CHAPTER III. HUMAN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION.
In man, as it has been clearly proved, sensations and perceptions occur
both physiologically and psychically just as they do in animals. If
science and the rational process of the interpretation of things have
their origin and are evolved in us by the duplication of our faculties,
such a function, which is due to this duplication, is very slowly
developed and exercised, and in its origin, as an effort of the
intelligence, it does not differ from that of animals.
It is true that the internal act of the higher faculty of reflection has
hardly taken place before man unconsciously enters on a new and vast
apprenticeship, which soon distinguishes him from and exalts him above the
animal kingdom; science has already put forth its first germ. But the
reasoning and simply animal faculties were so mingled, that for a long
while they were confounded together in their effects and results, as well
as in their natural methods. We must therefore begin by considering the
nature of this primitive human perception, in some degree identical with
that of animals, so that they may be estimated to be of equal value, at
any rate in their first results and arts.
The vivid self-consciousness, inseparable at all times from every act,
passion, and emotion, actuates man and animals alike; he has this
consciousness in common with all other animals, and especially with those
superior orders which are nearest to himself. The further perception of
extrinsic things and phenomena occurs after the same manner and in
accordance with the same physiological and psychical laws.
By the intrinsic law of animal nature, as it is adapted to his cosmic
environment, we see the cause and necessity of the transfusion and
projection of himself into everything which he perceives; whence it
follows that he regards these things as living, conscious, and
deliberating subjects; and this is also the case with man, who animates
and endows with life all which surrounds him and which he perceives.
In fact, in man's spontaneous and immediate perception and apprehension of
any object or external phenomenon, especially in early life, the innate
effects are instantaneous, and correspond with the real constitution of
the function; analysis and reflex attention necessarily and slowly succeed
to this primitive animal act in the course of human development.
Consequently the true character and value of its effect on the perception
are the same in man and animals.
If in this psychical and organic fact of perception, man is at first
absolutely in the conditions of animals, identical effects must be
produced; and this was originally the case, as far as man himself and
external things were concerned. The powerful self-consciousness which
actuates man and animals alike is projected on the objects or phenomena
perceived, and they see them transformed into living, deliberating
subjects. In this way the world and all which it contains appears to be a
congeries of beings, actuated by will and consciousness, and powerful for
good or evil, and in practice they seek to modify, to encourage, or to
avoid such influence. The ultimate effect of this action, assumed to be
intentional in all and each of these subjects, will be their
personification, either vaguely or definitely, but always as a power
active for good or ill.
If we trace back the memories of historic and civilized peoples into the
twilight of their origin, at a time when they were still barbarous, and
little removed from their primitive savage conditions, we shall find, the
further we go back, the more vivid, general, and multiform will the
mythological interpretation and conception of the world and its various
phenomena appear to be; everything was personified by these primitive
peoples in a way common to the animal and human consciousness alike.
Of this the testimony remaining in the most ancient verses of the first
Veda is a sufficient proof. At the epoch of their composition the human
race had made some relative progress in morals and civilization; yet we
find that psychical human life was transfused and projected into
everything: man personified each phenomenon and force of nature in
accordance with his own image.
For example, fire in general was personified and identified with humanity
in _Agni_; even the shape taken by the flames, all which was required to
light the fire, the whole process of the sacrifice, even the doors of the
altar-railing, the prayer and oblation to the god.[9] We also learn from
the solemn and ancient songs of the Rig-Veda that all terrestrial,
meteorological, and celestial phenomena were more or less vaguely
personified. These facts recur in all the earliest recollections of
civilized peoples. If we turn from these to observe the savage races of
modern times, and the most barbarous tribes still extant in continents and
isles far removed from culture and science, we shall again find the same
beliefs. The range of absurd personifications, degenerating into the most
trivial and varied forms of fetish worship, becomes wider, and its
influence deeper, in proportion to the rude and barbarous condition of the
tribe or stock in which they appear.
Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized European nations
of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lower classes,
both in cities and the country. It flourishes in proportion to the
ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who have really
studied the intellectual conditions of all classes in our time.[10] In the
child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, and even at a
later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak, and when it
approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions of animals, such
a projection of self and personification of surrounding objects is evident
to all. For this reason a child transforms all which it seizes or plays
with into a person or animal, and when alone with them it talks, shouts,
and laughs, as if such objects could really feel, act, and obey; in short,
as if they were real persons or animals. So strong is the childish
instinct, or, as I might say, the law of its being to project and
transfuse itself into objects, that it is apt to speak of itself in the
third person. A child seldom says, "I will," or "I am hungry," but "Louis
wants," "Louis is hungry," or whatever his name may be. This phenomenon
reappears in the second childhood of old age, when the power of reflection
is weakened, and there is a reversion to the primitive animal condition.
