CHAPTER VII. THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MYTH AND SCIENCE
(CONTINUED...)
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 honor 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 travelers 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.
Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from
the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the
intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with
the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of
things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleatic
school followed from the two former, although its development was
contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence
upon them was to some extent reactionary.
Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle,
namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from the
water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source
in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the
teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we
find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in many
legends diffused through the world even in modern times. He said that
everything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself was
derived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is the
origin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it is
the primitive principle of the world. We see how much this theory is
concerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth by
means of seed. He regarded the world as a living being, which had been
evolved from an imperfect germ of moisture. This mode of animating the
world, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already in
existence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy. He saw life in
the appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to be
animate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filled
with demons and genii.[32]
We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales,
declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything was
derived from a primitive condition of germs. The same opinion was held
by Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras.
Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremely
ancient in his time. The other philosophers of the Ionic and successive
schools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement of
their theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so that
it is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions are
identical.
It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved a
more rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols and
primitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although they
assumed a larger and more scientific form. Thales and others assigned a
mechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which was
contrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world as
a living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functions
as all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons,
thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race.
While the scientific faculty was gathering strength and leading the way
to a more rational consideration of the world and natural phenomena,
really advancing beyond the earlier ideas which had been almost wholly
mythical, myth was still the matrix of thought, although its
envelopment was partly rent asunder and was becoming transparent. From
this brief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for our purpose,
let us return to the Pythagorean school, in which, although the faculty
at work is essentially objective, there is a closer consideration of the
analogies between thought and the world, and the ground is more often
retraced, so that theory assumes a more intellectual form.
The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the world as the union of the
two opposite principles of the illimitable and the limited, of the equal
and the unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive union, since
they formulated the supreme principle as equal--unequal (Arist. _Met_.
xii. 7.) They held the infinite to be _the place of the one_. There was
an attraction between the two principles, which was termed the _act of
breathing_; hence the void entered into the world and separated things
from each other. Thus their conception of the world was that of a
concourse of opposite principles. They represented its limits as a unity
and as the true beginning of multiplicity. They regarded the development
of the world as a process of life regulated by the primitive principles
contained in the world; its breath or life depended on the breaking
forth of the infinite void in Uranus, and the time which is termed the
_interval_ of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath into the
world. All therefore emanates from one, and all is at the same time
governed by one supreme power. Number is everything, and is the essence
of things, but the _triad_ includes all number, since it contains the
beginning, middle, and end. Everything is derived from the primitive
_one_ and from the principal number; and since this number in breathing
its vital evolution into the void is divided into many units, everything
is derived from the multiplicity of these units or numbers.
Since, by his idea of the source of universal order, Pythagoras partly
accepted the theocosmic monad as the final and necessary root of all
life, and of all that is knowable, he could not fail to see the
convertibility of the unit into the Being. But if the unit must always
precede the manifold, there is a first unit from which all the others
proceed; if this first and eternal unit is at the same time the absolute
being, it follows that number and the world have a common origin and a
common essence, and that the intrinsic causes and possible combinations
of number are virtually accomplished in the development of the world,
and these causes and combinations are ideal forms of this development.
The monad is developed by these laws through all the generative
processes of nature, while at the same time it remains eternal in the
system of the universe; so that things not only have their origin and
essence, their place and time according to numerical causes, but each is
in effect a number as far as its individual properties and the
universal process of cosmic life are concerned. The reason of the number
must depend upon the substance, by the configurations of which it is
defined, divided, added, and multiplied, and to this geometry is added,
which measures all things in relation to themselves and others. This
eternal cause makes it intelligible that if immaterial principles
precede and govern the whole material world, it is also by means of
these that the classification of science is in intrinsic agreement with
that of nature. Numbers have their value in music, in gymnastics, in
medicine, in morals, in politics, in all branches of science. The
Pythagorean arithmetic is the bond and universal logic of the knowable.
