or country, in the form
of those very ancient superstitions which have been collected with
immense labour by learned mythologists and ethnologists; on the
contrary, I maintain that the mythical faculty still exists in all men,
independently of this survival of old superstitions, to whatever people
and class they may belong; and it will continue to exist as an innate
function of the intelligence, if not with respect to the substance,
which may alter, at any rate in the mode of its acts and proceedings.

I fear that this opinion will appear at first sight to be paradoxical
and chimerical, since it is well known that the mythical conception of
the world and its origin is gradually disappearing among civilized
nations, and it is supposed to be altogether extinct among men of
culture and intelligence. Yet I flatter myself, perhaps too rashly, that
by the time he reaches the end of this work, the reader will be
convinced of the truth of my assertion, since it is proved by so many
facts, and the psychical law from, which it results is so clear.

It must not, however, be forgotten that, in addition to the mythical
faculty of our minds, there exists the scientific faculty, the other
factor of a perfect intellectual life; the latter is most powerful in
certain races, and must in time prevail over the former, which in its
objective form precedes it; yet they are subjectively combined in
practice and are indissolubly united through life.

Undoubtedly neither the mythical nor the scientific faculty is equal and
identical in all peoples, any more than they are equal and identical in
individuals; but they subsist together, while varying in intensity and
degree, since they are both necessary functions of the intelligence.

Whether we content ourselves with studying the mental and social
conditions in the lower types of modern peoples, or go back to the
earliest times, we find men everywhere and always possessed of the power
of speech, and holding mythical superstitions, it may be of the rudest
and most elementary kind; so also do we find men possessed of rational
ideas, although they may be very simple and empirical. They have some
knowledge of the causes of things, of periods in the phenomena of
nature, which they know how to apply to the habits and necessities of
their social and individual lives.

No one, for example, would deny that many mythical superstitions, and
fanciful beliefs in invisible powers, existed among the now ext