The same phenomenon also occurs in idiots, in whom there is a morbid
defect of reflective power.
This fact of the personification of the objects of perception is therefore
evident and constant in the primitive man of civilized races, in the
barbarous condition of modern savages, in the ignorant multitude, and in
children--intellectual conditions which approach most closely to the
condition of animals--and conversely it is plain that it belongs in the
highest degree to the intellectual life of animals, and that myth, into
which such a personification and animation of things must be resolved, has
its original and innate necessity in animal life. We think that this is a
new scientific fact, which throws much light on the history of human
thought.
M'Lennan observes, "Some explanation of the phenomena of life a man _must_
feign for himself; and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest
hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural
phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things,
and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men
are conscious they themselves possess."[11] This fact, indicated by
M'Lennan and by all who have devoted themselves to anthropological
researches with respect to the origin of religions, and of myth in
general, is now recognized as certain; but it seems to me that the
interpretation and explanation of it are altogether implete.
They suppose it to be simply the effect of psychological laws as far as
man is concerned, whereas we have shown that it forms, in the ultimate
causes by which it is produced, the very essence of animal perception.
They ascribe it to man as a rational hypothesis to explain the primitive
order of things, whereas it is a spontaneous and primary intuition of the
animal intelligence.
Alger, although he is also mistaken as to the true causes of myth in
general, expresses himself better when he asserts that the brain of a
savage is always dominated by the idea that all objects whatsoever have a
soul precisely similar to that of man. The custom of burning and burying
various things with the dead body was, he thinks, in many cases prompted
by the belief that every such object had its _manes_.[12] In fact, the
innate psychical and organic constitution of the intelligence, both animal
and human, is such that it spontaneously and necessarily projects itself
into every object of nature and perception, animating and personifying it
by this special law, and not by a reflective hypothesis, such as would be
the conscious and deliberate solution of a given problem. Such a solution
cannot be made by animals, since as we have shown they are without the
faculty of making a deliberate research into any subject; nor can it be
effected by the primitive man, in whom the reasoning faculty with which he
is endowed is still undeveloped.
The real origin of reflection is not to be found in what may be called the
mythical creation of nature, which is the necessary result of the
spontaneity of the intelligence, both in man and animals; it is developed
after long duration of barbarism and ignorance. M'Lennan and others have
shown how the era of reflection and hypothesis begins in the evolution of
human intelligence. Sekesa, an intelligent Kaffir, said to Arbrousset,[13]
"For twelve years I have shepherded my flock. It was dark, and I sat down
upon a rock and asked myself such questions as these, sad questions, since
I was unable to answer them. Who made the stars? What supports them? Do
the waters never grow weary of flowing from morning to evening, from
evening to morning, and where do they find rest? Whence come the clouds,
which pass and re-pass, and dissolve in rain? Who sends them? Our diviners
certainly do not send rain, since they have no means of making it, nor do
I see them with my eyes going up to heaven to seek it. I cannot see the
wind, and know not what it is.
Who guides and causes it to blow, to rage, and overwhelm us? Nor do I know
how the corn grows. Yesterday there was not a blade of grass in my field,
and to-day it is green; who gave to the earth the wisdom and power to
bring forth?" Again, there is a passage in the Rig-Veda, in which it is
said, "Where do the fixed stars of heaven which we see by night go by
day?" It is in this intellectual condition that ignorant and savage man
really begins the spontaneous yet reflective research into the causes of
things, and it is in this condition only that he hypothetically interprets
the order of phenomena through myths, which have then become _secondary_,
and are no longer _primitive_. The true origin of the primitive myth which
animates and personifies the universe is not to be found in this
condition; its origin is of much earlier date in the history of man, and
indeed it has its roots, as we have shown, in animal life.
Certainly when we compare the two intellectual periods, there is a wide
difference between the age in which Sekesa could be perplexed by such
inquiries, and that of more primitive peoples, which still believe without
question in the soul and informing spirit or shade of stones, sticks,
weapons, food, water, springs--in short, of every object and phenomenon.
This is still the case with the Algonquins, the Fijians, the Karens, the
Caribbees, the negroes of Guinea, the New Zealanders, the Tongusians, the
Greenlanders, the Esthonians, the Australians, the Peruvians, and a host
of other savage and barbarous peoples. They not only animate and personify
material objects, but even diseases and their remedies.
