Chapter 8 OF DREAMS, ILLUSIONS, NORMAL AND ABNORMAL HALLUCINATIONS, DELIRIUM, AND MADNESS-CONCLUSION.

In the preceding chapters, I have shown, as I believe, the genesis of myth, the fundamental faculty in which it necessarily originates, and its evolution in man, particularly in the Aryan and Semitic races. We have seen that the primitive and universal fact consists in the immediate and spontaneous entification of natural phenomena and of the ideas themselves; and we have resolved this fact into its elements, from which all the generating sources of myth issue, that is, from the immediate effects of the perception.

Putting man out of the question, we ascertained that the same innate necessity was common to the animal kingdom.

In order to complete the theory, we must consider some other facts and psychical phenomena, both normal and abnormal, so as to ascertain whether these are not due to the same cause, as far as respects their intrinsic forms; namely, the belief in the reality of images seen in dreams, as well as in those which appear in illusions, in normal hallucinations of the senses, and in those which are abnormal, in ecstasy, in delirium, in madness, in idiocy, and dementia. In all these mental conditions, we ascribe a body and material existence to images which for various causes appear to be really presented to our senses.

If we are able to show that all such appearances are believed to have a real existence in virtue of the same law and faculty of perception which generated myth in its earliest manifestation, we shall have succeeded in establishing a common genesis for all these various psychical phenomena, thus affording no contemptible contribution to psychology in general, and to the science of human thought.

To dream is not merely a normal act of man, but, as it appears from many witnesses, it is common to all animals. In dreams the ordinary laws of time and space are strangely modified, and images of all kinds appear, sometimes confusedly, sometimes in a rational order, often in accordance with the laws of association, while the voluntary exercise of thought may be said to be dormant. This is, speaking generally, the condition and nature of dreams, which we must presently consider adequately with more subtle and exact analysis.

Before we trace the cause of the apparent reality of these images, and the laws which govern it, let us consider man in his waking condition, so as to ascertain at once the likeness and the difference between these two states. We must first inquire whether the waking is absolutely distinct from the dreaming state as far as the appearance of the images, their nature, and mode of action are concerned. It has been observed by many psychologists and physiologists that in the waking state, when images do not arise from the immediate presence of objects, or are not directed by the will to a definite aim, they appear, group themselves, and disperse by the immediate association of ideas, and the measurements of time and space are modified just as they are in dreams. These observations are correct, and the phenomena may be verified by every one for himself.

In this waking state, which really resembles that of dreams, only the analogy of form has been perceived; the ideas of the objects present to the mind have resembled those of images seen in dreams, but they have continued to be mere ideas, presented to the imagination, whereas in dreams the things seen have been supposed to have a real existence. In this respect the analysis is partly true and partly false; it is not, as we shall see, perfect and exact.

It sometimes happens, owing to special circumstances and conditions of mind, or to peculiar temperaments, that the ideas of things do not remain as mere thoughts in the thinker's mind, but that they become so intense that they are for the moment held to be real, precisely as in a dream.

I do not here speak of abnormal or pathological conditions, or of extraordinary phenomena, but of a normal and common condition. If there is any novelty in the assertion, it is owing to a want of observation and reflection, and to not attempting to trace the real nature of the phenomena in which we take part, and which occur every day. The habitual inaccuracy of observation has led to the use of many proverbs and aphorisms in the interpretation of things which have been transmitted from one generation to another, and are now accepted as indubitable axioms. These are to be found in every branch of knowledge, and we have an instance in the popular and scientific aphorism that in dreams images appear to be real, and that in the waking state they always continue to be mere thoughts and ideas.

This is not the fact, since, putting illusions and hallucinations out of the question, thoughts and ideas sometimes assume the character and nature of real objects, just as they do in dreams. This fact constitutes the link and gradual assimilation of the two states, since in no series of phenomena natura facit saltum.

When, for instance, as often happens, we abandon ourselves to a train of thought, and our perception of surrounding objects is weakened by inattention, we become as it were unconscious, and are only intent on the thoughts and ideas which move us. Since no definite object constrains the will to rule and guide these thoughts and ideas, that condition of mind is established which we have shown to be identical in form with the act of dreaming, for in this case also thoughts and ideas have their origin in association alone. In this condition a phenomenon peculiar to dreams may also occur which may be termed the suggestive impulse; a sound or some sudden sensation produces an immediate transformation of the image itself, and a new dream arises in conformity with the nature of the new impression. Every one must, consciously or unconsciously, have experienced such a phenomenon, and this special characteristic of dreams may also take place in the waking condition which I have described. I myself can bear witness to this fact, and will mention one among several instances: I was once reading inattentively, seated at my ease in a lounging chair, and my thoughts took quite another direction, wandering vaguely from one thing to another. All at once some people entered an adjoining room talking together; I heard what they said indistinctly, but the word Florence reached my ears, and I soon imagined myself to be in that city, and going on from one association to another I continued for some time to see again the places, monuments, and people I had known there. Yet I was fully awake, and from time to time I brushed the flies from my face and glanced at the clock on the chimney-piece, since I had to go out at three o'clock.

It appears from this fact, which will be confirmed by many of my readers, that some waking states resemble those of dreams in form, and moreover they are sometimes even alike in substance. Ideas and thoughts in the conditions just indicated may not only be latent, active, combined, or transformed by suggestive impulses, but ideas are represented by images in such vivid relief that, until the observer recollects himself, they are seen and felt by him with the same sense of reality as in a dream. This mental transformation is however so habitual, that the implicit conviction of being really awake, does not allow us to observe what the actual nature of the phenomenon is, since there is an immediate transition from an implicit perception of the image as real to the habitual form of simple thought, without distinguishing the difference between these two states of consciousness. Any one who has long practised himself in the observation of such distinctions will, however, be able to understand the psychical process and to estimate its value.

It has often occurred to myself, in circumstances analogous to the above, when thinking of persons or places at a distance, to see them imaged before me in such vivid relief that I have been startled as if by a morbid hallucination. Once, in passing through my chamber, my attention was so strongly fixed on an absent person that I was not only vividly conscious of his form, but also of his voice and gestures, so that I was amazed by the lively image brought before me. I could adduce other instances from my own experience and that of others to show that in a waking and altogether normal state we may believe in the reality of the image as we do in dreams.

This vivid and momentary realization of images is very common in the lower classes, who often talk to themselves, and use gestures which show that they are conversing at the moment with imaginary persons, who stand before them, as if they were really there, in the same manner as in dreams. Indeed, every one has experienced this phenomenon for himself, especially when strongly excited by anger, sorrow, or hope. If it were possible to reflect on the process of thought at the time we should distinctly understand that we were dreaming while still awake.

The vivid imagination of artists is well known, so that they are able to see and represent things and persons, either in words, with the pencil, or the chisel, just as if they were actually present. The image so vividly realized is a necessary condition of the exercise of their respective arts. When great poets, such as Dante, Ariosto, Milton, and Goethe, conceived and idealized their thoughts with every detail of circumstances, persons, actions, expressions, and movements, no one can deny that the images were vividly present to their minds, and that while in the act of composition these were unconsciously regarded as having a real existence. If these poetic descriptions are presented to the attentive reader in such a vivid form as to transport him into a real world, much more must the authors of these marvellous creations have looked upon them as real at the moment of composition. The impression of truthfulness is indeed produced by the fact that the writers saw these things as though they were real. I speak of states of consciousness, not of reflex observation, of intense moments of sensation and imagination, which are unnoticed by the man who experiences them in his waking moments. Such is the reader of a poem, a romance, or history, the spectator of a picture, who is able for the time to abstract himself from surrounding objects, and who implicitly believes that he sees those places and persons, or whatever the book or painter has described or represented. If suddenly interrupted, he rouses himself, and may be said to awake to the present reality of things, as if startled from a dream.

Wigan relates that a celebrated portrait painter worked with such quickness and facility that he painted more than three hundred portraits in a year. When he was asked the secret of his rapid execution and of the faithfulness of the likeness, he replied, "When any one proposes to have his portrait taken, I look at him attentively for half an hour, while sketching his features on the canvas; I then lay the canvas aside and pursue the same method with another portrait, and so on. When I wish to return to the first, I take his person into my mind and place it before me as distinctly as if he were actually present. I set to work, looking at the sitter from time to time, since I am able to see him whenever I look that way." Talma asserted that when he was on the stage, he was able by mere force of will to transform his audience into skeletons, which affected him with such emotion as to add force and energy to his action. Abercromby speaks of a man who had the faculty of calling up visions with all the vividness of reality whenever he pleased, by strongly fixing his attention on mental conceptions which corresponded to them. Yet he was a sane man, in the prime of life, perfectly intelligent, and versed in practical affairs.

A very slight withdrawal of the attention from surrounding objects is all that is necessary to enable artists and some other persons to call up these images with vivid distinctness, since even in the waking state the image may for the moment appear to be actually before them. Any one might attain to the same power of verification if the transition from the real to the merely ideal image were not in the waking state so instantaneous and easy; whereas in a dream the state of illusion is uninterrupted, and it is physiologically impossible for the mind to pass immediately from the image, which is believed to be real, to the simply representative idea of the thing.

Even in the waking state, the image and representative idea of the thing naturally tend to become, or to appear to be, actual realities, even in a strictly normal condition of mind and body. Nor do they only implicitly tend to become such by the innate impulse of the mind, but they actually become so in fugitive moments of which man is scarcely conscious, and they appear to him exactly as they do in dreams. Hence it follows that there is no hard and fast line between the sleeping and waking states, so far as the nature of images, their source, action, and combinations are concerned, when men are distracted in mind, and the course of their thoughts is not voluntarily directed to some definite object; so that by a psychological process the phenomena of the waking state may be partly transformed into those of dreams. The vivid character of the image, presented to the senses as if actually there, is common to both phenomena. The way in which we begin to dream shows how, owing to our physiological conditions, we pass through regular stages from the waking state into that of sleep.

