
intellect, it has not and cannot have any conception of the thing in
itself, the intrinsic essence of the phenomenon, nor yet of the
objective and cosmic cause; because it animates the phenomenon with its
own personality, which has assumed the external form of this phenomenon,
it is conscious of a cause, like itself, transfused into the object in
question. We have shown that phenomena affect animals in this way, and
that they are conscious of being in a world of living subjects,
constantly actuated by the deliberate purpose of influencing them.
The faculty and elements of apprehension are precisely similar in man
and animals, since extrinsic things present the same appearance to both
alike, and the perceptive power acts in the same way. We cannot, indeed,
go back to our first beginnings, and it is difficult for those who are
not accustomed to such researches to discover the primitive facts of
their own being, which have been so much modified by exercise and the
intrinsic use of reflection for many ages; yet some certain signs
remain, nor would it be now impossible to reproduce them. No one can
doubt that man also began to communicate with the world and with himself
by his perception of a phenomenon, of some extrinsic quality or form.
From this he directly apprehended the thing and its cause. No
intelligent person can believe that man had any direct intuition of the
thing in itself, independently of the extrinsic phenomenon by which it
was presented to his perceptions: he could not by the sudden
apprehension of all natural objects intuitively grasp the _Idea_. This
will be more fully shown in the following chapter.
In accordance with this statement, man, who still retains his animal
nature, has exercised the same faculty of apprehension by the synthetic
process of the three elements which compose it in the case of animals;
he attains therefore to the same results, that is, he animates the
object of perception, and considers it as an efficient cause. This
identical faculty of perception in man and animals was only
differentiated when the reflex power of man subsequently enabled him to
regard objects, as we do now, as inanimate, and subject to the universal
laws of nature.
Even now, after all our scientific attainments, we are not wholly free
from the former innate illusion; we often act towards things as if we
lived in the early days of our race, and continue that primitive process
of personification in the case of certain objects.
We have shown what was the origin of the fetish and of myth, and how it
arose from the impersonation of all natural objects and phenomena, which
are transformed into living subjects. This shows that the faculty,
elements, and results of the apprehension are identical in man and
animals. If man created the fetish which in process of differentiation
generated all kinds of myths, he, like animals, was directly and
implicitly conscious of the living subject, and in it of an active
cause. Although in man the fetish retains its personality in his memory,
and becomes the cause of hopes and fears throughout his life, while its
effect on the animal is only transitory, and at the actual moment of
perception; yet this does not invalidate the truth of the principle, nor
prove that their impulses and genesis are not identical. Thus the
analysis of the faculty of apprehension confirms and explains the proof
before given of the origin of myths, and explains their causes.
We have all, however unaccustomed to give account of our acts and
functions, found ourselves in circumstances which produced the
momentary personification of natural objects. The sight of some
extraordinary phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one acting with
a given purpose, and hence of an actual fetish. A man will sometimes
address the things which surround him, and act towards them as if they
possessed consciousness and will. Children, who are still without
experience and reflection, will often invest external objects with
solidity.
A child, as soon as it can guide its own motions, will grasp anything
which is pliant and yielding as firmly as if it were solid, thus
implicitly judging the thing from its appearance. In the same way, a
child confidently relies on any support, however weak and insufficient
it may be, arguing as usual from the appearance to the thing itself. Nor
must it be said that experience is necessary to correct these errors.
The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to experience, which only
becomes possible by means of this faculty. The elements of this faculty
unconsciously fulfil and pursue their office in the child, aided by the
reflex motions which are cerebro-spinal and peripheral, as they have
been produced and organized in the species by evolution; but they, as
well as these reflex physiological motions, are prior to the same
temporary experience.[23]
Thus the new-born infant sucks the milk which serves for its nourishment
from its mother's breast; it is impossible in this case that such a
class of elements should not be spontaneously developed; the child feels
the nipple and adapts its mouth and mode of breathing to it, while
pressing the breast with its hands to express the milk. If much in this
operation might be ascribed to reflex movements, yet in association with
them, supplementing and rendering them possible, there is an implicit
perception of the external phenomenon through the sense of touch, and he
becomes conscious of the object, and of its causative power; such power
consisting in this case of its capacity to satisfy his wants. In short,
all animals, man included, in every act of communication with the world,
exercise this faculty by means of the three elements which constitute
it. If we consider the actions of infants, and still more of all young
animals, this truth will be vividly displayed.
In common speech, even to this day, all men, both learned and unlearned,
speak of inanimate things as if they had consciousness and intelligence.