But at the same time Pythagoras and his school peopled the world with
demons and genii, which were the causes of disease; they did not abandon
the old mythical ideas of the incarnation of spirits and the
transmigration of souls--theories and beliefs which recur in nearly all
primitive and savage peoples.
In this vast Pythagorean scheme, which contrasts with that of the Ionic
school of physics, thought is more explicitly freed from the ruder
mythical ideas, and rises to a more intelligent and rational conception
of the world, but the ancient popular traditions still persist, and
there is an evident _entification_ of number. The primitive monad,
numbers, their genesis and relations, are not regarded as abstract
conceptions, necessary for understanding the order of nature, and a
merely logical function of the mind; they are the substantial essence
which underlies all mythical representations. Although the essential
life of the world is considered from a more abstract point of view, yet
the mythical analogy of animal life evidently finds a place in the
breath of the void and of time, assumed to be independent entities. The
subsequent train of beliefs in spirits, of their incarnations and
transmigrations, are closely connected with the phantasmagoria of the
past, and display their mythical genesis; yet by their deeper and more
explicit thought they may be said to infuse intellectual life into the
world and into science which relates to it. In this first rational
classification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and its
ideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation of
manifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamental
conceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of being
altogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific.
I must here be allowed to quote a hymn in the Rig-Veda, which was
historically earlier than the primitive philosophy of Greece, but which
reveals the same tendency, the same mythical and scientific teaching in
its interpretation of the world. In this hymn, which has been translated
and explained by Max Mueller, we see how boldly the problem of the origin
of the world is stated (hymn 129, book x.)--
"Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth,
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
Nature below, and power and will above--
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The gods themselves came later into being--
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."
It is evident that in this hymn, the expression of the moment when human
thought was partly freed from the earlier anthropomorphic ideas, the
scientific faculty which attempts a rational explanation of the world is
shown; and although this is an isolated inspiration of the prophet, yet
it shadows forth the conclusions to which the primitive Hellenic
speculation came when it was deliberately exerted to solve the problem
of creation. In fact, there is here an intimation of the waters, of the
void or deep abyss, as the beginnings of the world; of the breath of the
One, the hidden germ of things developed by means of heat; of
productive powers as a lower, and energy as a higher form of nature; of
conceptions found in the Ionic, the Pythagorean, and the Eleatic
philosophies, which all converge into _the one_. All belong to the same
Aryan race.
The Vedic composition represents in _Dyavaprthivi_ the close connection
between the two divinities, Heaven and Earth, the one considered as the
active and creative principle, the other as that which is passive and
fertilized; the same ideas, more or less worked out, underlie not only
the first philosophies, but successive theories and systems. The worship
of water, of fire, and of air involved their personification, and they
then became exciting principles, in accordance with the law of evolution
which we have laid down. In the Rig-Veda, as well as in the Zendavesta,
the waters are collectively invoked by their special name _apas_, and
they are termed the _mothers_, the _divine_, which contain the _amrta_
or ambrosia, and all healing powers. In _Agni_ and its Vedic
transformations we clearly trace the worship of fire, and its cosmic
value. The Vedic worship of the air is Vayu, from _va_, to breathe, who
is associated with the higher gods, and especially with _Indra_, ruler
of the atmosphere: next comes _Rudra_, the god of storms, accompanied by
the _Maruti_, the winds; and in the Zendavesta the air is invoked as an
element. Hence we see that a more rational conception of the genesis of
the world succeeds to these earlier representations and
personifications of the elements; representations which in another form
endure throughout the course of human thought.
It is now necessary to consider the other period of the mythical and
scientific evolution which had its definitive conclusion in Plato and
Aristotle, teachers who even now to some extent influence the two great
currents of speculative science. For us, however, it is more important
to consider the Platonic teaching as that in which the mythical
evolution of the earlier representations has full and clear expression;
while in the Aristotelian philosophy an element of dissolution is
already at work which throws some light on the illusions of the Platonic
school.