"Nuovo pensiero dentro a me si mise,

Dal qual più altri nacquero e diversi;

E tanto di uno in altro vaneggiai

Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,

E il pensamento in sogno trasmutai."[33]

So Dante writes in the "Purgatorio" with deep and subtle truth. Each man can verify for himself the exactness of the great poet's description.

I myself can readily study the phenomena of dreams, since I never sleep without dreaming so vividly that I remember all the circumstances in the morning. I have used all sorts of artifices in order to trace the beginning of sleep and dreams, and always with the same result, so that I am certain of the accuracy of experiments which have been repeated a hundred times. I have examined other persons who have made the same observations, all of whom agree with me.

When repose, the herald of sleep and dreams, begins, my thoughts wander in an irregular and somewhat confused manner. As they are gradually subjected to the associations to which they successively give rise, they are transformed into more vivid images, a vividness which is always in inverse proportion to the attention. This gradually produces the state which has been described by Maury and others as hypnagogic hallucination; that is, the images seem to be real, although the subject is still partly awake, and the voluntary exercise of thought is lost from time to time in this species of incipient chaos. It is at this point that images are really most intense, and that every idea assumes a body and form, every image a reality: finally, when the body and the brain have reached the physiological conditions of sleep, thoughts which had been changed into hypnagogic images in the intermediate stage between sleep and waking, are altogether transformed into the real images of dreams.

By an effort of will I have often been able to surprise myself in this intermediate stage, and the same thing has been done by others, and it always appears that this is the real moment of transition from wakefulness to dreaming, I have been able to verify the fact that the first dream is only the continuation of our last waking thoughts, which have now become dramatic and real I have also observed that this intermediate stage between waking and dreaming, during which the images are real and vivid, although we are still conscious of our real condition, goes on for a long while, sometimes for a whole night, with brief intervals of sleep. This has occurred to me when I was kept awake, either when travelling at night, or when I had taken a large draught of water before lying down (other liquids or food does not produce the phenomenon) or if I have been looking during the day at objects illuminated by dazzling sunshine. In all these circumstances the bright and vivid images appear reduced to an almost microscopic scale, although very distinct in form and colour; in ordinary cases, the images appear of the ordinary size, but not without a tendency to become smaller.

I believe that there is a physical cause for the reduction and attenuation of the images in the excessive excitement of the retina, or central encephalic organ in which images are formed in conscious concurrence with the cortical part of the hemispheres. Owing to the excitement caused by wakefulness, by fatigue, by sunshine, or in some cases by the condition of the nerves of the stomach, the objective projection on psychical space, partly transmitted by heredity and gradually formed by associations and local signs,[34] is arrested by the innate force of the image on the organ, and it appears to be smaller and in proportion with the relative smallness of the image which is produced by minute vibrations and by the susceptibility of the cellule. This intermediate and persistent stage of hypnagogic images serves in every way to explain the physical genesis of involuntary hallucinations.

As a proof that the image physiologically assumes the form of a real appearance, I may mention the experience of myself and others. When suddenly awakened from a vivid dream I have sometimes, even when I was fully awake, seen for an instant the figures of my dream still moving, and projected on the wall. This fact shows that even the images of our waking state have, in the physiological conditions of the brain, a tendency to take real forms, so that they may be termed normal, or more properly, inchoate hallucinations, corrected by the conscious efforts of our waking state and external consciousness. So that it might be said that dreams are at first the transformation of our waking thoughts into normal images and hallucinations, and afterwards into those of dreams, properly so called.

If the hypnagogic phase actually affects the cerebral cellules in connection with the various senses of which they are the organs, the phases of sleep and dreams, strictly so called, have more general conditions. The idea, converted into an image presented to the senses, may thus be said to have three stages: that of the waking state, which depends as we have said on the intensity and vividness with which it is reproduced, aided by a momentary detachment from the real environment; secondly, the hypnagogic phase, in which there is the physiological action of the nervous centres, which produce the image, though still with the implicit consciousness of the waking state; and finally, the actual dream, in which this implicit consciousness is almost always wanting, and the psychical exercise of thought is completely transformed into visions and figures which are believed to be real. This in its turn depends upon the other two causes, and on the physiological relaxation of the body, which is to a great extent isolated, so that the effectual impulses of external nature are greatly attenuated.

In the waking state, the whole body and all its organs of relation and movement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites the whole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation or relative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all its dependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but it stimulates and directs our whole system, as numerous experiments have shown. In the waking state both these functions are exercised equally, as far as the impulses and functions of the body are concerned, and as long as the psychical and organic characteristics of the waking state continue. But in sleep the exciting influence of the brain is diminished, and the brain transmits much less of the normal excitement and normal tension to the spinal axis with its ramifications in the afferent and efferent nerves; in the waking state an external impression is promptly conveyed to the centres, whence it returns in corresponding movements with the usual connection and rapidity, whether reflex or deliberate. Since in sleep the relative condition is flaccid and torpid, this action no longer takes place. For if the brain be affected by strong impressions, and these are followed by corresponding movements due to reflex action, as is often the case, even in sleep, the dreamer is only obscurely conscious of them, and they almost wholly depend on the spinal axis, and the peripheral ganglia.

As we have said, the function of the brain is duplex; it stimulates and directs, and it is also sentient and conscious, and this second function is persistent in dreams. Although the brain is no longer directed by a power which dictates psychical acts and phenomena, yet its automatic action is not destroyed, and to this the apparent reality of images seen is owing, since there is no longer any distraction from the external world, or, at all events, its impulses are so attenuated as to be unobserved. In such conditions past images recur with an appearance of reality owing to the mnemonic and automatic action of the brain; such a tendency exists in the waking state, and the images are associated and dissociated in a thousand ways, by means of analogies, resemblances, former combinations of facts, and series of facts analogous to those of the waking state, and are modified by suggestive impulses. We have experimental proof, to which I can add my own irrefragable witness, that the stimulating influence exerted by the brain in the waking state is dormant in sleep, and that only its automatic act of representation remains active, with the occasional exercise of an aroused and conscious will.

The following strange and unpleasant phenomenon generally occurs to me once or twice a year. All at once, in the midst of a deep sleep, I become wide awake; I am fully conscious of myself, of the place where I am, of my position and the like, and wish to move like a person who is fully awake. Yet for some time this is impossible; the psychical, cerebral faculty is perfectly awake, and master of itself, but not the stimulating faculty, so that the limbs do not respond to the first impulse of the will. All my efforts are unsuccessful; I only succeed in escaping from this unpleasant situation by uttering with great difficulty some inarticulate sound, which acts as a shock, and I thus obtain the mastery of my body, for the nerves of speech and the muscular movements of articulation also fail to answer to my will. If this occurs when I am alone, the struggle is severe, and there is a violent shock to the whole body before its equilibrium is restored and the motor function of the brain resumes its office.

It is therefore manifest that the stimulating function of the brain is dormant in sleep and dreams, but its automatic, psychical function persists; it sometimes happens that the stimulus of the will is awakened before the stimulus of motion, and that the brain may be aroused to consciousness for some moments before it has resumed its normal functions as a stimulating organ, which were attenuated and relaxed in sleep. The abnormal condition of paralysis proves and confirms this fact.

Let us now ascertain the cause of the various psychical and physiological conditions which aim at and often succeed in presenting to the mind a mere representative sign as a substantial and real image. What is the cause of the apparent reality of dreams? The image is clearly a psychical phenomenon, containing a sensible element of which we are conscious; the fundamental faculty of the perception is exerted on it as on a real object, and the immediate results are precisely identical. The reader will remember that we have shown that a phenomenon involves the intuitive idea of an active subject, so that the image also, in accordance with the innate faculty of perception, must normally appear to the mind as such. When this is not the case, it is because the normal effect of natural phenomena, to which our attention is constantly directed, and our mental education and hereditary influence, have accustomed us to distinguish at once between the mere idea and the real object, and thus we discern the difference between the normal action of thought and sense, and illusions, hallucinations, and dreams. But since these psychical and physiological conditions lose their force when the habit and actions of our waking state are dormant, the primitive and innate entification of the image quickly recurs, as we can plainly see from the previous analysis.

This is so much the case, that some savage peoples even now find it hard to distinguish real events from those of dreams, and this is owing to a defect in their memory or to the imperfection of their language. In fact, all civilized and barbarous peoples in the world have without exception believed, and still believe, in the reality of images seen in dreams, and their personification has been the source of an immense number of myths. Even now, with all our civilization and advanced science, not only the common people, but many of those in fashionable and tolerably cultivated society, believe in the reality of dreams and in their hallucinations, and derive from them fears, hopes, and warnings for their future life.

I will give one instance in a thousand to prove the innate tendency even in the act of dreaming to transform the image into a real object. It appeared to me that I was in a large room filled with acquaintances and strangers, who discussed an event which had really occurred in the city a few days before. All at once I raised my eyes to the wall of the room, and saw a large picture, representing a landscape with distant mountains, streams, cottages, and animals. As I looked, the picture was gradually transformed into a real object, and I found myself, together with the company before mentioned, in the midst of the fields, on the bank of the river, and within one of the cottages.