The incubus, for example, termed _Mara_ in Northern mythology, was the
spirit which tormented sleepers. This is the _Mar_ of the German proverb:
_Dich hat greitten der Mar_. The word is derived from _Mar_, a horse, and
becomes _nightmare_ in English, _Cauchemar_ in French, [Greek: Ephialtes]
in Greek, meaning one which rides upon another. So with epilepsy, which
signifies the act of being seized by any one; it was, like all nervous
diseases, held to be a sacred evil, and those afflicted by it were
supposed to be possessed. Insanity was regarded in the same way, as we see
in the Bible where Saul's melancholy is said to be an evil spirit sent
from God. A furious madman was supposed to have been carried off by a
demon, and in Persia the insane were said to be God's fools. In Tahiti
they were called _Eatooa_, that is, possessed by a divine spirit; and in
the Sandwich Isles they were worshipped as men into whom a divinity had
entered. In German the _plica polonica_ is called _Alpzopf_, or
hobgoblin's tail. All nations believed that the malign beings which
animated diseases could, like men, be propitiated by ceremonies and
incantations. The Redskins are always in fear of the assaults of evil
spirits, and have recourse to incantations, and to the most absurd
sacerdotal rites, or to the influence of their _manitu_, in order to be
safe. Their devotions and sacrifices are prompted by fear rather than by
gratitude.
Tanner mentions, in his "Narrative of a Captivity among the Indians," that
he once heard a convalescent patient reproved for his imprudence in
exposing himself to the air, since his shade had not altogether come back
to abide within him. For this purpose, and in conformity with such ideas,
when the sorcerer _Malgaco_ wishes to cure a sick man, he makes a hole in
a tomb to let out the spirit, which he then takes in his cap, and
constrains it to enter the patient's head. The process of disease is
supposed to be a struggle between the sick person and the evil spirit of
sickness. The Greek-word, _prophylake_ signifies the arrangements of
outposts. _Agonia_ is the hottest moment of conflict, and _krisis_ the
decisive day of battle, as we see in Polybius, liii., c. 89. Medicine was
from the earliest times confounded with magic, which is only the primitive
form of the conception of nature. The Aryan rulers in India in ancient
times believed that the savage races were autochthonic workers of magic
who were able to assume any form they pleased.[14] The negro priests of
fetish worship believe that they can pronounce on the disease without
seeing the patient, by the aid of his garments or of anything which
belongs to him.[15] The superstition of the evil eye recurs in Vedic
India, as well as among many other peoples. In the Rig-Veda the wife is
exhorted not to look upon her husband with an evil eye. There was the same
belief among the ancient Greeks, and it is also found in the _oculus
fascinus_ of the Romans, and the German _boeses Auge_. The early German _Rito_,
or fever, was a spirit (_Alb_) which rode upon the sick man. A passage in
the Rig-Veda states that demons assume the form of an owl, cock, wolf,
etc.[16] Such was the primitive attitude of the transfusion of individual
psychical life into things, and consequently of general metamorphosis.
Kuhn identifies the Greek verb [Greek: iaomai] with the Sanscrit _yavayami_,
to avert, and in the Rig-Veda this verb is used in connection with _amivae_,
disease; so that it was necessary to drive away the demon, as the cause of
sickness. A physician, according to the meaning of the old Sanscrit word,
was the exorciser of disease, the man who fought with its demon. We find
the practice of incantations as a remedy for disease in use among the
ancient Greeks, the Romans, and all European nations, as well as among
savages in other parts of the world.
The objects and phenomena obvious to perception are therefore supposed by
primitive man, as well as by animals, to be conscious subjects in virtue
of their constitution, and of the innate character of sensation and
intelligence. So that the universal personification of the things and
phenomena of nature, either vaguely, or in an animal form, is a
fundamental and necessary fact, both in animals and in man; it is a
spontaneous effect of the psychical faculty in its relations to the world.
We think that this truth cannot be controverted, and it will be still more
clearly proved in the course of this work.
Such a fact, considered in its first manifestation and in the laws which
originally govern it in animals, and in man as far as his animal nature is
concerned, assumes a fresh aspect, and is of two-fold force when it is
studied in man after he has begun to reason, that is, when his original
psychical faculty is doubled. The animation and personification of objects
and phenomena by animals are always relative to those of the external
world; that is, animals transfuse and project themselves into every form
which really excites, affects, alarms, allures, or threatens them; and the
spontaneous psychical faculty which such a vivifying process always
produces necessarily remains within the sphere of their external
perceptions and apprehensions. In a word, they live in the midst of the
objective nature, which they animate with consciousness and will, and
their internal power is altogether absorbed in this external
transformation.
