Myth and Science | Page 3

psychological constitution in the whole animal kingdom, in which
man is also included, signifies whatever in them is fixed and
permanently organized; whatever is perpetuated by the indefinite
repetition of habits, organs, and functions, by means of the heredity of
ages. The whole history of organisms abounds with positive and
repeated proofs of this fact, which no one can doubt who is not
absolutely ignorant of elementary science. Every day adds to the
number of these proofs, demonstrating one of those truths which

become the common property of nations.
A priori is therefore reduced by us to the modification of organs in their
physical and psychical constitution, as it has ultimately taken place in
the organism by the successive evolutions of forms which have
gradually become permanent, and are perpetuated by embryogenic
reproduction. This reproduction is in its turn the absolute condition of
psychical and organic facts, which are thus manifested as primitive
facts in the new life of the individual. By this law, the psychical facts,
whether elementary or complex, as they occur in the individual up to
the point of their evolution, have the necessary conditions of possibility,
and may therefore be termed a priori with respect to the laws of
evolution, and to the hereditary permanence of acts performed in the
former environment of the organism at the time when they appeared.
This conception of a priori is, it must be admitted, very different from
that of transcendental philosophers, who seek to prove either that an
independent artificer has not only produced the various organic forms
in their present complexity, and has specially provided the spiritual
subject with its category of thought, independently of all experience; or
else they assert the intrinsic existence of such forms in the spirit, from
the beginning of time.
In this way, as we have already said, we must not only collect the facts
which abound in history and ethnology respecting the general teaching
of myths, but we must also observe introspectively, and by pursuing the
experimental method, the primitive and fundamental psychical facts, so
as to discover the a priori conditions of the myth itself. We must
ascertain, from a careful psychological examination, the absolutely
primitive origin of all mythical representations, and how these are in
their turn the actual historical result of the same conditions, as they
existed prior to their manifestations.
It must not be supposed that in this primary fact, and in these _a priori_
psychical and organic conditions, we shall find the ulterior cause of the
various and manifold forms, or of the successive evolution of myths.
This would be a grave mistake, equal to that of transcendentalists, who
imagine that the laws which actually exist, and the order of cosmic and

historic phenomena may be determined from the independent exercise
of their own thoughts, although such laws and order can only be traced
and discovered by experience and the observation of facts. In the a
priori conditions of the psychical and organic nature, and in the
elementary acts which outwardly result from them, we shall only trace
the origin and necessary source of myth, not the variable forms of its
successive evolution.
The ulterior form, so far as the substance of the myth and its various
modifications are concerned, is in great part the reflex work of man; its
aspect changes in accordance with the attitude and force of the faculties
of individuals, peoples and races, and it depends on an energy to which
the a priori conditions, as we have just defined them, do not strictly
apply so far as the determinate form is concerned.
It is precisely in this ulterior work of the evolution of myth, which in
the elementary fact of its primitive essence had its origin in the
predisposition of mind and body, that we may discern the
interchangeable germ and origin both of myth and science. If, therefore;
the rationale of science cannot be found in the general form of mythical
representations, the matter which serves to exercise the mind; yet the
mode of its exercise, and of the logical and psychical faculty, and the
spontaneous method pursued, are identical: the two mythical and
scientific faculties are, in fact, considered in themselves, fused into one.
As far as the origin of myth is concerned, the mode of considering its
evolution, and its organic connection with science, we differ from other
mythologists as to the sources to which they trace this immense
elaboration of the human intelligence. We may be mistaken, but we are
in any case entering on unexplored ways, and if we go astray, the
boldness of an enterprise which we undertake with diffidence pleads
for indulgence.
Omitting to notice the well-known opinions on the origin of myth
which were current in classic antiquity, in the Græco-Latin world, or in
India,[2] we