oses in addition to mythic creation a labor of abstraction,
through which a dominating characteristic of the historic personage is
chosen and everything else is suppressed, cast into oblivion: the ideal
becomes a center of attraction about which is formed the legend, the
romantic tale. Compare the Alexander, the Charlemagne, the Cid of the
Middle Age traditions to the character of history.

Even much nearer to us, this process of extreme simplification--which
the law of mental inertia or of least effort is sufficient to
explain--always persists: Lucretia Borgia remains the type of
debauchery, Henry IV of good fellowship, etc. The protests of historians
and the documentary evidence that they produce avail nothing: the work
of the imagination resists everything.

To conclude: We have just passed over a period of mental evolution
wherein the creative imagination reigns exclusively, explains
everything, is sufficient for everything. It has been said that the
imagination is "a temporary derangement." It seems so to us, although it
is often an effort toward wisdom, i.e., toward the comprehension of
things. It would be more correct to say, with Tylor, that it represents
a state intermediate between that of a man of our time, prosaic and
well-to-do, and that of a furious madman, or of a man in the delirium of
fever.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Primitive man has been defined as "he for whom sensuous data
and images surpass in importance rational concepts." From this
standpoint, many contemporary poets, novelists, and artists would be
primitive. The mental state of the human individual is not enough
for such a determination; we must also take account of the
(comparative) simplicity of the social environment.

[49] Let us mention the euhemeristic theory of Herbert Spencer,
taken up recently by Grant Allen (_The Evolution of the Idea of
God_, 1897), who brings down all religious and mythic concepts from
a single origin--the worship of the dead.

[50] "When I tried to briefly characterize mythology in its inner
nature, I called it a disease of language rather than a disease of
thought. The expression was strange but intentionally so, meant to
arouse attention and to provoke opposition. For me, language and
thought are inseparable." _Nouvelles etudes de Mythologie_, p. 51.

[51] Vignoli, _Mito e Scienza_, p. 27.

[52] Marillier, Preface to the French translation of Andrew Lang's
_Myth, Ritual, and Religion_.

[53] On this point con