In another dream, I appeared to be conversing with an old soldier on the shores of a lake; after some incoherent talk, he began to describe a bloody battle in which he had taken part; he had not gone far before the narrative was changed for an actual occurrence, and I was in the midst of a real battle, such as the soldier had undertaken to describe. Another night I dreamed that I was reading a tragic poem, relating terrible deeds of blood and rapine, and suddenly I seemed to have become an actor or real spectator of that which I had at first read in a book. In another strange dream I was going over a difficult pass in a hired carriage, and I seemed to see before me a friend from whom I had parted on the previous day, when he got into an omnibus to return to the country. I soon saw in the distance a large coach-builder's establishment, a vast enclosure with sheds and carriages, and in the piazza I saw the manager, a man I knew, who had really some appointment in a carriage manufactory; the building recalled by association the familiar appearance of the high chimneys which rose above the roof, and while thinking of those chimneys with my eyes fixed on the manager, he appeared to me to be changed into a very high chimney, still bearing a human face. Finally, not to multiply examples, I remember a dream in which I was present at a popular disturbance, where one woman, more furious than the rest, came to blows with her husband, and called him a dog. Suddenly the scene changed, and I was transported to a courtyard in which there were poultry, pigs, and a fine dog of my acquaintance, called Lightning. Again the scene changed, and I found myself in a country district with some friends, exposed to a violent storm of thunder and lightning.

We clearly see from these facts that whatever may be presented to the imagination is transformed into a real object in the dream itself, so that it might be called a dream within a dream, and in the last instance the transmutation passes through three images and consecutive objects. This transmutation not only consists in the transition from our waking thoughts to the image of our dreams, but it takes place in the act of dreaming; such is the power of the faculty of perception, in which we find the first origin of myth in man, and its roots also in the animal kingdom. Thus the genesis of myth, as far as the entification of the image is concerned, is the same as that of dreams.

The normal illusions of the senses, which are believed to be real by primitive men, and by those ignorant of physical laws, have a similar origin. The objection of such phenomena as a mirage, or the tremulous effect produced in tropical regions by the refraction and reflection of light on trees, rocks, and mountains, so well described by Humboldt, is due to ignorance of the laws of nature, and this is in fact an entification of the phenomenon, occasioned by the innate tendency to animation which is proper to the perception. In this it is easy to trace the genesis both of myth and dreams. The fact of hallucination is more complex, even in its normal state, that is, in those general conditions of mind and body in which reason has complete command over us.

Without entering into any analysis of the various forms of hallucination of which many able psychologists and physicians of the insane have treated, let us turn to the more ordinary cases in which an image of the mind is projected on the external world so as to appear real. The roots of such a phenomenon are strictly organic, and belong to the centres in which the image is formed, as we have already observed; this image sometimes stands out in such vivid relief on the psychical space that it seems to be an external, not, as it usually appears in less vivid form, an internal intuition. The hallucinations which Nicolai describes himself to have experienced may be taken as a classical example. When Andral was returning from an autopsy, he clearly saw the corpse stretched before him as he entered his room. Goethe, Byron, and many others, have been affected in the same way. I myself have occasionally had hallucinations of the kind when in a perfectly healthy condition of mind and body; one, in particular, of a very vivid character, occurred when I awoke one morning and seemed to see a tall and venerable priest entering my chamber. It is needless to multiply examples; similar facts abound in classic books in English, French, German, and other languages. Let us rather study the phenomenon and trace its origin.

It is clear on the one side that the images of the hallucinations of sight or hearing appear to have a real existence, so that they may be observed and studied with ease; and it is also certain that this image has no external existence, and is simply a cerebral fact, due to the organs adapted for perception. Without considering the cause of the external projection, to which I have already alluded, since perhaps its physiological and psychical genesis is not yet fully understood, we must consider the image, so far as it is believed to be real.

In cases of normal hallucination the reason is intact, and the observer is conscious of the illusion, yet notwithstanding this positive judgment the image has an appearance of complete reality. The cause of this illusion is evidently the same as that of the illusions of dreams, and of the origin of myth; namely, that everywhere and always the mental or natural phenomenon and its image are respectively entified. In the normal waking state, habit and other causes on which we have touched render our ideas of things altogether immaterial, as merely psychical forms and representative signs, but when the excitement of the organs increases, so as to present them to the consciousness as objective images, then, owing to the interruption of the ordinary process, they are suddenly entified, and appear as an external phenomenon. Hallucinations are therefore explained by our theory, and it is further confirmed by the hallucinations of animals, and especially by the delirium of dogs and other animals affected by hydrophobia, or by cerebral excitement artificially produced by alcoholic and exhilarating drugs.

If a man is habitually subject to many and various hallucinations, and his sane judgment esteems them to be such, they are undoubtedly unusual phenomena, but they do not in any way injure the rational exercise of the mind. It is only when he believes the images to be real that the abnormal state begins, termed delirium if it is of short duration, and madness if it is permanent. We must examine hallucination under these new conditions.

In the delirium of fever, or in various forms of disease, the cerebral excitement is so great that not only the deliberate exercise of reason, but the power of estimating external objects is lost, and the organs of the senses are so completely altered, that the perceptions themselves are exaggerated and confused. In this state hallucination reaches its highest point, and the patient sees, hears, and feels, directly or indirectly, strange and terrible things: wild beasts, enemies of all kind, torments; or again, pleasing and agreeable images. Independently of the alteration in various sensations produced by the morbid alteration of the special organs which induce them, the real cause of this phenomenon consists in the objection of mental sensations and images. Such an objection of images or sensations, considered in the act which transforms them into a reality, depends on the same cause as all other acts of perception; there is always an entification of the phenomenon, which in this case is a vivid internal image, appearing to be external and real.

The entification of images is still more direct and powerful because in this morbid crisis the necessary corrections made by reason cannot take place, since the sick man is for the time deprived of it, and he is in fact a dreamer, whose condition is intensified by abnormal excitement. Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and serves to explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of the representations of the intellect. The transition is easy from delirium to madness, for although an insane person is not always delirious, but sometimes calm and composed, yet there is a fundamental resemblance to delirium in the change in his states of consciousness and its relative organs, which imply a constant hallucination. The most famous and acute physicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a hundred insane persons are subject to hallucinations. The morbid condition which generates them is also produced by debility, by an?mia, and the senile decay of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, and old age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the power of fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing to the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the external world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases the recollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear as hallucinations. The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms of dementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from their morbid and organic conditions, derived from the same source which produces myths, dreams, and normal hallucinations; the objective entification of images is due to the innate faculty of the perception, which leads to the immediate personification of any given phenomenon. We have shown that, given a sensation, there naturally arises the implicit notion of a subject and a cause, and this natural impulse is further developed by the influence of heredity; both in man and animals the constant and powerful sense of individual life is infused into the phenomenon perceived.

The various forms of madness throw a clearer light on this necessary and primitive fact of human and animal perception. The act of sensation may then be said to be under its own direction, and generates itself in the automatic exercise of the brain, as in dreams, without the explicit, disturbing, and modifying influence of reflection, and the habit of rational analysis. The act of sensation is spontaneously completed and developed in and with its own constituents, and since it is isolated from other modes and exercises of thought, its real nature appears. The hallucinations of madness, produced by the mental realization of images, either detached or in association, prove that all our mental images or ideas have a tendency in themselves to become real objects of consciousness; with this difference, that a sane man recognizes these mental entifications by their mobility and incessant alterations, which contrast with the fixity and permanence of external and cosmic phenomena.

The following considerations will confirm the truth of these facts. In our advanced state of civilization, thought may, after so many ages' exercise, almost be said to have become part of the organism by the indisputable effect of heredity; and the phenomenon of the recurrence to memory of past facts and distant places is obvious and intelligible, since our judgment of them is never subject to illusion, or only in rare instances and in abnormal conditions. But this judgment is less obvious and easy in the case of primitive savages who have advanced little beyond the innate exercise of the intelligence. The rational analysis of the states of consciousness has not been made, and hence their special and general distinctions are seen with difficulty or not seen at all. Consequently the primitive and natural amazement of man must have been great, when by day, and still more in the lonely silence of night, persons, places, and his own past acts recurred to his mind, and he was able to contemplate them as if they were actually present. He was incapable of giving an explanation of this marvellous fact in the rational and reflective manner which is possible to psychologists and to all civilized men. This revival of the past appeared to him as a fact in its simple and spontaneous reality; he made no attempt to explain it, but it was presented to his consciousness like all other natural facts. The only explanation of the phenomenon appeared to him to be that these images did not recur to the mind by the necessary action of the brain, but that by their own spontaneous power they were recalled to take their part within his breast: he supposed the phenomenon to be objective, not subjective.

Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, and some primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down by tradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to the mind. The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions. The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to be external, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams; primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memory and of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed to consist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance in the waking or sleeping state. The images assumed in the memory a relative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams. In fact, some savages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states, and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection of things, the fancy, and dreaming. This also occurs in children, who at a very early age often call by name absent persons and things which recur to their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the facts of real life from those of dreams. I have observed this fact in several children.

Among primitive peoples it often happens that an object with which they are unfamiliar, but which has some analogy with those with which they are acquainted, becomes associated with the latter, and is constituted into a compound being, endowed with life. The Esquimaux believed the vessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars. When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship to be a whale with sails. The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, and imagined that it required the nourishment of grass. When an Arauco saw a compass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has been held by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, which play tunes mechanically. Herbert Spencer mentions similar behaviour in some men belonging to one of the hill tribes in India; when they saw Dr. Hooker pull out a spring measuring tape, which went back into its case of itself, they were terrified and ran away, convinced that it was a snake. From these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it not only appears that everything is spontaneously animated by man, but also that the images of his memory are fused with those which are actually present, since their respective factors are esteemed to be equally real. This primitive objection of the images of the memory also occurs in the mythical representations of dreams, which, as the images of absent objects, have much in common with the images of the memory. In fact, all peoples, as we have seen, have believed in the reality of dreams.

The North American Indians believe in the existence of two souls, one of which remains in the body while the other wanders at pleasure during the dream. The New Zealander supposes that the dreamer's soul leaves his body, and that he meets the things of which he dreams in the course of his wanderings. The Dyak also believes that the soul is absent during sleep, and that the things seen in dreams really occur. Garcilasso asserts that this was likewise the Peruvians' belief. A tribe in Java abstains from waking a sleeper, since his soul is absent in dreams. The Karens say that dreams are what the là or soul sees during sleep. This theory is also found among more civilized peoples, as for instance in the Vedic philosophy and the Kabbala, and it has come down to our days among the common people, and even among those of some culture.

