t admit that all these phenomena, and the beliefs which
arise from them, must tend to make the observation of psychical life
more easy, just as morbid psychical phenomena often explain the natural
action of such life under normal conditions. These phenomena, so closely
connected with physiological disturbances which are beyond the control
of our personal will, will inform us of the biological relations between
consciousness and thought on the one side, and our organism on the
other.

The mythical faculty, as we shall see in the following chapters,
combined with physiological excitements, both normal and abnormal,
generally assumes constant forms in the various and manifold world of
its creation; constant forms which conversely also reveal those of the
scientific faculty. In this way the development, composition, and
integration of a myth, into which others are fused by assimilation, may
be said to explain to us the mode in which systems of philosophy are
constituted, and to manifest to us in a fanciful way the underlying mode
in which human thought is exercised.

Nor do the effects and importance of these studies end here; they are
also the necessary foundation of true and rational sociology. In fact,
the relations of the individual to the world, the manifold conditions
caused by the relations of persons to each other, the constitution of
all social order, and the various modifications of that order; all these
are resolved into the primitive thought, and into the emotional impulses
of mythical prejudices and fancies, and in these they have also their
natural sanction, and the cardinal point on which they rest and revolve.
There is no society, however rude and primitive, in which all these
relations, both to the individual and to society at large, are not
apparent, and these are based on superstitious and mythical beliefs.
Take the Tasmanians, for example, one of the peoples which has recently
become extinct, and regarded as one of the most debased in the social
scale, and we have in a small compass a picture of the acts and beliefs
to be found in their embryonic association.

In every society, however rudimentary, these are held to be important
facts: the birth of individuals, which is their entrance into the
society itself, and into the possession of its privileges; marriages,
funerals, reciprocal obedience between persons and classes, or to the
chief; public assemblies, and the existence of powers equal or superior