inct
Tasmanians, and are now found among the Andaman islanders, the Fuegians,
the Australians, the Cingalese Veddahs, and other rude and uncultured
savages. On the other hand, those who are acquainted with their mode of
life find that savages are not absolutely devoid of intellectual
activity of an empirical kind, since they partly understand the natural
causes of some phenomena, and are able, in a rational, not an arbitrary
manner, to ascribe to laws and the necessities of things many facts
relating to the individual and to society. They are, therefore, not
without the scientific as well as the mythical faculty making due
allowance for their intellectual condition; and these primitive and
natural instincts are due to the physical and intellectual organism of
human nature.

In order to pursue this important inquiry into the first and final cause
of the origin of myth, it is evidently not enough to make a laborious
and varied collection of myths, and of the primitive superstitions of
all peoples, so as to exhaust the immense field of modern ethnography.
Nor is it enough to consider the various normal and abnormal conditions
of psychical phenomena, nor to undertake the comparative study of
languages, to ascertain how far their speech will reveal the primitive
beliefs of various races, and the obscure metaphorical sayings which
gave birth to many myths. It is also necessary to subject to careful
examination the simplest elementary acts of the mind, in their physical
and psychical complexity, in order to discover in their spontaneous
action the transcendental fact which inevitably involves the genesis of
the same myth, the primary source whence it is diffused by subsequent
reflex efforts in various times and varying forms.

In speaking of the transcendental fact, it must not be supposed that I
allude to certain well-known _a priori_ speculations, which are opposed
to my temper of mind and to my mode of teaching. I only use the term
transcendental because this is actually the primitive condition of the
fact in its inevitable beginning, whatever form the mythical
representation may subsequently take. This fact is not peculiar to any
individual, people, or race, but it is manifested as an essential
organism of the human character, which is in all cases universal,
permanent, and uniform.

In order to give a clear explanation of my estimate of the _a priori_
idea, which also takes its place as the factor of experimental and