One belief connected with dreams, generally diffused among all savage and civilized peoples, is that of the appearance of dead men, or of their ghosts. Of this all the traditions and popular myths in the world are full. Such a belief, first excited by the vision of the dead in dreams, is easily aroused in the savage or uneducated mind, even when he recalls to memory while he is alone, and especially at night, the image of one whom he loved in life. Affection, and the lively emotion of sorrow and desire give such a life-like appearance to these images that they become objectively present to the mind, to console the mourner, or, on the other hand, to threaten the murderer. I have more than once heard persons of all classes, after the death of children, of a husband or wife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, either during life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all good faith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory and visible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifully appear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them for not fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem to them to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, but objective and personal apparitions within the soul. The cases are not rare in certain dispositions of mind, in which the projection of these images on the memory gradually produces madness. We must not forget that psychical phenomena in general are very differently regarded by the savage and the civilized man, since the latter is accustomed to analysis, and to the real distinctions of things. If this canon is forgotten we shall fall into grave errors in the attempt to interpret the evolution and primitive history of thought and of humanity.

We shall more readily understand the nature and genesis of all these hallucinations, and of normal and abnormal illusions, if we study another phenomenon of frequent occurrence which I myself have often had occasion to observe. I mean the illusion or hallucination which does not consist in the absolute projection of an internal image with an external semblance of reality, but which presents it in the twilight as an object of uncertain form, either in a room or out of doors. It often happens, as I and others have experienced from childhood, that a dress or other object lying by chance on a chair, or on the ground, or hanging on a piece of furniture or a peg, seen in connection with the other things near it, is transformed into a person or animal, in a sitting or standing posture or lying at full length, as if it had been a spectre or phantasm; somewhat like the figures which we all take pleasure in tracing in the strange and mobile forms of clouds. The fantastic figure sometimes appears instantaneously and at the first glance, sometimes it is only gradually made out; but in both cases, as we shall see, its genesis is the same. Although in the former case that which in the latter is gradually developed appears to be developed all at once, yet in reality it passes through the same stages.

Let us now consider the second mode; and in order to be perfectly accurate, I will describe one out of many apparitions which I saw so recently that its gradual formation is retained distinctly in my memory. On a small three-legged table beside my bed there was a little oval mirror, on which hung a woman's cap, which fell partly over the glass: there was also an easy chair, on which I had thrown my shirt before going to bed, while my shoes were as usual on the floor. I awoke towards morning, and as I chanced to look round the large room, in the uncertain light of a night-light which was almost burnt out, my eyes fell upon the easy chair. Immediately I seemed to see a head above it, corresponding to the mirror, and a vague and confused image of a person seated there. As I am accustomed to do in similar cases, I closed my eyes for a little, and on reopening them I looked at the appearance with attention and interest; this time the person or phantasm had a less confused outline, although I did not see the form distinctly, nor the features, nor its precise position. Yet in this second observation, I obtained an idea of it as a whole, and in details.

On further examination the face and person stood out more clearly, and the features became more distinct, the longer I looked. Each accidental fold or shadow on the cap was transformed into bright eyes, strongly marked eyebrows, into the nose, mouth, hair, beard, and neck; so that as I went on I had before me a perfectly chiselled face corresponding to the type which had first flashed across my mind as the confused impression of a face conveyed by the cap and mirror. The same process of evolution was pursued with respect to the limbs, the breast, arms, legs, and feet; parts of the body which at first appeared to be vague and indeterminate gradually, and as if by enchantment issued distinctly from every fold of the shirt, from every shadow, angle, and line, so as to compose what Dante would call una persona certa. Finally I saw before me a man dressed in white, of an athletic form, sitting in the easy chair and looking fixedly at me: the whole body was in harmony with the head, which had first resulted from the rude resemblance to a human face. The image appeared to me so real and distinct that on rising from the bed and gradually approaching it, its form did not vanish, even when I was near enough to touch the object which produced it. An analysis showed that the features, limbs, and position corresponded in every point with the folds and relative position of the articles of dress which had formed it. A similar process, issuing in such apparitions, is a frequent cause of illusions, which in the case of ingenuous, superstitious, and primitive peoples, may lead to the firm conviction that they have seen an apparition. This has certainly been the case in primitive and even in civilized times, and has given occasion to myths, legends, and the worship of tutelary deities and saints.

If we consider the causes of such a phenomenon, and analyze its elements and motives, we shall, I think, discover that it goes far to explain many normal and abnormal hallucinations.

In the first place, there is in man a deep sense of the analogies of things, partly developed by the organic tendency to regard any given object of perception as subjective and causative, and to infuse into it our own animal life, a tendency confirmed by education and the practice of daily life. Such analogies, which find their expression in metaphor, are very vivid and persistent in the vulgar and in those persons who approximate most closely to the primitive ingenuousness of the intelligence. The most frequent analogies are between natural phenomena and objects and animal forms. Analogies are also found between the various forms of inanimate natural objects, but the former are more usual, and especially those which refer to the human form. There are numerous and familiar instances of the names of men or women given to mountains, rocks, and crags, because they have some remote resemblance to some human feature or limb. Every day we may be called upon to see a face in some mountain, stone, or trunk of a tree, in the outline of the landscape, a wreath of mist or cloud. We are told to observe the eyes, nose, mouth, the arms and legs, and so on.[35] Every one must remember to have often heard of such resemblances, even if he has not himself observed them. All the facts and laws which we have observed explain why the sudden appearance of some vague form in an uncertain light, reminding us in a confused way of the human figure, instantly causes us to trace a resemblance to man rather than to any thing else. It must be noted, as my experiment has already proved, that in this first sketch of a phantasm in human form, a general, though indefinite type of the whole figure has spontaneously arisen, to which it is made to correspond. This is the key to the ultimate perception of the phenomenon. What may be called the prophetic type of the figure which will afterwards appear to us in all its details, although it may seem to be produced by external resemblance, is in fact the product of the mind, which has been unconsciously exercised in its construction.

In fact, out of the immense variety in faces, and in the general form of persons, of gestures, fashions of dress, attitudes in rest and motion, which are indelibly impressed on the memory, every one constructs general types for himself; types which are revealed in the allusions made in our daily conversation to the resemblances which we are continually observing. These remain in the memory, with all the manifold resemblances, as well as the ideal of certain types in which the numerous forms we have seen and compared are formulated. We know that when the memory has been dormant, which is often the case, it may be awakened by the stimulus of association, of analogy, or of will, so as to reproduce the forgotten ideas and sensations which are thus again presented to the consciousness. When, therefore, one or more objects are seen in an uncertain light, so as to present a confused appearance of the human form, its general lineaments are unconsciously made by us to correspond with the human type already existing in the memory, and this type presides in the subsequent composition of the reproducing artist who observes the phantasm. The unconscious mental labour which is accomplished in the reproducing cellules of past impressions and ideas by the instantaneous creation of the type, gathers round this type the form and features corresponding with it, which had its earlier existence in our own experience. The external pose and indefinite modification of the objects appear to correspond with the gradual mnemonic revival of the typal form, and they reciprocally stimulate and react on each other. For while a fold, shadow, or line of the objects seen appear to correspond with some feature of the mnemonic type, on the other hand, a fold, shadow, or outline of the object recalls a feature of the inward phantasm composed by the memory.

In this process the mnemonic details which are in accordance with the pre-existing type, and sometimes also in accordance with some remarkable face or person which was the first to present itself to the mind, serve as a model for the accidental form of the external object or objects which correspond to it; this in its turn recalls features which remain in the memory, and in this way the external form of this particular phantasm is gradually chiselled into full relief. The more intently we regard the object which is modified to suit the mental image, the more perfectly they agree together, and the apparition stands out with more vivid distinctness. This will be the experience of every one to whom such a phenomenon appears, and a dispassionate analysis of all the phases of this fact must fully confirm our theory.

Such a fact, which is implicitly included in the general law we have laid down for the origin of myth, will also as I think throw further light on the origin of many hallucinations, both in normal conditions of mind and in the abnormal state of nervous disorders. The different appearances of objects, animals, and men, the voices, words, songs, and conversations seen and heard in these hallucinations, are produced, by an internal impulse as well as by a stimulus from without; they are internal in the images and sensation already unconsciously impressed upon the memory, and they are external in the accidentally modified form in which they occur in sensible objects, so that they act reciprocally as an incentive and impulse to each other.

If in normal hallucinations the vividness of the internal image is in certain physiological conditions projected outwardly, the configuration and accidental form of the external objects contribute to complete the composition in accordance with the nature and design of this internal image. Sometimes the physiological conditions of hallucination are so powerful that it is at once produced by the appearance of an object which has some analogy with the mental image. Whatever may be the genesis and primitive character of the idea of space, and its psychical and physiological relations to actual space-a question which has been the theme of so much discussion in our time-it is certain that first habit and then hereditary influence cause us to have the sensation and apprehension of a psychical space, which may be termed artificial and congenital, and upon which the various impressions of the senses are spontaneously projected. Of this there is an evident proof in the fact that if we look at the sun or any bright object, such as the windows of a room in the day time, and then close our eyes, so as to make the vision of external space impossible, the image of the sun, sometimes of a different colour, or of the window, is projected into the darkness at some distance from us, and moves about this psychical space. This phenomenon also occurs in the subjective sensations of hearing, since the sounds do not appear to be close to the ear, but at a distance. We are not here called upon to discuss the causes which generate the appearance of this psychical space, but the fact is indisputable; so that conversely it becomes intelligible how the internal image may be projected in the same way, or may at least appear to be externally projected in hallucinations. This surprising phenomenon is only a modification of the ordinary exercise of the psychical and physiological faculties in the projection of images; of which, after the idea of space has been formed by primitive experience, habit and education are the chief factors.

