Myth and Science Part 5

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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tute 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 cra.s.s, 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 const.i.tuent 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 a.s.sumes a really efficacious power, whether in its extrinsic form, or in its intrinsic image, and in this way primitive superst.i.tions 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 ent.i.ty, but it becomes a mysterious apparition in the sphere of fancy, in a way a.n.a.logous 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 cla.s.sifying 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 mult.i.tude of a.n.a.logous 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 const.i.tutes, 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 reconst.i.tuted. This shows how the same human faculty, the same elements which const.i.tute 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 superst.i.tions, 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 superst.i.tions 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 cla.s.sification 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 const.i.tutes the fetish and myth also const.i.tutes 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 cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sifying 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 att.i.tude 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 const.i.tuted 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!_

CHAPTER VI.

THE INTRINSIC LAW OF THE FACULTY OF APPREHENSION.

We have now carefully considered the acts and dynamic activity of human thought. We have seen in what animal and human perception consists, and how it acts; how the subjects developed in our imagination are gradually united in specific forms or types, and are arranged in a system, whence follow the first symbolic representations of science. But our task is not yet accomplished, since much more is needed to display all that this fact involves, so that we may fully understand the inward evolution of myth and science in history and in our race, and not merely in the individual man.

The faculty and its effects, which could primarily be reduced to this unique and indivisible fact, do not exclusively belong to primordial ages, but go on through all time, our own included, while a.s.suming divers forms and fresh aspects as the faculty of the intellect becomes more developed. It is an indisputable truth that the influence of myth on thought and fancy, a survival from prehistoric ages, still prevails among the common people both in town and country, among those who are uncultivated, and even in the higher cla.s.ses conventionally called good society.

It is more difficult to trace the occasional existence of the same influence among those who think rationally and investigate the laws of the universe while acquainted with the earlier mythical process; and yet, as we shall show, the greatest and most able men are not unfettered by it. Myth has. .h.i.therto been regarded as a secondary and fanciful product of the psychical human faculty, due to extrinsic impulses, rather than as the primitive and intrinsic necessity of the intelligence--a necessity which has its roots in animal intelligence itself; and the unique fact which generates both myth and science has not been ascertained. If this fact and law had been discovered before, we should have more readily understood religions, philosophic systems, and the successive forms of science, and pure reason would have made more rapid progress. Our theory, besides giving a rational explanation of the different forms a.s.sumed by thought in the course of its historic evolution, will, I hope, also account for many psychological phenomena which have hitherto been imperfectly understood, such as dreams, hallucinations, the aberrations of insanity, and the like. The primitive fact and its effects reappear in these conditions, and this influence is persistent and enters into all our acts, conscious or unconscious, voluntary or involuntary.

It follows from the innate necessity of the perception that objects and their extrinsic and intrinsic causes are resolved into living subjects, and are cla.s.sified in a hierarchy of specific types, which are accepted by the primitive and ignorant mind as the universal mythical forms.[26]

But the necessities of human speech, which is however involved in mythical representations, from the very beginning essentially reflex, require other terms than those of individual and specific animations. It is clear that the simple personifying faculty of the intellect sufficed in its earliest emotions, but that after the slow development of psychical reduplication, and the enlargement of languages and ideas, it no longer satisfied the logical requirements of the mind.

Consequently, explicit,--that is, rational--singular, and specific ideas gradually arose and a.s.sumed a definite form; they were interwoven and fused into these individual and specific types, and thus obtained a place in the thoughts and language of primitive man. The gradual intrusion of specific rational ideas is natural to the human mind, since it is logically progressive, and the fact may be observed by those who watch the mental growth of children, and of ignorant and untaught adults.

While the mythical intelligence continues as before to give its habitual mythical interpretation of many natural phenomena, the use is gradually acquired of special and generic symbols which express special and specific ideas, and these no longer include a personification of the individual thing or idea. Without this intrusion of rational ideas any progress would be impossible, as well as the power of expressing all which time and education present to the mind, and gradually enable it to comprehend; the fanciful image is fused in a rational conception, which is, however, not yet definite and explicit.

What are commonly termed abstract ideas arise from this necessity, as the result of the perfection and development of speech, but these were not at first abstract, although they made use of the abstract idea.

Unconscious abstraction is certainly one of the primary acts of the intelligence, since abstraction follows from the consideration of a part or of some parts of a whole, which are themselves presented as a whole to the perception. But this primitive abstraction was so far a concrete fact for the perception, in that each act of the apprehension const.i.tuted a phenomenon of which the apparent character was abstracted from the other parts which formed a whole, and was transformed into a living subject, as we have already shown at length. The really explicit abstraction, to which man only attained after many ages, consisting in the simple representation of a quality or part of a thing, could not at that time be effected, although special and specific ideas gradually found their way into thought and speech. All the terms for form and relation in primitive speech, and also among modern savages, confirm this a.s.sertion, as linguists are aware; the form and relation now expressing an abstract reference to actions and pa.s.sions in the verbs, nouns, and adverbs, originally referred to a concrete object.

Three modes or degrees of abstract representations occur in the progressive exercise of the intellectual faculty; these, combined with the special apprehensions of the individual memory, and with imaginative types, const.i.tute the life of human thought, and are the conditions by which we attain to rational knowledge. While the specific mythical type may take the place of the general type in the logical exercise of thought, and may suffice for an imaginative comprehension of the system of the world, the abstract conception intervenes in the daily necessity for communication between these general mythical types, and serves to cement them together, thus rendering the commerce of ideas among men and in the human mind more easy.

The abstract conceptions which are formed in this way may be divided into three cla.s.ses--physical, moral, and intellectual. To begin with the first; it is impossible for human speech to point out and define a subject or phenomenon in the series to which it belongs by resemblance, ident.i.ty, or a.n.a.logy, unless there is already in the mind a conception which includes the general qualities, or quality proper to the series of similar phenomena; this is essentially an abstract type, but it primarily a.s.sumes a concrete form. I cannot say that anything is white or heavy, until by repet.i.tions of the same sensation I have been able to combine in a single conception the sensations diffused over an infinite number of objects. The genesis of these conceptions is found in the comparative explicit judgment which depends on the memory for the necessary conditions of its formation.

The typical and abstract idea of white has not merely a nominal value, as it is a.s.serted in some schools of thought, for an empty term could express no idea, whereas this idea is perfectly clear. Neither is it a real thing, but rather an ideal reality, not a pure abstraction of the spirit, extracted, so to speak, from the material substance. The conception of whiteness formed by the comparative judgment is limited by the perception of the concrete, external fact perceived as one special quality among all other qualities in nature, and it is therefore a physiological fact of inward consciousness.

In the abstract idea of white or whiteness we do not only picture to ourselves a quality common to many things, but by this term, and by the idea which corresponds to it, the same sensation is actually present to our inward intuition, or the same quality of the sensation which was previously generated by our external senses in a concrete form.

Although, therefore, the idea is generic, the sensation itself is represented to the mind in the form of a concrete perception. It is not concrete in the sense of belonging to a special object or definite form, as it is presented to the outward perception, but only so far as there is actually an inward and physiological sensation of whiteness, which the word recalls to the memory. There can be no mental confusion with the quality of red, or of any colour, when I speak or think of what is white.