ps still more important, have shown the continuity of the
mythical faculty between man and the animal kingdom. We have
ascertained this fact, in its cosmic necessities, both physiological and
psychical, but without considering the faculty on which it depends; we
have still to decompose the elements of which it consists, and to
consider their nature and number.

This inquiry forms the chief problem we have to solve, and it is
precisely what we have endeavoured to state in this chapter. In the
necessary order of things the fact has its physiological and cosmic
conditions in man; it is therefore necessarily internal and psychical,
and it is accomplished by the special and intrinsic exercise of the
intelligence. We shall be convinced of this truth if we only consider
that science and myth have a common origin.

It is evident that there are great difficulties in such an inquiry; for,
putting aside other extrinsic difficulties, we have to reduce to a
single act or fact the origin of the two vast worlds of myth and
science; it is needful to gauge the inmost psychical faculty of the
intelligence, and to discover the continuous yet rapid and delicate
process of its exercise.

If we are able to attain our object and to tear away the veil which
conceals this mysterious act, we shall have a noble recompense in the
laborious path on which we have entered, inasmuch as we shall reveal one
of the most important laws of life, of the exercise of reflex
intelligence and of the genesis of science. Yet we are very sensible how
far we are from being equal to the enormous difficulties of this
inquiry.

CHAPTER V.

THE ANIMAL AND HUMAN EXERCISE OF THE INTELLECT IN THE PERCEPTION OF
THINGS.

Apprehension is the act, both in animals and in man, by which the
spontaneous and immediate animation of things and of phenomena is
accomplished. It is therefore necessary to pause and consider this act,
since it is, even in man, the source and foundation of the origin of
myth, and in it we shall find the causes, elements, and action by which
such a genesis is effected. This fact is so evident that the necessity
of making such an inquiry might almost be taken for granted, since the
truth can be ascertained in no other way.

In the case of animal perception, which we have already considered, the
external perception of an object is composed of three elements: the
phenomenon perceived, the living subject with which this phenomenon is
animated