Hallucinations, in the cases observed above, are due to an external impulse; and this is especially the case in madness and other nervous disorders; since a critical observation and clear discernment of things is wanting, some object of vision, a voice, phrases, or sounds are much more apt to act as a stimulus to a vast field of visual hallucinations, or to a long succession of sentences and speeches. It is not, therefore, wonderful that in an ecstasy, for instance, in which all the faculties are concentrated on very few ideas and images, or perhaps on one only, every external sign, whether obvious to sight or hearing, combined with the mnemonic effort already explained, is modified to correspond with these vivid and exalted images; thus constituting the wonderful phenomenon of ecstasy. In such a case the ecstatic phenomenon in persons subject to these nervous affections is often invested with fresh wonders by the additional sensations of light and subjective colours; this is not uncommon even in persons of a sane mind and body, but undoubtedly it is more frequently the case in those whose mental and physical conditions are abnormal. It is not rare to hear an ecstatic person recount divine visions, suffused with extraordinary light and glory.

In order to contribute to the researches of others into the nature of this phenomenon, I must be permitted-not from vanity, but from a desire that my own imperfections may serve the cause of science however slightly-to relate some facts, personal to myself, which bear upon the question, facts of very general experience. From my childhood I have had, both by day and night, various subjective sensations of light which I was, as a person of perfectly sane mind, able to observe dispassionately. After reading for a long while, or when fatigued by sleeplessness, mental excitement, or some temporary gastric derangement, I see clear flames circling before my eyes. These are in a small, oblong form, arranged at brief intervals in concentric curves, and composing a moving garland projected upon space, tinged with a yellowish light, shading into vivid blue. Sometimes this figure is changed for stars, twinkling in a vast and remote space, as in a firmament. In addition to this phenomenon, I have about twenty times in the course of my life experienced other subjective and more extraordinary sensations of light, not unknown to others. This phenomenon occurs when I am in a normal condition of health, and always begins with a confusion of sight, so that I am unable to see objects and the faces of people distinctly; after which everything within the range of vision becomes mobile and tremulous. This state continues for ten minutes, and then clear and distinct vision returns. Next a lucid circle, zig-zagged in acute angles, appears close to the eyes, now on the right, now on the left. It moves in a somewhat serpentine course, and is broken in the centre of the lower half. It withdraws from the eye into subjective space, and the shining band of which it is composed gradually loses its sharp angles, and becomes wider and undulated, while still in motion.

Another remarkable sensation follows. The shining band, which has dilated until it is withdrawn from the eyes, whether closed or open, to an apparent distance of several yards, becomes tinted with all the colours of the rainbow, standing out in such vivid splendour on the dark background that I have never seen them equalled in nature. Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Throughout the phenomenon I continue to be perfectly collected and free in mind, so that I can observe it in all its details with perfect calmness, and can also impart my observations to the persons with whom I happen to be. Only when the subjective sensation has ceased, I feel an obscure pain in the brow of the eye in which the phenomenon occurred. This is readily explained by the well-known interlacing of the nerves, and the action of the hemispheres.

Supposing that such phenomena occur, as they more readily do, in persons predisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and in a society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habitually contemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if in moments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to the images proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is very likely to be the case, or the iridescent aureole we have described, they would certainly accept and glorify the heavenly vision revealed to them. The revolution of the bright stars or iridescent band, preceded by the obscurity of vision which accompanies the ordinary ecstatic hallucination, would certainly be ascribed to the saints or angels, and would thus become more supernatural and consonant with the believer's idea of heaven; and these very subjective sensations might often produce the ecstatic vision, so ready to appear in the morbid conditions which lead to hallucination.

According to the process previously described, by which the phenomenon of natural hallucinations is produced by an external stimulus, these luminous phenomena would revive the memory of angelic and saintly forms, of which men were so profoundly conscious in times of religious excitement, and would be regarded as their external signs, while they would at the same time stimulate the appearance of such angelic visions. Ultimately this would lead to the vast drama of celestial hallucinations described for us in the accounts of many ecstatic visions. They do not only occur in modern religions, but in those of the old heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of savages. The ethnography of the most savage peoples of our time teaches us that the origin of very many myths is to be found in normal and abnormal hallucinations, and in the luminous visions which conform to their mental conditions. Persons subject to nervous affections, from simple epilepsy to madness and idiocy, were and still are supposed to be inspired, and endowed with the power of prophesying and working miracles; they are also venerated for relating the strange visions presented to them in the crisis of their disorder. Africa, barbarous Asia, America, Oceania, and the ignorant and superstitious people in Europe itself, abound with such facts; they have occurred and are likely to recur in civilized peoples of all times, including our own, as we know only too well.

We have thus reduced the primitive origin of myth, of dreams, of all illusions, of normal and abnormal hallucinations, to one unique fact and genesis, to a fundamental principle; that is, to the primitive and innate entification of the phenomenon, to whatever sensation it may be referred. This fact is not exclusively human in its simple expression and genesis, since it occurs in the lower animals; evidently in those which are nearest to man, and by the necessary logic of induction in all others, according to their sensations and modes of perception. In the vast historic drama of opinions, beliefs, religions, mythical and mytho-scientific theories which are developed in all peoples; and again, in the infinite variety of dreams, illusions, mystic and nervous hallucinations, all depend on the primitive and unique fact which is also common to the animal kingdom, and identical with it; in man this is also the condition of science and knowledge. I think that this conclusion is not unworthy of the consideration of wise men and honest critics, and that it will contribute to establish the definitive unity of the general science of psychology, considered in the vast animal kingdom as a whole, and in connection with the great theory of evolution.

This primitive act of perception, the radical cause and genesis of all mythical representations, and the physical and intellectual condition of science itself, is also one of the factors and the ?sthetic germ of all the arts. The constraining power which generates the intentional subjectivity of the phenomenon, and the entification of images, ideas, and numerous normal and abnormal appearances, also unconsciously impels man to project the image into a design, a sculpture, or a monument. Since an idea or emotion naturally tends, as we have seen, to take an external form in speech, gesture, or some other outward fact; so also it tends to manifest itself materially and by means of various arts, and to take the permanent form of some object. It is embodied in this way, as it was embodied in fetishes in the way described in the foregoing chapters. Owing to this innate cause, and by the instinct of imitation which results from it, children as well as savages always attempt some rude sketch of natural objects, or of the fanciful images to which they have given rise. Drawings of animals and some other objects are found among the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians. Nor is this fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which are still in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings and remains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date have been found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age of our flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water. There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitive impulse to imitative arts. A stag's meta-tarsal bone, on which there was a carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny: in a cave at Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs of schist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office, on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and other animals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked man in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known by the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or so-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, going with its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard. Other designs of the chase and of animals afford a clear proof of the remote period at which the primitive instinct towards the imitative arts existed.

It is peculiar to man to portray things and animals, and to erect monuments out of a superstitious feeling, or to glorify an individual or the nation; the bower-birds and some cognate species may perhaps be regarded as an exception, since they show a certain sense of beauty, and an extrinsic satisfaction in gay colours, which indeed appears in many animals. But art in the true sense and in its essential principle are the act and product of man alone, of which I have demonstrated the cause and comparative reasons in another work, so that it is unnecessary to repeat them here. Some rare cases indicate an artistic construction which is not an essential part of animal functions, and the sense of form and colour occurs in some species. But this only shows that there exist in the animal kingdom the roots of every art and sentiment peculiar to man, subsequently perfected by him in an exclusive and reflex manner, and this confirms the general truths of heredity and evolution.

When primitive man draws or carves objects, he does not merely obey the innate impulse to give an external form to the image already in his mind, but while satisfying the ?sthetic sentiment which actuates him, he is conscious of some mysterious power and superstitious influence. This sentiment is not only apparent in our own children, but among nearly all savages, of which many instances might be given; some of them are even afraid to look at a portrait, and shrink from it as from a living person.

As time went on, a belief in spirits was developed from causes already mentioned, the rude theory of incarnation followed as its corollary, and this sentiment was naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images; for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of men and animals. In these figures the amulet, talisman, or gris-gris of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superstitions. The belief in spirits, resulting from the personification of shadows, or of the image of a man's own soul which was supposed to return from the tomb, had a mythical influence on the mode and ceremonies of sepulture, on the position of corpses, on the orientation of tombs, and their form. In fact, the mythical ideas of spirits, and the fanciful place they took in the primitive idea of the world, produced the custom of burying corpses in an upright, stooping, or sitting position, and their situation with reference to the four cardinal points. In America the cross which was placed in very early times above the tombs is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been a symbol of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb itself and to the human remains enclosed in it. One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the head and feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the attitude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have special customs in burying their dead.

All the primitive artistic representations of the human form, the orientation of tombs and temples and their peculiar form, were prompted by these spiritualist and superstitious ideas; they expressed a symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the constitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends. This assertion might be verified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among all peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those of our times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, and particularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, beginning with the Greeks and passing through the Latins down to the Christianity of our day; nor need we exclude the Oceanic races, and those of the two frigid zones.

Doubtless the purest ?sthetic sentiment was gratified in the productions of the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was at its highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment. At the same time, for the great majority of peoples in early and subsequent ages down to our own time, there was and is the consciousness of a numen, in the proper meaning of the word, within the statue or effigy, and these were unconsciously entified by the same law which leads to the entification of natural phenomena; the august presence of the gods and an artificial symbol of the living organism of the world were contained in the material form. While this sentiment took a higher development in art, and was gradually emancipated from its mythical bonds, it never altogether disappeared in artistic creations; and there are still many who would, like some uncultured peoples of early and modern times, cover up their images when they are about to commit some action which might be displeasing to these idols of the gods or saints. If we were to gauge the sentiments which really animate a man of the people, even when he; looks at the statue of a great man, we should find that in addition to his ?sthetic satisfaction, he unconsciously imagines that the spirit of the dead man is infused into the image and is able to enjoy the admiration of the observers.