We must bear in mind that the spontaneous and even the reflective
intellectual faculty gradually assimilated special and independent myths
into comprehensive types, which referred to all natural objects. Next,
the incarnation of spirits produced the earliest forms of polytheism,
and these were slowly classified into more concentric circles, and
finally into a single hierarchical system. Owing to the attitude and
ethnic temperament of the Greeks, the glorious anthropomorphism of their
Olympus arose in a more vivid form than elsewhere, and it was
impersonated in the all-powerful and all-seeing Zeus, ruler of the
world, of gods and men. This process, modified in a thousand ways, was
carried on in all races. Hence it resulted that every object had a type,
its god; everything was typically individuated in an anthropomorphic
entity in such a way that there arose a natural dualism between the
phenomena, facts, and cosmic orders on the one side, and on the other
the hierarchy of gods who represented them and over whom they presided.
The Hellenic philosophies prior to Plato, both physical and
intellectual, and also the psychological morality of Socrates, had
already accomplished the first evolution of this typical stage of
universal polytheism, substituting for anthropomorphic representations
physical and intellectual principles and powers. Thought was educated in
its inward exercise, as well as in the observation of facts and ideal
representations. But--and this constituted the first evolution of
anthropomorphism in general--these powers all expressed the thing in its
general and phenomenal form; it was endowed with merely zoomorphic
force, and the world was regarded as physiologically living.
Plato, impelled by the foregoing evolution, and by the large and
exquisitely aesthetic character of his genius, accomplished the second
and altogether intellectual stage of evolution by inverting the problem;
he affirmed that the final and intrinsic result of the exercise of
thought was its earlier and eternal essence, extrinsic and objective.
The types which were first fetishes and then polytheistic were
transformed into the physical and intellectual principles of the world,
divested of all mythical and extrinsic form as far as their material
organization was concerned. Plato held that such types were really
ideal, as in fact they had unconsciously been from the first; that is,
that it was simply a logical conception of species and genera which is
natural to human thought; a conception necessary for the spontaneous as
well as for the reflex and scientific processes of thought. From the
type, the specific idea, the generalization into the idea of each
special object was easy, since each object has its psychical
representation in the mind. Special and specific ideas were then
arranged in a certain order, and those which are more general in a
concentric and systematic classification; this had been also the case in
the earlier polytheistic system, since the process of the intelligence
naturally arranges all its representations. But he did not stop here,
nor indeed was it possible for him to do so.
We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, but
their relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty;
these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively
perceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motion
of the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and then
embodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that in
primitive thought these relations involved an active entity, and were in
a word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning,
and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the _ideality_ of these
relations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence he
was constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm that
an idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little,
the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the general
construction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but an
active, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individual
and a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understanding
of ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According to
Plato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a
general character, like those which embrace all ideal relations
whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse of
thought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apex
of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically _the_ Idea, or God. On
turning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas are
the eternal model (_paradigm_) according to which things are made; these
are the images (_idoli_) of which the others are the imperfect copies
(_mimesi_). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, a
figure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the
lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in the
sphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined together
by higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on to
the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good which
includes and sums up the whole.
Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become the
body by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it;
matter considered in itself is the indefinite (_apeiron_), the
indefinable (_aoriston_), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal with
ideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had its
origin, the image of the invisible deity, God in power, the living
organism (_Zoon_), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul.
The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautiful
which can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also the
most perfect motion.
The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixed
stars, then the planets, then the earth, _created deities_; the earth
produced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work and
object of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourish
him, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, the
microcosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in a
body. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head,
the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. The
breast is the seat of generous passions, while the bestial appetites are
found in the belly and intestines.
The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortal
elements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality of
the soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life and
matter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate,
equivocal being, the _demiurgos_. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of the
intelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to the
monistic theory of the Eleatics.
In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of the
elements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical forms
correspond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. He
divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are
ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend
upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be
happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but
those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as
shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various
animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods:
they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of
fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of
demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac
powers are themselves demoniacs.