While this mode of expression bears witness to the extremely early
origin of the general personification of natural objects, it also shows
that even now our intelligence is not emancipated from such a habit, and
our speech unconsciously retains the old custom. Thus we call weather
good and bad, the wind mad (_pazzo_) or furious, the sea treacherous,
the waters insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it,
and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could
hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholy
and unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We say
that some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable,
that well cultivated ground is no longer wild, that in a good season the
whole landscape smiles and leaps for joy. A river is called malevolent,
and a lake swallows up men; the earth is thirsty and sucks up moisture,
and plants fear the cold. The people of Pistoja say that some olive
trees will not feel a thrashing, that they are afraid of many things,
and that they live on, despising the course of years. Again, they say
that olive trees are not afraid of the pruning knife, and that they
rejoice in its use by a skilled hand. Thousands of such expressions
might be adduced, and we refer our readers to Giuliani's work,
"_Linguaggio vivente toscano._"
Nor do we only ascribe our own feelings to inanimate things, but we also
invest them with the forms and members of the human body. We speak of
the head, shoulder, back, or foot of a mountain, of an arm of the sea, a
tongue of land, the mouth of a sea-port, of a cave, or crater. So again
we ascribe teeth to mountains, a front (_fronte_, forehead) to a house;
there is the eye-brow (_ciglio_) of a ditch, the eye of heaven, a vein
of metal, the entrails of a mountain. The Alps are bald or bare, the
soil is wrinkled, objects are sinister or the reverse (_sinistra,
destra_),[24] and a mountain is gigantic ox dwarfish.
In like manner we ascribe our own functions to nature. The river eats
into the land; the whirlpool swallows all which is thrown into it, and
the wind whistles, howls and moans; the torrent murmurs, the sun is born
and dies, the heavens frown, the fields smile. This habit is also
transferred to moral questions; and we speak of the heart of the
question, the leading idea, the body of doctrines, the members of a
philosophic system; we infuse new blood into thought. Truth becomes
palpable, a theme is eviscerated, thought is lame, science is childish.
History speaks clearly; there is an embryo of knowledge, a vacillating
science; the infancy, youth, maturity, and death of a theory; morality
is crass, the spirit meagre or acute; the mind adapts itself, logic is
maimed; there is a conflict of ideas, the inspiration of science,
truncated thoughts. Again we talk of the head of the mob, of the foot of
the altar or the throne, of the heart of the riot, of the body of an
army, of a phalanx, of trampling under foot, duty, decency, and justice.
From these examples, and indeed we might say from the whole of speech,
especially if we go back to the primitive value of words and to their
roots, it appears to what a vast extent man originally projected
himself, his consciousness, emotions, and purposes into inanimate
things; and how, even under the historical conditions of civilization,
he still personifies the world, and ascribes to it the forms of his own
body and limbs.
Again, we have plainly shown that man, by the intrinsic reduplication of
his psychical faculty, spontaneously retains and personifies the inward
phantasm generated by such a projection of special natural objects on
his perception. In the genesis of such fetishes, and also when, by an
effort of will, he recalls them to his mind, this faculty with its
constituent elements is brought into action. In fact, when the image is
recalled to the mind, it is represented like the external phenomenon;
and consequently it involves and generates the thing of which the
phenomenon is the external vest, that is, its causative power; and in
this way the objective process of its formation is inwardly reproduced.
Since the cosmic reality is thus ideally reproduced, the inward
substance of the fetish assumes a really efficacious power, whether in
its extrinsic form, or in its intrinsic image, and in this way primitive
superstitions had their source.
In the case of savage and primitive man the inward image of the fetish
without its bodily presence is, owing to the process already described,
not merely valid as a real entity, but it becomes a mysterious
apparition in the sphere of fancy, in a way analogous to our belief in
the reality of things seen in a dream or in moments of hallucination.
This appears in the history of all peoples past and present, whence it
is certain that primitive man not only formed personifications of
external objects and of his own emotions, but also of their images, as
they were retained in his memory. In both cases the sequence of the
three elements of apprehension, the phenomenon, subject, and cause, is
due to the same unique faculty; in a word, the inward perception is
identical in its genesis and laws with that which is external.
These are not the only results which follow from the exercise of this
faculty. By the spontaneous classifying action of our intelligence we
rise from the perception of special and individual objects and phenomena
to their various types, and hence to an inward and ideal world of
specific representations, as if these were causative powers, informing
the multitude of analogous and similar phenomena in which they are
manifested. These specific types, which are more strongly present to the
fancy in the primitive exercise of the intelligence, also become
personified, and they generate what is called polytheism in all its
forms, varying according to the races, times, places, and respective
conditions of morality and civilization in which they are found.