The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded on this belief in the incarnation of spirits and the numen of fetishes. There is indeed no real difference between the superstitious adoration of a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in many religions of modern civilization. Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and gris-gris of savages. This fetishtic and idolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development been infused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hung on plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbol of perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills. We have analogous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or the words of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn round the neck. The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lamps kept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help and favour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thus transforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous or civilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, for instance, and some other American peoples regarded the number "four" as sacred.

In addition to the cherished remembrance always inspired by portraits of those we love, a breathing of life, as if the dead or absent person were communicating with us in spirit, is perhaps unconsciously infused into the picture while we look at it. These are transient states of consciousness, of which we are scarcely aware, although they do not escape the notice of careful observers. Any dishonour or insult offered to images, whether sacred or profane, deeply moves both the learned and unlearned, both barbarous and civilized peoples, not merely as a base and sacrilegious act against the person represented, but from an instinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in the image. Any one who analyzes the matter will find it impossible to separate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinary scenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resulted from the identification of the image with the thing represented.

Even when a man of high culture and refined taste for beauty stands before the canvas or sculpture of some great ancient or modern artist, his spiritual and ?sthetic enjoyment of these wonderful works is, as he will find from the observation of his inmost emotions, combined with the animation and personification of what he sees; he is so far carried away by the beauty and truth of the representation that the passions represented affect him as if they were those of real persons. This relative perfection of a work of art, either in the way the objects stand out, in the varied diffusion of light and shade, in the movement and expression of figures, in the effect of the whole in its details and background, is all heightened and confirmed by the underlying entification of images. The process we have before described by which a confused group of objects appear to us as a human form or phantasm is also effected in this case in a more subtle way and with less effort of memory; it is all ultimately due to the primitive fact of animal perception. Our imagination can supply the resemblance, the limbs, colour, and design in a picture in which a face, figure, or landscape are slightly sketched, or in a roughly chiselled statue. We often hear the complaint that a work of art is too highly finished, and it wearies and displeases us because it leaves nothing for the imagination to supply. The remark reveals the fact, of which we are all implicitly conscious, that we are ourselves in part the artificers of every external phenomenon.

We need not stop to prove a truth well-known to all, that architecture and all kinds of monuments lend themselves to a symbolism derived from ancient and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in India, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Jud?a, Greece, Ancient and Christian Rome, and in the ancient remains found in savage countries and in America. The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the earliest and most varied traditions with the symbols of Christianity. We unconsciously carry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, although the meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs in the open air which enclosed a spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacred buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture, both religious and civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, the development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth were reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, arch?ology, and the history of all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader. Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as human speech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were an algebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive and concrete image whence it proceeded. The arts also, like other human products, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course; the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritual beliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformed into symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and give place to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fully satisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends.

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin and evolution as the others. Vico, Strabo, and others have asserted that primitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark. Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocal modulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulate emotion. In truth, the mental and physiological effort which tends by vocal enunciation to present the image or emotion in an external form, is on the one hand not yet fully disintegrated, and on the other the greater or less intensity of feeling involved in primitive languages a corresponding vocal modulation to supplement it, just as it required gesture and pantomime. Thus speech, gesture, and song, in the larger sense of the word, had their origin together. This is also true of many of the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection; in this case the frequent repetition of the same monosyllable conveys a different meaning, not only from its relative position, but from the modulation and tone in which it is uttered. The same thing may be observed in children who are just beginning to talk.

Rhythm, or the graduated and alternate action and reaction with which a vibration begins and ends, is a universal law in the manifestation and movements of all natural phenomena; a law which is revealed on a grand scale in all the recurring periods of nature, whether astral, telluric, or meteorological, as well as in the form and manifold phases of organisms and their modes of reproduction. This universal law also applies to the whole mental and organic system of animals and men, whenever they become conscious of their own existence. The same universal rhythm constitutes the fundamental form of sound in the vibration of metallic bars, or of strings, and becomes perceptible to the external senses by means of our organ of hearing, as also by the external and innate necessity slowly developed by our habits of consciousness, which may be termed the external causes of its organic evolution and constitution.

By these organic and cosmic tendencies, and by the intrinsic impulse towards modulation of sound already explained, speech first issued from the human breast in harmonious accents and rhythmic form, and these became in their turn the causes and genesis of versification and metre. The classic experiments of Helmholtz show that each note may be regarded as a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompany it in its complete development. With reference to our own race, the genesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by the researches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, and the Greeks, since the fact that their metres were the same implies a common origin. The demonstration is complete, if we compare the iambic metre of Archilochus with that of the Vedic hymns. There are in both three series of iambuses-the dimeter, the cataleptic trimeter, and the acataleptic.[36]

This observation applies to the physical and physiological conditions of the phenomenon, since primitive men could not speak without rhythmic modulation of words. We are not quite without hope of discovering by induction the origin of wind or stringed instruments which accompanied the songs, after the specification of the modes of speech was so far advanced as to distinguish singing-which had already become an art-from the daily necessity of reciprocal communication in words. In this research we must proceed step by step, aided by minute observation, lest we should accept an hypothesis which does not correspond with the facts.

Not only man, but some animals-among others a species of mouse found in South Africa-naturally uses his limbs to moderate or strengthen the light of vision. This mouse was observed to shade its eyes with its forepaws in order to look at some distant object under a blazing sun, as we should do in like conditions. In man, whose arms and hands are readily adapted to this primitive art, the habit is common, even among the rudest savages. Putting sight out of the question that we may consider hearing, which is our present theme, reflex movements, either casual or habitual, have certainly induced primitive men to place their hands on the mouth, either so as to suppress the sound or to augment it by using both hands as a kind of shell. It is easy to imagine the use of shells or other hollow objects as a vehicle of sound, either for amusement or some other cause, and these rude instruments might serve as the first step to the invention of wind instruments. Reflection on these spontaneous experiments would readily lead to the search for some mode of prolonging or imitating the voice. In these attempts men might be guided by their observation of the whistle and song of birds, whose beaks may have served as a model for the construction of the flute and reed-pipe. Pott traces the word for sound to the root svar, and hence, after some natural phonetic changes, we have in Lithuanian szwilpti for the song of birds. Of all natural objects, different kinds of reeds and the hollow stalks of plants are, owing to their hollow and cylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak and the sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for a flute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, van?a and vênu mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, na and nay mean a flute and reed; in Greek δ?να?, and in Latin calamus, have the same double meaning, and many more examples might be given.

Stringed instruments are a more elaborate invention, and may have been suggested by the vibration of a bow-string when it is twanged. The bow is common to all modern savages, and was also found among extinct peoples and those which are now civilized, as well as in prehistoric times. The Sanscrit word for a stringed instrument, tata or vitata, is derived from the root tan, to stretch. Pictet observes that one name for a lute is rudri, from rud, to lament, that is, a plaintive instrument; in Persian we have rod for song, music, or a stringed instrument. The etymology of arcus is the same; the root arc not only means to hurl, but to sing or resound. Homer and Rannjana often allude to the sonorousness of the bow and its string. Homer says in speaking of the bow of Pandarus, "stridit funis, et nervus valde sonuit." And when Ulysses drew his avenging bow, the cord emitted a clear sound like the voice of a swallow. L?càka, another name for a cord, also means one who speaks, from lòc, loqui; and the Persian r?d, r?da, a bow-string, also means a song. In the Veda the root arc' is used in speaking of the roaring wind, or of a long echoing sound. Again tavara, a bow-string, is from tan, to stretch, to sound. The Greek τ?νο? must be referred to the same root, and signifies, a bow-string, a sound, an accent, a tone. Benfey traces the Greek λ?ρα, in which this root is wanting, through λυδρα, or rudra. Kuhn confirms this transformation by the analogy between the Vedic god Rudra and the Greek Apollo, both of whom are armed with a bow. Rudra, like Apollo, is a great physician; the former is called kapardin, from his mode of wearing his long hair, and vanku from his tortuous gait as the god of storms; to the latter the epithets of ?χερ? εχομε? and λοξ?α? are applied; the mouse was sacred to Rudro, and Apollo had the surname of Smintheus, from the mouse, Σμ?νθα, which was his symbol.

These wind and stringed instruments were not, in their primitive forms, at once used as an accompaniment to song. Before such use was possible, there must have been considerable progress in the specification of language, and special songs must have been disintegrated from common speech, which was at first an inchoate song. Possibly some rude instruments were invented for amusement or some other purpose before this specification had taken place. At any rate the use of various instruments for accompaniment was preceded by gesticulation, or the spontaneous striking of some object which coincided with animated speech, or which accompanied it in sonorous cadences.

The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to speak in song, also impelled them to accompany it with gestures and movements of the body, and this was the origin of the dance, which, when the body moved in correspondence with cadenced utterances, was at first merely the accompaniment of song. Tradition, modern ethnography, and the primitive habits of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to the rhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there is the practice of spontaneously beating time with the hands and feet, which were doubtless the first instruments used by man as a musical accompaniment. Hence, owing to the facility of, construction, there arose percussion instruments, which were at first made of stone or pieces of wood. So that singing, dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some rudely fashioned object arose almost simultaneously, as soon as the process of specification had established a distinction between song and ordinary speech. The first simple instruments which we have described only made the song, shout, war-dance, or religious ceremony more effective.

