tive
superstitions had their source.

In the case of savage and primitive man the inward image of the fetish
without its bodily presence is, owing to the process already described,
not merely valid as a real entity, but it becomes a mysterious
apparition in the sphere of fancy, in a way analogous to our belief in
the reality of things seen in a dream or in moments of hallucination.
This appears in the history of all peoples past and present, whence it
is certain that primitive man not only formed personifications of
external objects and of his own emotions, but also of their images, as
they were retained in his memory. In both cases the sequence of the
three elements of apprehension, the phenomenon, subject, and cause, is
due to the same unique faculty; in a word, the inward perception is
identical in its genesis and laws with that which is external.

These are not the only results which follow from the exercise of this
faculty. By the spontaneous classifying action of our intelligence we
rise from the perception of special and individual objects and phenomena
to their various types, and hence to an inward and ideal world of
specific representations, as if these were causative powers, informing
the multitude of analogous and similar phenomena in which they are
manifested. These specific types, which are more strongly present to the
fancy in the primitive exercise of the intelligence, also become
personified, and they generate what is called polytheism in all its
forms, varying according to the races, times, places, and respective
conditions of morality and civilization in which they are found.

The same psychical faculty and the same elements are necessary for the
personification of such types or idols. The three elements appear in
their proper sequence even in the amorphous phantasms which these types
first shadow forth, and which are subsequently perfected and embodied in
human form. For the consciousness of the external form always exists in
the first vague and nebulous conception of the phantasm which gradually
appears and formulates itself in the vivid imagination; and hence
follows the phenomenal vest, which, as usual, generates the
corresponding subject, informed with a causative power. This process
clearly shows, and in fact constitutes, the essence of myth.

Since the types vary very much, and are indeed unstable from their very
nature, constantly becoming formed and again decomposed, the primitive
mytholog