In man, in addition to this animation of the things and phenomena of the
external world, another more profound and vivid animation takes place, the
animation not merely of external forms, but of internal perceptions,
ideas, sentiments, and all kinds of emotions. We know that man has not
only the perception of external and internal things, but also the
perception of this perception. Hence the external form, or the internal
sentiment and emotion, may by the dominion of his will over all the
attributes of his intelligence be once more subjected to his deliberate
observation and intuition; by this process the external and internal world
are doubled in their intrinsic ideal, and give birth to analysis and
abstraction, that is, to the specification and generalization of the
things observed.
When this spontaneous faculty of man has been developed within him, his
observation of the similarities, analogies, differences, and identities
which are to be found in all things and phenomena, in sentiments and
emotions, necessarily induces him to collect and simplify them in special
forms, to combine these various intuitions in a homologous type; this type
corresponds with an external or internal congeries of similar, identical,
or analogous images or ideas, out of which the species and genera of the
intellect are formed. In this way, for instance, arose the mental
classification of trees, plants, flowers, rivers, springs, animals, and
the like, as well as that of love, hatred, sorrow, anger, birth, and
death, strength, weakness, rule, and obedience; in short, the generic
conceptions of all natural phenomena, as well as of psychical sentiments
and emotions.
Animals, for example, perceive a given plant or tree, as a thing presented
at the moment to their individual consciousness, and by infusing this
consciousness into the object in question, they animate and personify it,
especially if its fruits or leaves are attractive, or if it is moved by
the wind. We have seen that all things are necessarily personified by
animals, for if they meet with any material obstacle, they do not ascribe
the sudden impediment to the impenetrability of matter, or to superior
force, but rather to an intentional opposition to their aim or progress.
We often see that animals not only exert mechanical force to break through
or destroy the material barriers intended to keep them in confinement, but
they act in such a way as to show rage and fury towards a hostile and
malevolent subject.
To return to our example; if an animal vivifies and animates some special
plant specially presented to him, he does not go beyond this vivifying
act; when he goes on his way, and no longer perceives the concrete
phenomenon, the animation at the same time disappears and ceases. Man,
however, by means of the classifying faculty we have noticed, after
repeatedly perceiving various plants similar or analogous to the first, is
able by spontaneous reflection, and by the automatic exercise of his
intelligence, to refer them to a single type, and in this way the specific
idea of a tree is evolved in his mind and fixed in his memory. The same
thing gradually takes place with respect to flowers, animals, springs,
rivers, and the like. These ideal types are not wholly wanting even among
the most barbarous peoples, in the most concrete and dissimilar languages,
since without them any language would be impossible.
The same intrinsic and innate necessity which, both in man and animals,
automatically effects the animation and personification of consciousness
and will in the case of external objects and phenomena, also impels man to
vivify and personify the specific types which he has gradually formed, and
they take an objective place in his memory as the objects of nature do in
the case of animals. In this way man does not, like animals, merely vivify
the special oak or chestnut tree presented to him in a concrete form at a
given moment, but he vivifies in the same way the psychical type of trees,
of flowers, etc., which has been evolved in his mind, just as he vivifies
the type of suffering, of disease, of death, of healing, or of any other
force.
For this reason the process of necessary and spontaneous personification
is at first two-fold; namely, the personification of individual and
external objects and phenomena, and that of their specific inward types,
whether of the objects themselves or of their sensations and emotions.
It must be observed that at this early stage of man's history, specific
types, or the classification of things, were not ordered and determined
with scientific precision; they were undefined and confused, running more
or less into each other, so as to be easily lost, or constantly diverging
more widely. This internal movement of images and undefined conceptions
was a stimulus to active and mobile life, and an abundant source of vivid
or obscure myths, and of the sentiments corresponding to them.
These specific primordial types were openly referred to external
phenomena, and were based upon the life of nature, since rational or
scientific ideas had not yet made their appearance, or only very sparsely.
In any case, the reality of these types and their animation are facts, as
all the earliest records attest, whether among civilized or savage races.
The personification of specific types, which are in general the most
obvious--those, namely, which refer to animals, vegetables, minerals, and
meteors, things useful or injurious to man--is the origin of the
subsequent belief in fetishes, genii, demons, and spirits, and these led
to the vivification of the whole of nature, her laws, customs, and forces.
Man's personification of himself, his projection of himself as a living
being into external things, was the result of reflection. In fact, the
impersonation of the winds took place in very early times, since they most
frequently and universally excited the attention and anxiety of man and
animals, whether beneficially or otherwise, and by their mechanical
action, their whistling and other sounds, they readily struck the mobile
fancy of primitive men, and also of savage and ignorant peoples in our
day.