When chanted speech was formulated in a fixed order by means of rhythm and the modulations of the voice, it became verse, and the melody itself, as the simple expression of the song which had been cast into verse, or even into an inarticulate chant, was naturally evolved from it. An artistic education is not needed in order to experience the pleasure of rhythmic order in the succession of sound, for a predisposition of the nervous system will suffice. Savages, children, and even animals are sensible of rhythm, which is the order and symmetry of sensations. The dance, as Beauquier justly observes, is the practical form of rhythmic motion and the gesture of music. The motion impressed by sound on the internal organism tends to manifest itself in external gesture, and in fact, the rhythm of the music is repeated in dancing in the limbs and in the whole body of the dancer. The rhythm, regarded in its material cause, need not be accompanied by any very musical sound. The percussion instruments were at first only used to mark and intensify the rhythm.

Melody may be termed a fusion of rhythm and sounds of different pitches, united in time, and assuming a regular and symmetrical form; melody, as others also have observed, constitutes the whole of music, since without it harmony itself is vague and indefinite. Notwithstanding the numerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labour implied in its analysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation of man, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorant of music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we have instances in popular and national songs, which are generated by the musical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has an independent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, and conduces to its subsequent progress among peoples capable of developing it in all its power.[37]

Music has a powerful influence upon all the senses. It has at all times been supposed to have a healing power, and in the Middle Ages it was believed to cure epilepsy, madness, convulsions, hysteria, and all forms of nervous affections; while in our own time it is usefully employed in cerebral diseases, since it has both a stimulating and soothing effect. Women, since they are generally more nervous and sensitive than men, are more especially affected by music. Animals as well as man are influenced by it, as it has been shown by exact and numerous experiments. Every one knows that many birds can be taught airs, which they sing with taste and lively satisfaction. The major key, with its regular proportions, its full and gradual sounds, arouses in man a sense of life and joy, while the minor key excites languor and invincible sadness, and animals are affected in the same way.

It is evident that the formation of the scale, the essential foundation of music, varies with, the epoch, climate, habits, and physiological conditions of the different races which have successively adopted the diatonic, the major, and minor scales. The music of the Chinese differs from our own, and while it is equally elaborate, it does not quite please us, and the same may be said of the music of the Indians, of the ancient Egyptians, and others. Undoubtedly our scale is more convenient and conformable to art, setting aside the physiological conditions of race, since the notes separated by regular intervals form a more spiritual and independent, in short a more artistic system.

Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and of music, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effect on man and animals. We must now consider the subject from the mythical point of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts. We know that the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and this fanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in its expression. It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneously and unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea or emotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as a whole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflective manner, in consequence of intellectual development. Among all civilized peoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not only personified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified. It is well known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified the Gr?co-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted upon it. If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed against men or things. Kar means to bewitch, as in German we have einem etwas anthun, in low Latin facturare, in Italian fattucchiere, and from Kar we have carmen, a song or magic formula. The goddess Carmenta, who was supposed to watch over childbirth, derived her name from carmen, the magic formula which was used to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as Carmenta, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs were termed carmentes.[38] The Sanscrit maya, meaning magic or illusion and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from man, to think or know; from man we have mantra, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, manthra is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse manadh, incantation or juggling, and mòniti in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from the same root.

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to use exorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with the noise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology, and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the first rude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms down to our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to Pius IX. by M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water against the innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people the cosmic spaces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of all modern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fanciful personification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song, and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories, and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets, as if these contained the spirit of God. The Patagonians, to quote a single instance from among savages, drive away the evil spirits of diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons are painted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees, which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing.

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves, and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughout Polynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole of Africa. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers in Africa give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such a worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerial space, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, their secret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearance both by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, must necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of Hurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers and images of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which they were animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia.[39] It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus. Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, of the raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament speaks of the worship of groves at Ashtaroth in Canaan, of sacrifices under the green trees, and we know that such worship occurred in the Semitic races of Numidia and elsewhere.

The simultaneous elaboration of myths relating to trees and birds as objects of worship, as beneficent or malign powers, and as the transmitters of oracles, necessarily confirmed and extended the personifications of speech and song, and were fused through many sources into a whole, which represented a supernatural agent, endowed with the power of a mediator, of a good or evil spirit or idol. This ultimately led to a universal conception of the efficacy of sound, considered as the manifestation of occult powers. In this mythically spiritual atmosphere, all peoples formerly lived and in great part still continue to live.

As the innate impulse led to the entification of speech and of the singing of men and animals, so it also led to the mythical personification of dancing and instrumental music, in which nearly all peoples have recognized a demoniac and deliberate power. For this reason, dancing and the noise of rude instruments generally accompanied solemn religious and civil ceremonies, and any remarkable cosmic, astral, or meteorological fact; and in polytheistic times the deities of poetry, dancing, and music served to accentuate and classify ideas.

The instrument became a fetish, and was invested with a mysterious power resembling that which was supposed to exist in all utterances of the animal world. Indeed, instruments were, and still are among savages, regarded as sacred and as an integral part of public worship, so that each had its definite function and office. This need not surprise us, since for such men every object is a fetish, which contains a soul. The Karens, a tribe in Burmah, believe that their arms, knives, utensils, etc., have all a kelap or soul, which is termed a wong by the negroes of West Africa. The same belief is found in a more explicit form among the Algonquins, the Fijians, and the aforesaid Karens, whose beliefs are characteristic of all peoples which have reached this stage of mythical conceptions. The different objects belonging to a dead man, and his instruments, arms, and utensils, are laid in his tomb, or burnt with his body, and this is owing to the belief that the souls of these objects follow their possessor into another life. The same custom unfortunately extends to persons, and there are instances of this evil practice among relatively civilized nations; the massacre which takes place at the death of a king of Dahomey is well known, and is revolting from the number of victims and from the mode of their sacrifice. It is therefore easy to imagine the way in which musical instruments and the sounds produced by them were personified, since these manifestations seemed to approximate more closely to those of animals.

Fetishtic beliefs concerning magic songs or sounds were, as we have seen, confirmed by the influence naturally exerted on men and animals in their normal or abnormal state by rhythmic and musical sounds, however rude and unformed they may be. Theophrastus tells us that blowing a flute over the affected limb was supposed to cure gout; the Romans recited carmina to drive away disease and demons: the old Slav word for physician, vra?i, comes from a root which means to murmur; in Servian, vrac is a physician, and balii, an enchanter or physician. The use of incantations as a remedy prevailed among the Greeks in Homer's time. The Atarva-Veda retains the old formula of imprecation against disease, and the Zendavesta divides physicians into three classes, those which cure with the knife, with herbs, and with magic formulas. Kuhn believes that the Latin word mederi refers to these proceedings, comparing with it the Sanscrit méth, mêdh, to oppose or curse. Pictet traces the meaning of exorciser in another Sanscrit word for a physician: Bhisag from sag, sang, tojurbo gate.

As the civilization of the historic races advanced, poetry, singing, and musical instruments became more perfect, and were classified as reflex arts. Among the more intellectual classes the earlier fetishtic ideas connected with them almost disappeared, while in the case of the common people, the fetish was idealized, but not therefore lost; it persisted, and still persists, under other forms. Polytheism, modified to suit the place, time, and race, and yet essentially the same, offers us a more ideal form of the arts, each of which was personified as a god, and taken together they formed a heavenly company, which generated and presided over the arts. The greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity retained a sincere belief in the inspiration of every creation of art; and this was only a more noble and intellectual form of the first rude and indefinite conception by which the arts were embodied in a material shape.

Of all the Aryan peoples, Greece represented her Olympus in the most glorious mythical form, set forth by all the arts of description. From the polytheistic point of view, nothing can be ?sthetically more perfect than the myths of Apollo and the Muses, which personify harmony in general, and whatever is peculiar to the arts. Such conceptions, by which the arts of speech, song, vocal and instrumental music were embodied in myths, did not disappear as time went on, but were perpetuated in another form. Music, which was always becoming more elaborate, continued to be the highest inspiration, a divine power, an external and harmonious manifestation of celestial beings, of eternal life, and the order of the world. This conception was shadowed forth in the Pythagorean theory of the mythical harmony of the spheres: that school regarded the world as a musical system, an harmonious dance of planets.

The fetishtic and mythical origin common to all the arts is clearly shown by the fact that at a period relatively advanced, but still very remote, they were formulated in the temple, a symbolic representation of their deities, to be found even among the most primitive peoples. The evolution of the arts towards a more rational conception, divested of mythical and religious influence, took the form of releasing each art from bondage to the temple, and enabling it to assume a more distinct, free, and secular personality, an evolution which was however somewhat difficult and slow in the case of vocal and instrumental music. Although in our own time it has achieved a field for itself, yet in oratorios and ecclesiastical music the old conception remains.

The joys of the Elysian fields and of Paradise, as rewards of the good and faithful after death, varying in details with the moral and mythical beliefs of various peoples, were heightened by concerts and musical symphonies, as, owing to natural evolution and the introduction of Oriental ideas, if appears even in the Christian conception of Paradise. For the great majority of believers, earthly music is only an echo of that celestial music, and participates in its divine efficacy. In the Christian Paradise there were saints to preside over the instruments, the singing, and music; the visions of the ecstatic, the hallucinations of the mystic, and the precious memories and images of the dead, are often combined with sweet and heavenly music, and this completes the fetishtic idea which enters into every phenomenon with which man has to do. For if inanimate objects and instruments were supposed by the primitive savage to have a soul which followed the shade of the dead man into the mythical abode beyond the grave, in modern religions the earthly instruments, the fanciful idols of the common people and of mystics, also resound in Elysium and the heavens, touched and inspired by choirs of angels and by seraphic powers.