We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns the
organization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of the
soul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regarded
as deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered to
be alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life and
intelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, their
recollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderings
around the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, are
all very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part of
the theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times and
places. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, but
those which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts:
throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in the
transmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. The
Tasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abide
there; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons,
of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called a
diabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a living
animal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only the
primeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena applied
to the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much of
Plato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historic
course of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modified
before his time.
We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in this
the advance made by Plato in the evolution of myth really consists, and
it marks a very definite stage which had and still has a powerful
influence on subsequent and modern thought.
We have already shown how, by the logical power of thought, this phase
in the ideal evolution of myth was reached, and we have traced it in an
inchoate form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ultimate
modification in Plato. In his writings it takes the form of a complete,
vast, and organic theory. The logical conceptions and representative
ideas, idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first involved in
fetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are now divested of their earlier
wrappings, and are classified as the intellectual ideas which they
really are, and which they have become by the innate and reflex exercise
of human thought. But on account of the faculty which ever governs our
immediate perception of internal and external things they could not in
Plato's time, nor indeed in that of many subsequent philosophers, remain
as simple intellectual signs of the process of reason. This faculty
influenced these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether particular,
specific, or general, and they became living subjects, like phenomena,
objects, shades, images in dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations.
Thus the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoretically,
_entities_ with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, and absolute
essences. But the fetish, the anthropomorphic idol, was not only
regarded as a living but as a causative subject; the same power was
likewise infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes of
particular things, of which they were the earlier and eternal type. Thus
the myth in the Platonic Ideas became scientific, but it continued to be
a myth; the substance varied, but the form was the same. The objective
phenomena of the world had first been personified, or their fanciful
images were assumed to be objective; now the world of reason was
personified, and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic.
Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said that he realized
abstractions, or personified ideas; but no one, as I think, perceived
the natural process which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty by
which he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory was only an ultimate
phase of the evolution of the vague and primitive animation of the
world, which had passed through fetishism, polytheism, and the worship
of the elements of nature, and had reached the entification and
subjectivity of ideas, which was also attained by natural science, after
passing through its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes,
which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened to be objective,
while they were in Plato's case subjective, owing to the character and
temperament of his mind; both conduced to the development and aesthetic
splendor of this teaching among the Greeks. The teaching of Plato,
which had more or less influence on all the earlier civilized peoples,
of his own and subsequent times, and which was also involved in the
mythical representations of later savages, assumed an aspect which
varied with the special history, the ethnic temperament, the
geographical and extrinsic conditions of different peoples; but
considered in itself, it is always the same, and is the necessary result
of the evolution of myth and of thought. Since the evolution of myth
leads to the gradual genesis of science, which becomes more rational as
myth is transformed from the material to the ideal, ideas are
substituted for myths, and laws, as Vico well observes, for the canons
of poetry.
This noble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideas
resembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supreme
Idea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to another
mythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it was
afterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute. This was
fused with the Logos, the Platonic demiurgos of Messianic ideas, and
afterwards produced the universal philosophy and religion of
Catholicism, which dominated and still dominates over thought with
vigorous tenacity, and extends into all the civilized world inhabited by
European races. We do not only trace the same thought, modified,
classified, and perfected in the Fourth Gospel, in the Councils, the
Fathers, and the schoolmen, but also in independent philosophies. In
our own time it has assumed new forms, derived from the rapid progress
made in cosmic and experimental sciences, even in those which are
apparently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in Hegel, Fichte, and
Schelling, nor is it difficult to trace it in the latest and artificial
theories of the schools of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In all these cases
the entification of logical conceptions is evident; in all there is an
arbitrary personification of a conception or of a fundamental Idea.
In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth and
science, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose in
Greece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thus
obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. In
addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the
Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of
Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical,
and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and
the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the
universe.
In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition to
the speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which were
derived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world was
considered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus became
more conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected by
this combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. This
was what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, passing
beyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on the
movement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followed
the theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, of
bodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since,
however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimental
methods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded with
the mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogether
anthropomorphic conception of gods who were dissolved and formed again;
the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed the
ancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginary
forms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressive
and rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato,
and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up to
our time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to the
continuance of myth.