Just as the act of respiration is a faint wind which goes on whether in
sleep or wakefulness, and only ceases with death, so it was with the
phenomenon of nature which attracted their attention, and it was invested
by them with life. Since the winds of nature had already been animated and
personified by a spontaneous act, so our inmost being was certainly first
considered as material, and impersonated as breath and air.
This appears from the roots and words of all languages; the Hebrew _nephesh,
nshamah, ruach_--soul or spirit--are all derived from the idea of
breathing. The Greek word [Greek: anemos], the Latin word _animus_,
signify breathing, wind, soul, and spirit. In the Sanscrit _atman_ we have
the successive meanings which show the evolution of the myth: breathing,
vital soul, intelligence, and then the individual, the _ego_.
In Polynesia we find the same process of things. _To think_, which in the
Aryan tongues comes from the root _c'i_, and originally meant to collect,
to comprehend, in German, _begreifen_, becomes in the Polynesian language,
_to talk in the belly_. It is, therefore, an evident historical fact that
man first personified natural phenomena, and then made use of these
personifications to personify his inward acts, his psychical ideas and
conceptions. This was the necessary process, since animals were prior to
man, temporally and logically, and external idols were formed before those
which were internal and peculiar to himself.[17] It is true that man
unconsciously, that is, without deliberation, not only animates external
things and their specific types, but he also, by an exercise of memory,
animates the psychical image of these special perceptions. If, for
example, the primitive man personifies a stream of water which he has seen
to issue from a fissure of the rocks, and ascribes to it voluntary and
intentional motion, he also animates the image which reappears in his
sphere of thought, and conceives it to have a real existence. He does not
merely believe it to be a psychical and what may be called a photographic
repetition of the thing, but rather to have an actual, concrete existence.
Thus, among all ancient peoples, and among many which are still in the
condition of savages, the _shadow_ of a man's body is held to be
substantial with it, and, as it were, his inmost essence, and for this
reason the spirits of the dead were in several languages called shades.
Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the psychical
conditions of primitive men, at a time when the objects of perception and
the apprehension of things were presented by an effort of memory to the
mind as if they were actual and living things, yet such conditions are not
hypothetical but really existed, as any one may ascertain for himself who
is able to realize that primitive state of the mind, and we have said
enough to show that such was its necessary condition.
The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially
the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and how
at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and
reply to internal questions which he imagines to be put to him by absent
persons, against whom he is at the moment infuriated. The images of these
persons and things are as it were present and in agitation within him; and
these images, in the fervor of emotion and under the stimulus of
excitement, appear to be actually alive, although only presented to the
inward psychical consciousness.
In the natural man, in whom the intellectual powers were very slowly
developed, the animation and personification effected by his mind and
consciousness were threefold: first, of the objects themselves as they
really existed, then of the idea or image corresponding to them in the
memory, and lastly of the specific types of these objects and images.
There was within him a vast and continuous drama, of which we are no
longer conscious, or only retain a faint and distant echo, but which is
partly revealed by a consideration of the primitive value of words and of
their roots in all languages. The meaning of these, which is now for the
most part lost and unintelligible, always expressed a material and
concrete fact, or some gesture. This is true of classic tongues, as is
well known to all educated people, and it recurs in the speech of all
savage and barbarous races.
_Ia rau_ is used to express _all_ in the Marquesas Isles. _Rau_ signifies
_leaves_, so that the term implies something as numerous as the leaves of
a tree. _Rau_ is also now used for _sound_, an expression which includes
in itself the conception of _all_, but which originally signified a fact,
a real and concrete phenomenon, and it was felt as such in the ancient
speech in which it was used in this sense. So again in Tahiti _huru, ten_,
originally signified _hairs; rima, five_, was at first used for _hand;
riri, anger_, literally means, _he shouts_. _Uku_ in the Marquesas Isles
means, _to lower the head_, and is now used for _to enter a house_. _Ruku_,
which had the same original meaning in New Zealand, now expresses the act
of diving. The Polynesian word _toro_ at first indicated anything in the
position of a hand with extended fingers, whence comes the Tahitian term
for an ox, _puaatoro, stretching pig_, in allusion to the way in which an
ox carries his head. _Too_ (Marquesas), to put forward the hand, is now
used for _to take_. _Tongo_ (Marquesas), to grope with extended arms,
leads to _potongo tongo_, darkness. In New Zealand, _wairua_, in Tahiti _varua_,
signifies soul or spirit, from _vai_, to remain in a recumbent position,
and _rua_, two; that is, _to be in two places_, since they believed that
in sickness or in dreams the soul left the body.[18] Throughout Polynesia
_moe_ also signifies a recumbent position or to sleep, and in Tahiti _moe
pipiti_ signifies a double sleep or dream, from _moe_, to sleep, and _piti_,
two. In New Zealand, _moenaku_ means, to try to grasp something during
sleep; from _naku_, to take in the fingers.