The same psychical faculty and the same elements are necessary for the
personification of such types or idols. The three elements appear in
their proper sequence even in the amorphous phantasms which these types
first shadow forth, and which are subsequently perfected and embodied in
human form. For the consciousness of the external form always exists in
the first vague and nebulous conception of the phantasm which gradually
appears and formulates itself in the vivid imagination; and hence
follows the phenomenal vest, which, as usual, generates the
corresponding subject, informed with a causative power. This process
clearly shows, and in fact constitutes, the essence of myth.
Since the types vary very much, and are indeed unstable from their very
nature, constantly becoming formed and again decomposed, the primitive
mythologies of all people are in like manner very various, indefinite,
and subject to constant change.
It appears in the Vedic mythology, and also in that of the ancient
Greeks and Latins, how often the typical myths of Agni, Varuna, Indra,
Asvini, and Maruti; and again, of Zeus, Here, Athene, and the rest, are
changed and reconstituted. This shows how the same human faculty, the
same elements which constitute the perception and primitive
personification of external phenomena, are those also of the specific
and intrinsic phenomena. Just as man, in the primitive conditions of his
existence, by the psychical and physiological law of his perception,
which he has in common with animals, transformed the world and its
phenomena into subjects endowed with conscious life; so by his psychical
faculty of reduplication he personified the mental images of these same
subjects as fetishes and myths; and subsequently invested them with more
distinctly human forms, and also with specific types of humanity. The
same faculty and conditions of animal perception afterwards become the
true and only causes of the superstitions, mythologies, and religions of
mankind. The law of continuity is unbroken, and this is a certain
confirmation of the truth.
This faculty, inward function, and process of mythical and symbolic
facts led in course of time to the evolution and beginning of knowledge,
which is first empirical and then rational. Therefore, we must repeat,
the extrinsic and intrinsic perception, the specification of types, and
their modification into a unity which was always becoming more
comprehensive, are the conditions and method of science itself, which is
only developed by means of this faculty. Hence the elements and
intrinsic logical form of science are identical with those through which
mythical representations and the inward life of the human intelligence
are developed.[25]
Besides, as we have before remarked, the empirical knowledge of things
begins and is perfected in the superstitions of fetishes and myths.
Ideas are modified and become purer as they converge into types, and the
principle and method at once become more rational. Either in the faculty
of perception and in its elements, or in the inward classification of
specific forms, or again in the more perfect empirical knowledge of
phenomena, the progress of myth and science go on together, and they are
not only developed in a parallel direction, but the form becomes the
covering, involucre, matrix, or, as I might say, the _cotyledons_, by
means of which the latter is developed and nourished. Even in more
rational science this faculty, and these elements, necessarily recur,
since in every human conception we find the material aspect, or its
mental image, the thing and its cause, and, as we shall see, some
mythical personality is insensibly identified with it.
The act which produces myth is therefore the same from which science
proceeds, so that their original source is identical. The same process
which constitutes the fetish and myth also constitutes science in its
conditions and form, and here we find the unique fact which generates
them both; science, like myth, would be impossible without apprehension,
without the individuation of ideas, and the classification and
specification of types.
Before going further I must briefly recapitulate the order of ideas and
facts which we have observed, so that the process may be as strictly
logical as it is practical. Since, in the elements of apprehension,
perception is absolutely identical in man and animals, its primitive
effects in animating natural phenomena are the same. But man, by means
of his reduplicative faculty, retains a mental image of the personified
subject which is only transitory in the case of animals, and it thus
becomes an inward fetish, by the same law, and consisting of the same
elements as that which is only extrinsic. These phantasms are, moreover,
personified by the classifying process of types, they are transformed
into human images, and arranged in a hierarchy, and to this the various
religions and mythologies of the world owe their origin. Since such a
process is also the condition and form of knowledge, the source of myth
and science is fundamentally the same, for they are generated by the
same psychical fact. It is in this way that the progress of human
intelligence was developed in the course of ages; its attitude varies in
various races, but the impulses, the faculty, and its elements are
identical. I do not think that this unique fact in which myth and
science have their source has been observed before; still less has any
one defined the limits of human intelligence, and recognized in the
simple acts of animals the formal and absolute conditions of human
science, and the origin of myth.
If I am not deluded by a prejudice in favour of my own researches, this
theory is a contribution to truth. It is confirmed by the solidarity
which it establishes between the acts and laws of the psychical human
faculty, and that of animals which necessarily preceded it. No science
can be constituted without such solidarity; this great truth was felt
and, after their manner, demonstrated by scholastic philosophers, or, as
it was afterwards scientifically expressed by the genius of Leibnitz:
_Natura non facit saltum!_