The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching;
if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical entities of
Plato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other his
theory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations in
physiology and anatomy, and his natural classification of the animal
kingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an _a posteriori_
method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposed
it to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas of
cosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, his
conception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in all
things, were indeed obstinately maintained by the philosophy of
Catholics and schoolmen, and served as an obstacle to the real progress
of science; but on the other hand, his general method of observing
nature, the discoveries which he made, and the tendency of his
researches, as well as the importance he assigned to consciousness in
the formation of ideas, did much to foster independent inquiry in the
history of human thought; and coupled with the earlier mechanical
schools, he prepared the way for the evolution of modern science. This
is not the place for tracing the simultaneous course of the evolution of
the ideal and mechanical schools during the ages which separate us from
their origin; and while the influence of the one gradually waned, the
other gained strength, although in a sporadic way, first among
privileged minds, and then more generally.
It necessarily happened that as the evolution of thought went on,
impelled by its early tendencies, both mechanical and positive, the
ideal system was also modified, and gave place to sounder and truer
theories. This great fact, the ultimate evolution of our own time, was
effected on the one side by psychological analysis, and on the other by
the direct and experimental observation of nature. Setting aside the
gradual preparation which led up to this point, we can consider
Descartes and Galileo as the representatives of these two great factors;
since the one by the analysis of thought, the other by natural
experiments, overthrew the mythical ideas, although without being aware
that the achievement would produce such grand results.
The Platonic Ideas were objective to the mind, and independent of it,
since they were regarded as a divine, concrete, absolute world in
themselves. The earlier evolution of myth and science relied upon this
and were resolved into it. But we know that the process of thought is
continuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of its
personality and assumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus the
material Idea passed into an intellectual conception; that which first
appeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective and
intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gave
rise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first reality
was wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectual
myth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect which
formulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of the
faculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, the
world and all which it contained had a doubtful existence. This tendency
had its ultimate expression in Fichte, who created the universe by means
of the Ego, thus transforming the earlier objective myth into one which
was wonderfully subjective. Descartes doubted about everything beyond
the range of his own thought, and was the first to overthrow the former
ideal realism, and to lead the way to science, and to more rational
analysis. To him the teaching of Spinoza and Kant was really due, as
well as the English schools which had so much to do with the destruction
of the earlier mythical edifice of ideas.
But, as I have already observed, if this great rational progress were
important on the one side, on the other it produced a more spiritualized
form of myth, namely the subjective, which became still more powerful in
the philosophy of Kant. While some thinkers sought to resolve and
dissolve the objective myth, they did it in such a way as to add
strength to the subjective form of myth and science, for which Descartes
had prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school in
general fundamentally consists in the substitution of entified forms and
dialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A great
error was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolution
of myth disappeared, in favor of another which, although still
erroneous, was more rational and independent.
The subjective and still mythical representations, either of the mind or
of external objects, were afterwards reduced to true science by positive
and experimental methods, aided by instruments, and confirmed by the
discoveries of Galileo and of his disciples throughout the civilized
world. He was in modern times another great factor of the dissolution of
myth, so far as it is definitive. Nature was made subordinate to weight
and measure, and to their mathematical and mechanical proportions in
various phenomena; these were deduced from experiment and the use of
instruments, the factors which in the hands of Galileo and his great
successors in all civilized nations, destroyed and are still destroying
the old mythical conception of the world. In astronomy they overthrew
the catholic tenet of the geocentric constitution of the heavens; they
shattered the spheres in which they were confined, opened infinite
space, and peopled it with an infinite number of stars, and in the
attraction of gravity they discovered the universal law of motion in the
firmament. Thus all the mythical representations of the system of the
world, whether Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, or Biblical, vanished for ever,
and the great zoomorphic body of the universe was dissolved; to be
replaced by worlds circulating in infinite space, subject to the laws of
number and of geometry.