We can understand something of the mysterious exercise of human
intelligence in its earliest development from this habit of symbolizing
and presenting in an outward form an abstract conception, thus giving a
concrete meaning and material expression to the external fact. We see how
everything assumed a concrete, living form, and can better understand the
conditions we have established as necessary in the early days of the
development of human life. This attitude of the intelligence has been
often stated before, but in an incomplete way; the primitive and the
subsequent myths have been confounded together, and it has been supposed
that myth was of exclusively human origin, whereas it has its roots lower
down in the vast animal kingdom. We hope, therefore, that it will be
granted that we have given the true and full exposition of myth.
Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the things and phenomena of
nature, of their images and specific types, were the great source whence
issued superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and also, as we shall
presently see, the scientific errors to be found among all the families of
the human race.
For the development of myth, which is in itself always a human
personification of natural objects and phenomena in some form or other,
the first and necessary foundation consists, as we have abundantly shown,
in the conscious and deliberate vivification of objects by the perception
and apprehension of animals. And since this is a condition of animal
perception, it is also the foundation of all human life, and of the
spontaneous and innate exercise of the intelligence. In fact, man, by a
two-fold process, raises above his animal nature a world of images, ideas,
and conceptions from the types he has formed of various phenomena, and his
attitude towards this internal world does not differ from his attitude
towards that which is external. He personifies the images, ideas, and
conceptions by transforming them into living subjects, just as he had
originally personified cosmic objects and phenomena.
In myths, since they owe their origin to the reflex power which is
gradually organized and developed, man carries on this faculty of
personification which had already been exerted in him as an animal. But
the object of myth became two-fold just as the animal nature became duplex
in man, whether as a special image of special conception, or as an
intellectual definition of the specific type already formed. The myths
are, therefore, from their very nature, either special, that is, derived
from the psychical duplication of a personified image; or they are
specific, and are derived, as we are about to explain, from the
personification of a type.
The deliberate intention to be beneficent or malign, useful or injurious,
which is ascribed to any external object, thus transforming it into an
intelligent subject, is the first and simplest stage of myth, and the
innate form of its genesis. In this case, it is always special, extrinsic,
and concrete, and belongs implicitly to the animal kingdom, although more
or less vividly in proportion to the mental and physical evolution of the
species. It is for the same reason also proper to man, in whose case it
first appears in the indefinite multiplication of fetishes, whatever may
be the object venerated, and whatever the form, aspect, and character
ascribed to it. This constitutes the primordial impulses, both of
religious consciousness and of the spontaneous solution of the problems of
the world among all peoples.
While the animation of special objects by animals generates actual myths,
yet it only occurs in the acts of momentary and transient perception; they
are born and die, they arise and are dissolved in the very act of
production, and they neither have nor can have retrospective or future
influence on the animal. The world, its laws and phenomena, form for him
one universal and persistent myth, so far as he feels himself constrained
to vivify and transform them into subjects actuated by will. This
consequently is the constant and normal condition of his conscious life
with relation to things, and it leads to nothing further; his mental
attitude with respect to myth does not vary from his physical attitude
towards the atmosphere, the food and water which nourish and sustain him,
and the exercise of his functions are in conformity with it, as though it
were his natural and necessary element.
Man, on the contrary, since he has acquired the power of reflection,
which enables him to reconsider past intuitions by an effort of memory,
as well as the psychical image which corresponds to them, is not content
with this normal and fugitive effect of apprehending the personified
object presented to him. The psychical image of his actual perception,
which he has ascertained from experience to be beneficent or malignant,
or which has been interpreted as such by his fancy, recurs to the mind
even when it is absent and remote, and it recurs in the vivid and
personified form in which it was first perceived.
Hence come the following psychical facts. On the one side the actual
object which he has assumed to be invested with the faculty of will
still remains to exert the same external influence; on the other, its
personified image is also present to his mind, so that he can regard it
with the vivid quickness of the fancy, and invest it, by its manifold
relations to other and various phenomena, with efficacy, force, and
mysterious purposes. It follows from this inward action and emotion that
while in the case of animals the beneficent or malignant object is only
invested with life at the moment of perception, and has no more efficacy
after its disappearance, man on the contrary retains the same
personified object in his memory, and recalls it at pleasure, so that
its special efficacy persists, and it continues to be the object of
hopes and fears either in the past or in the future. In a word, the
natural myth of animals is transformed by man into a fetish, whether
this object or its corresponding image in his mind be superstitiously
regarded as good or evil, pleasing or terrible.
