f
savage peoples, are almost inconceivably concrete, yet speech is
impossible without expressions of form, or abstract conceptions which
are moulded and adapted to that intuition of the relations of things
which is always taking place in the mind.[27] The mythical human form
does not indeed appear in these conceptions, but a substantial entity is
involved in them which sometimes, as we have seen, may even assume the
aspect of a complete myth.

A careful analysis of the process of our intelligence has shown that
this habitual personification of the phenomenon or abstract conception
is due to the innate faculty of perception, since the appearance of any
phenomenon necessarily produces the idea of a subject actuated by
deliberate purpose; this law is equally constant in the case of animals,
in whom, however, it does not issue in a rational conception. The
objection of ourselves into nature, the personification of its phenomena
and myths in general, are common to all, while they take a more fanciful
form in the case of primitive man; they are the constant and necessary
result of the perception of external and internal phenomena. This
personification includes moral and intellectual as well as physical
phenomena, and it always proceeds in the same way, from special
phenomena to specific types, and hence to abstract perceptions.

In this way we have established the important fact that the primitive
personification of every external or internal phenomenon, the origin of
all myths, religions, and superstitions, is accomplished by the same
necessary psychical and physical law as that which produces sensation.
That is, men, as well as animals, begin by thinking and feeling in a
mythical way, owing to the intrinsic constitution of their intellectual
life; and while animals never emerge from these psychical conditions,
men are gradually emancipated from them, as they become able to think
more rationally, thus finding redemption, truth, and liberty by means of
science.

We now propose to unite in a single conception this necessity of our
intellect, at once the product and the cause of perception, and of the
spontaneous vivification of phenomena; since the law may be expressed in
a compendious form.

Both in physical, moral, and intellectual myths, and in the substantial
entity infused into abstract conceptions, the external or internal
phenomenon immediately generates the idea of a subject, since it is a
fundamental law of our m