Measure, weight, and proportion were applied to all celestial and
terrestrial phenomena, and physics, chemistry, and all the organic
sciences became the manifestation of facts, of observed and calculated
laws, arranged in a natural order, and in this way an immense advance
was made in all branches of science. The history of mankind, first
regarded as the arbitrary arrangement of a superior being, as it was
formulated in the teaching of Judaism and Christianity, had its own laws
in the facts of which it consisted, and thus the mythical conception
which endowed it with personal life was dissolved. The origin of things
was explained by this method of observation, and by these positive
conceptions; the records which had hitherto been regarded as a divine,
extrinsic revelation came to be considered as simple documents, in which
truth was to be separated from the myth which obscured and encompassed
it. So by degrees, from fact to fact, from analysis to analysis, by
observation, experiment, and decomposition, the rational, mechanical
explanation arose and gathered strength. The generation of things, the
variety of phenomena and their order, were derived from the primitive
chemical atom, and from the various changes of form and rapidity of
motion to which they are subjected. The old conception of atoms, which
had never been forgotten, and which had unconsciously swayed and
influenced the minds of men, reappears; but it reappears transformed by
observation, by weight and measure and experiment, and it has become a
science instead of a simple speculation. The atomistic evolution of the
ancients, accepted by one school of speculative thought, which sought to
overthrow the mythical representation of the world, was only an isolated
anticipation of a few philosophers; it has now become a scientific
evolution, common to all modern civilization. The theory of descent,
transformation, and the general evolution of species, followed as a
necessary corollary and immediate result of the dissolution of Plato's
mythical conception of specific ideas, and of all the generic but
material personifications with which nature had been peopled. When such
conceptions of the ideal world were dissipated, those of the actual
world of nature soon followed, and this de-personification of natural,
mythical species in the vast organic kingdom is one of the most splendid
intellectual achievements of the age.
This victory of the natural sciences has reacted on those which are
psychological, and on the theory of the mind, and has subjected them to
the necessities and form of this new phase of the evolution of thought.
The subjective had been substituted for the objective myth and had
created the forms of mind, its logical laws and intrinsic process, the
objective synthesis of the world, and it was now influenced by the
stupendous discoveries and analyses of other sciences, so that
psychology was in its turn transformed into a science, not only of
observation, but of experiment. Measure, weight, numerical proportion,
in short the experimental method, took possession of the facts, acts,
and processes of the mind, as of every other object and subject of
nature. In addition to the great names of modern psychologists in
England, we may mention among other experimental psychologists in
Germany, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze, Helmholtz, Weber, Kammler, etc.;
illustrious men in France and elsewhere might also be cited to show what
progress has been made and is about to be made in this field. The
destruction of myth and of the subjective myths of psychology is always
going on, and a positive science of mental phenomena has arisen, like
that of natural phenomena. The ultimate phase of myth is so near its end
that it has been possible to create a psychology implying the absence of
a soul. The scientific faculty has now indeed a complete ascendency over
the mythical representation with which it was originally coeval.
Yet we do not mean to say that myth is extinct. In the case of the great
majority of the human race, a small and elect portion excepted, myth and
all the superstitions which proceed from it persist in an ideal, cosmic,
spiritual, or religious form, and these are only slowly disappearing
among the common people, and even among the educated classes. Owing to
the primordial and innate necessity which it is so difficult to
overcome, science itself still nourishes myths within its pale, although
unconsciously and in their most rational form. Within our own
recollection _the imponderable_ was a tenet of physics, and this was
indeed, in spite of all the enlightenment of science, a mythical
entification of forces. The same mythical entifications were found in
physiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly these
scientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they are
notwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtually
personify laws, or mere modes of motion.
Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its laws
and influences from the atoms which constitute the world, and working
among and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of the
imponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be a
material entity, while it may be only another modification of the
elementary matter in a state differing from the three already known to
us; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremely
gaseous matter leads to this assumption. The divided forces of matter,
and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions.
Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, and
truth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantly
reappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this is
an evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to an
intrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistently
reappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifying
faculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease.
Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, and
science, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advance
with caution and assurance. |