This was the source of primitive, confused, and inorganic fetishism
among all peoples; namely, that they ascribed intentional and conscious
life to a host of natural objects and phenomena. Hence came the fears,
the adoration, the guardianship of, or abhorrence for some given species
of stones, plants, animals, some strange forms or unusual natural
object. The subsequent adoration of idols and images, all sorts of
talismans, the virtue of relics, dreams, incantations, and exorcisms,
had the same origin and were all due to this primitive genesis of the
fetish, the internal duplication of the external animation and
personification of objects.
It is evident that fetishism in its earliest and most primitive form was
always inspired by special objects, since the external perception of
animals and of man is special and concrete. But we have seen how our
intelligence, by a spontaneous and innate process, was led to form types
from the immense variety of special things and phenomena, and these
types are the specific forms of such things as are alike, analogous, or
identical. We have also seen that by the same necessity of the psychical
faculty, which is not inconsistent with the fundamental process of
animal intelligence, man animates and personifies these specific types,
just as he had animated the special perceptions whence they were
generated in his mind.[19]
The second form of myth next occurs, if considered as it exists in man,
but the third form of myth, if regarded in his solidarity with the
animal kingdom. Instead of investing the special fetish of a given
object with superstitious fear, he now adores or fears all objects of
the same species, or which, in the imperfect classification of primitive
times, he believes to be of the same species. Thus, to give a common
example, if some particular viper or other form of snake is the first
form of fetish, in the second stage the whole species of vipers, and of
the snakes which resemble them, is regarded with the same dread. He next
supposes all the snakes which he comes across to emanate from a single
power, manifesting itself in this shape in various times and places. In
the same way, according to the natural evolution of this law, the
individual, concrete plant will no longer be the fetish or object of
myth, but all those of the same species, or which nearly resemble it. It
will no longer be a given spring, but all springs, no longer one
particular grove, cave, or mountain, but all groves, caves, and
mountains; in a word, the species will be substituted for the
individual, the type for the fact.[20]
In this second stage to which myth spontaneously attained, it must be
observed that all fetishes could not be reduced to a specific or typical
image, since in nature, and in ages and conditions when the intelligence
was still rude and uncultured, all phenomena or objects could not assume
a specific form, but were still regarded as individuals. In this class
are the sun, the moon, certain stars and constellations, as well as some
other natural phenomena, volcanoes, hot springs, and the like; since
these were unique within the range of country inhabited by the savage
hordes, they could not become specific. Hence, while all other objects
and their respective fetishes followed the natural evolution into a
specific type, and through these into the simplest form of polytheism,
the special fetish which referred to unique things or phenomena remained
special, although it was modified, as we shall see, so as to harmonize
with the aspect commonly assumed by other typical images.
It must be observed that we have gradually ascended from the special to
the specific fetish, and to types which are resolved by the intelligence
into more ideal and less concrete images; precisely because they are
ideal and less bound to the form they had before, they are incarnated in
an anthropomorphic and anthropopathic form. Released from the necessity
of regarding them in a vague form, or one different from that of man,
the image becomes more human, and that not only as before in
consciousness and purpose, but also in aspect and structure.
In fact, in this stage man does not merely infuse his spiritual essence
into these types, but likewise his corporeal form, whence we have the
true, human image of myth. This may be seen in the various primitive
Olympuses of all historic races as well as among savage peoples, only
varying in the splendor of their imagery. They consist in the
transformation of the earlier fetish into an intelligent, corporeal
person, and result from the formation and personification of types.
Beginning with the mysterious conception of some particular spring as a
malignant or beneficent fetish which, although personified, still
retains its concrete form, the classifying action of the intelligence
gradually constructs, from its points of resemblance to other springs, a
generic type which includes them all. This typical conception,
personified in its turn, next represents a unique power, of which all
the individual and accidental springs are only manifestations. Thus it
is clear that man, in the personification of this type or specific
conception, is no longer bound to the actual form of the special object
which first represented it, but he may be said to mould a more
indefinite and plastic substance into which he can with spontaneous or
facile art incarnate his whole person. Hence this substance will assume
an anthropomorphic form, and will issue, not in a mysterious being of
extrinsic and indefinite form, but in a person with human features,
obvious to human senses.
It was thus, when the fetish attained to a specific type, that mythical
anthropomorphism was generated, and polytheism, properly so-called; a
polytheism which represents in its figures and images the humanization
and personification of specific types. These afterwards diverge into
specifications which vary with the number of phenomena that are united
in a single idea or conception. The first polytheistic Olympus consisted
of natural types, and at a much later period they became moral or
abstract, in accordance with the spontaneous evolution of the
intelligence itself.
