explanation would be obscure.

The first stage of knowledge consists in the observation of the things
which surround us, and this first stage, which is necessary also in
science, is the common property of animals. Their observation of
themselves and of external things is psychologically and physiologically
the same as that of man, and in both cases there is a subjective
animation of the phenomena themselves. The primitive source of science
in its observation of phenomena was the same as that of myth and of the
special fetish; without such observation it would have had no existence.

In immediate succession to this primitive fact, which is common to the
whole animal kingdom, there arose--if we consider the general process
without the limitations of circumstances, places, time, and a thousand
accidents--two kinds of faculties which were identical in form, although
they had different effects, and produced opposite results. For in the
case of mythical entification the tendency to impersonation was always
increasing and becoming more distinctly zoomorphic and anthropomorphic,
and in this form it was crystallized or mummified, while science on the
other hand was always enlarging its sphere and dissipating the first
mythical form of its conception, until nothing was left but a purely
rational idea.

When this evolution takes place in peoples and races which are incapable
of improvement, or have a limited capacity for advanced civilization,
the faculty of myth remains in the ascendant; and as past and present
history shows, mythical stagnation and intellectual barrenness may
follow, until intellectual development is arrested and even destroyed.
If on the other hand the evolution takes place in peoples and races
capable of indefinite civilization, myth gradually disappears and
science shines forth victoriously.

Even in historical and civilized races the two cycles go on together,
since while robust intellects throw off as they advance the mythical
shell in which they were first inclosed, the ignorant masses continue
their devotions to fetishes and myths, which they can infuse even into
the grandest religious teaching. They perhaps might also perish,
crystallized in their miserable superstitions, unless, in virtue of the
race to which they belong, the nobler minds were gradually to succeed in
illuminating and raising them into a purer atmosphere. In our Aryan
race, and in our own country we have all seen the ideas of Christi