of reflection. This first stage does not involve any
definite fetish, that is, an immediate belief in a special object which
exerts its influence on the human soul, even when it is remote and
unseen: such a fetish is a secondary stage in human development. The
first mythical representations of animals, and of man, so far as his
animal nature is concerned, are not confined to fixed objects, which
can be retained in the mind as operative under all circumstances; they
are indefinite, and diffused through all the phenomena which are
successively perceived and vivified. The unseen wind which rises and
falls, the moving cloud, the flash of lightning and roar of thunder, the
dawn, the rushing torrent--when any of these things are perceived by
animals and primitive men, they are endowed with subjective life and are
supposed to act with deliberate purpose; and this is the first form of
myth. But when they are not present (I here speak of the animal nature
of man) they do not remain in the mind as persistent beings to which the
tribute of worship inspired by hope or fear must be paid; these and
other phenomena only inspire such sentiments when they are actually
present.

It is no vain distinction which I mate between the first vague and
intermittent form of myth suggested by phenomena actually present, and
that of the first stage of fetish: this distinction marks the difference
between the mythical representation of animals and the classifying and
reflective process peculiar to man.

Comte was the first to remark, quite incidentally, that animals might
sometimes attain to the idea of a fetish; Darwin gave the instance of a
dog which was scared by the movement of an open umbrella in a meadow,
although he remained quiet when it was unshaken by the wind; and Herbert
Spencer, partly accepting these ideas, adduces two somewhat similar
instances of the behaviour of dogs. It seems to us that these great men
are mistaken on the one hand in assuming that the first essential origin
of myth is not to be found in the animal kingdom, and on the other in
supposing that these facts have only an _accidental_ value, and that
animals only occasionally acquire a vague consciousness of the fetish.

Those readers who have gone with us so far will perceive that these were
not mere accidents of rare occurrence in animal life, but that they are
the necessary effect of mythical representation in its first stage,
although they cannot in any way be suppo