It was in fact in this way that all the specific myths of the general
phenomena of nature had their origin, and in our Aryan race we can,
starting from the Rig-Veda, follow their splendid development among
Graeco-Latins, Celts, Germans, and Slavs; it may also be traced in the
memory and historic evolution of other races, and with less distinctness
among those which are barbarous and savage.[21]
To take some example which may throw light upon our theory of the
evolution of myth, let us consider that of _Holda_ in the German
Pantheon, since it is a generic type of the special primitive fetishes
of sources, already in process of formation before the dispersion of the
Aryan tribes. Mannhardt (_Deutsche Mythologie_) has shown what was the
primitive form of the conception of _Holda_ and of the _Nornas_, that
is, of the phenomenal appearances of water; Holda, the _lady of waters_,
first watched over the heavenly sources, and then, by a subsequent
interweaving of myths and duplication of images, she kept and guarded
the souls of new-born infants. This early conception by progressive
specification gave birth to those of the _Nornas_, of _Valkuria,
Undine,_ and others. The primitive fetish, or fetishes of waters out of
which the specific type, afterwards personified, was evolved and formed,
were at first so bound to the concrete form of the phenomenon, that
although animated, it could not assume a human aspect and form. But when
the specific type which ideally represented the power manifested in all
the various modes of special phenomena was evolved, then man was
released from the concrete and individual forms of the fetish, and
readily moulded it in his own corporeal as well as in his moral image.
So Holda, changed from a heavenly to an earthly deity, was transformed
into the goddess of wells and lakes, and assumed a perfectly human and
even artistic form. She loved to bathe at noon-day, and was often seen
to issue from the water and then plunge anew into the waves, appearing
as a very fair and lovely woman.
Again, we know that in the gradual mythical evolution which found its
climax in Apollo, the animation of this type, so fruitful in special
instances, extended even to the form of his arms, his bow and arrows,
and to the place of his habitation at Delphos. He was armed, according
to Schwartz, with the rainbow and with thunderbolts, and Delphos was
esteemed to be the centre and navel of the world.
These mythical ideas have their special reproduction in the mythology of
the Finns. (Castren.) The god _Ukko_ with his great bow of fire sends
forth trees as darts against his enemies; while fighting, he stands
erect upon a cloud, called the _umbilicus_ of heaven. Thus we see that
the process of myth is similar, even in different races.
By the primitive personification of the special fetishes whence he was
evolved, the _Indra_ of Vedic India is shepherd of the herd of heavenly
kine. _Vritra_, a three-headed monster in the form of a serpent, steals
away the herd and hides it in his cave. Indra pursues the robber, enters
the cave with fury, overwhelms the monster with his thunderbolt, and
leads back the kine to heaven, their milk sprinkling the earth. This
myth gradually assumed in the Vedic hymns more splendid and artistic
forms, and more amazing personifications. The original motive of the
myth, as it has been interpreted even by Indian commentators, was the
storm with all its alternations which bursts forth with more terrific
violence in hot climates. The luminous clouds which bring rain are the
purple kine whom a black-demon tries to steal; the fruitfulness of the
earth depends on the issue of the contest, and the thunderbolt disperses
the cloud, which falls on the earth in rain, while _Indra_, that is, the
blue sky, appears in his splendor.[22]
It may be clearly seen from these examples how the specific myth was
gradually developed. We have said that in addition to the myth which
referred to types constructed from special and manifold suggestions,
alike or analogous in extrinsic circumstances, others were formed from
definite natural objects, in their relations to men and to their
acquaintance with cosmic facts in those very early times. These,
however, although definite, assumed anthropomorphic forms, like those
which were specific. The cause of this identity of construction is to be
found in the influence exerted upon them by the earlier myths. By a
necessary equilibrium and spontaneous symmetry of mental creations,
these were also modified by the gradual formation of contemporary
images. In this way the solar myths were elaborated and developed among
the Aryan peoples and other races; their aspects became much more
anthropomorphic and anthropopathic in proportion as the typical myths
assumed a human form.
The primitive myths of the secondary form were at first grouped round
physical and external phenomena, because these were originally the most
obvious to man. But the specific moral types had their origin by
reaction, and by a more strictly intellectual process, and these were
personified in the same way, although in this second stage they were not
so numerous. Yet their appearance and creation were inevitable, since
the same faculty and classifying process had to be carried out in the
intellectual and moral order as in that which was extrinsic and cosmic;
since the mind and consciousness and intrinsic faculty of the
intelligence are identical. And when once these ultimate types were
formed, the same necessity impelled their animation and personification
in anthropomorphic images. Of this we have abundant instances in all the
traditions of nearly all the peoples of the world. |