The deep and sonorous music of bells, of organs, and other ecclesiastical instruments, the chants which resound through vaulted roofs amid the assembled worshippers, ecclesiastical lights, and the fumes of incense, inspire many Christians with a deep and ?sthetic sense of the divine presence; and at such moments their vivid faith joins heaven and earth in the same harmonious emotion. The music, chants, and harmony, combined with other solemn rites, are unconsciously embodied by us, entering into our hearts as they circle round the church, and they become the mysterious language of celestial powers. We are once more immersed in the world of fancy and of myth, purified however by the evolution it has undergone. This exalted state of mind is also experienced by those who listen to profane music, since the harmony and modulation of sound, and the expression given to it by the combination of various instruments, immediately affect the soul of the listener as a whole, without the aid of reflection, and a substantial entity which deliberately fulfils its spontaneous cycle of development is thus created; in a word, the harmonies they hear are unconsciously personified. Any one who makes a deep and careful analysis of his states of consciousness in these circumstances will admit the truth of this assertion.

The ordinary modes of expression respecting music, which are in use not only among uneducated people, but among those who are educated and civilized, display the earlier and innate belief in the mythical representations of this art. The expressions may be often heard: What divine music! What angelic harmony! This song is really seraphic! and the like. Such expressions not only bear witness to the old mythical sentiment, and to the ultimate development of its form, but they also indicate the actual sentiments of the speaker. The personifying power of the human intelligence is such as to recur spontaneously, even in one who has abandoned these ancient illusions, if he surrenders himself for a while to his natural instinct. It has often happened that a man who listens to a melodious and beautiful piece of music is gradually aroused and excited by its sweet power, so as to be carried away into a world of new sensations, in which all our sentiments and affections, our deepest, tenderest, and dearest aspirations blossom afresh in our memory, and are fused into and strengthened by these harmonies; we seem to be transported into ethereal regions, and unconsciously surrender ourselves to their influence. This kind of natural ecstasy is not produced merely by the physiological effects of music on the organism, by the education of our sense of beauty, and of our reminiscences of earlier mythical emotions, but also by the innate impulse which still persists, leading us to idealize and vivify all natural phenomena, and also our own sensations.

But if among the common people, the devout, and occasionally also among people of culture, this highest art is not divested of its mythical environment, which still persists, although in a more ideal form, yet it has followed and still follows the general evolution of human ideas. The art of music was identified with song and with the mythical personality ascribed to it, of which these instruments were the extrinsic and harmonious echo; at first, like the other arts, it, was a religious conception and entity pertaining to the Church, but it gradually assumed a character of its own, was dissociated from the Church, and became a secular art, diverging more and more from the mythical ideas with which it had before been filled. When instruments increased in number, and became more perfect in quality; when harmony, strictly so called, was developed and became more efficient, instrumental music still continued to be the servant of vocal music, and was employed to give emphasis, relief, warmth, and colour to the art of song, which continued to be supreme. Song had its peculiar musical character, and the human voice, alone or in a chorus, might be regarded as the type of instrumental music, rendered more effective by the words which expressed the ideas and sentiments of such songs by harmonizing the various vocal instruments in accordance with their tones and varying timbre. Instrumental music, by the melodious harmony of artificial sounds, had however a vast field peculiar to itself, and an existence independent of the human voice. This was and is, in addition to its release from the bonds of myth, the necessary result of the evolution of this highest art.

Instrumental music, considered in itself, with the symphony as its highest expression, has been declared by a learned writer to be the grandest artistic creation, and the ultimate form of art in which the vast cycle of all things human will find its development. A symphony is an architectural construction of sounds, mobile in form, and not absolutely devoid of a literary meaning. Yet we must not seek in instrumental music for that which it cannot afford, such as the ideas contained in words. Any one must admit the futility of the attempt to give a dramatic interpretation or language to instrumental music, who reads the description attempted by Lenz and other writers of some of Beethoven's sonatas. Instrumental music does not lend itself to these interpretations, since it is an art with an independent existence. We have observed that in its first development it was used as an accompaniment to the voice, or associated with the movements of the body, or with the dance, and consequently had not the independence which was gradually achieved, until it culminated in the symphony. Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, nor to the expression of ideas and sentiments, but in it pure music consists, and it is the very essence of the art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order of ideas and emotions; music is only able to afford musical ideas and sentiments. Instrumental music has its peculiar province as the supreme art which composes its own poems by means of the order, succession, and harmony of sounds; it delights, ravishes, and moves us by exciting the emotional part of our nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas which may be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the powerful means at its disposal, produce effects of which instruments merely used for accompanying the voice are incapable. When instrumental music was released from all servitude to other arts, as well as from all positive sense of religious emotions or mythical and symbolic prejudice, thought was able to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself a special aim and meaning.

We have thus reached the term of our arduous and fatiguing journey. We flatter ourselves that a truth has been gleaned from it, and this conviction is not, due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, but on the conscientious honesty of our researches, combined with a great yet humble love of truth. Others, who are better endowed with genius and learning will judge of our success, and we shall willingly submit to their criticism and correction, so long as they are fair and unprejudiced and only aim at the truth. From animal perception, and the mental and physical fact into which it is to be resolved, we have traced the root which in man's case grows into a mighty tree; the first germ of all the mythical ideas of every people upon earth. The subjectivity of which animals and man are spontaneously conscious in every internal and external phenomenon, the subsequent entification of ideas, even after thought has attained to these more rational forms, are the great factors of myth in all its forms, of superstitions, of religions, and also of science. We have reduced all the normal and abnormal sources of these fanciful ideas to that single source which we have just indicated. Penetrating below the kingdom of man into that of animals, we have there discovered where the germ was formed, and this completes the doctrine of evolution and bears witness to its truth. The evolution of myth went through the regular process, by which it was formulated and simplified, until it was resolved into all the sciences and rational arts, and was thus transformed into a positive science, passing through an ulterior stage of myth and science before it took the definitive form of a purely intellectual conception.

We have seen that the source of myth is the same as that of science, since perception is the condition of both, and the process pursued is identical, although the subject on which the faculty of thought is exercised is changed. Therefore the problem of myth, which includes every achievement of the human understanding, and fills all sociology, is transformed into the problem of civilization. Thought has run its course in the vast evolution from myth to science, which is rendered possible by the permanence and duration of a powerful and vigorous race, and hence came the gradual transition from the illusions which involve the ignorance and servitude of the majority of the people to truth and liberty, since these are released from their earlier wrappings, and the human race rises to a sense of its nobility and highest good. We have considered this evolution as a whole and in its details, and have seen that every achievement of the human understanding passes through the same phases, and reaches the same goal. We have adduced witnesses to confirm our own observation from history and ethnography in general, apart from any bias for a religious and scientific system. We believe that in this way alone there can be any true progress in the science which we have undertaken to consider in this essay.

The result of the inquiry shows that by a slow yet inevitable evolution man rose from his primeval condition of error, illusion, and servitude to his fellow man, to that degree of truth and liberty of which he is capable: he was so made that he necessarily advanced to the grand height which has been attained by the most laborious and intelligent of the human race. He rises higher, and is more sensible of his own dignity, in proportion as he becomes, within the limits of his nature, the artificer of his own greatness and civilization. While many peoples have become extinct, others have, owing to their natural incapacity, remained in a savage and barbarous condition, while others again have attained to a certain amount of civilization, but their mental evolution has stopped short. Our own race, originally, as I believe, Aryo-Semitic, for it is possible that these two powerful branches were derived from a common stock, has persisted without interruption in spite of many adversities and revolutions, and has displayed in successive generations the progress of general civilization, and the goal which man is able to reach in his highest perfection of mind and body, favoured by the physical and biological conditions of climate. In this race, whether with respect to myth and science or to civilization, the theory of evolution has practically been carried out in all its phases and degrees.

Science and freedom were the great factors of civilization, or of progress in every kind of conceptions, sentiments, and social conditions: the first dissolved and destroyed the matrix of myth in which the intelligence was at first enveloped, and liberty, which was wholly due to science, made steady progress a matter of certainty. So that it may be said that the whole web of human history, so far as it consists in civilization or the progress of all good things, of the arts, and of every intellectual and material achievement, was the conflict of science, and her offspring freedom, against ignorance, and the despotism which results from ignorance, under all the social forms in which they are manifested. So that all good and wise men, sincere lovers of the dignity of mankind and of the welfare of society and of the individual, ought to feel a deep reverence and love for these two powers, and to be ready to give up their lives to them. For if-which in the present condition of the world is an impossible hypothesis-they were to fail, the human race would be irretrievably lost, since these are our real liberators from barbarism, which have upheld mankind in the struggle against it, under whatever name these principles have appeared.

I am aware that my theory will meet with many obstinate and zealous opponents in Italy, since I use the simple terms of reason and science, unqualified by other arguments, and I maintain the absolute independence of free thought. Opposition is the more likely since science and freedom have been held responsible for sectarian intemperance, for the disturbances of the lower orders, for the inevitable disasters, the social and intellectual aberrations both of the learned and of the common peoples: science and freedom are held to have repeated the wiles of the serpent in Eden. But I am not uneasy at the thought of such opposition, since the progress of the human race has been owing to the fact that men convinced of the truth took no heed of the superstitious and interested war waged against them, sometimes from ignorance of things in general and of the law which governs civilization, sometimes from honest conviction.

The falsity of the accusation so generally made against science and freedom will appear if we consider that all the benefits we now enjoy, civil, scientific, and material, and which are especially enjoyed by the men who inveigh most strongly against these two factors, are solely derived from science and freedom. Without them we should be in the civil, intellectual, and material condition of the kingdom of Dahomey, and in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive peoples. If the misunderstanding of truth or an imperfect science is injurious, it must not therefore be rejected. Science is the constant and vigilant generator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy of the tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whether it take a religious or secular form. Since sharp instruments are powerful aids to civilization and material prosperity, they are not to be altogether set aside because some persons die miserably by them. As I have always maintained, and now repeat with still stronger conviction, science and freedom, the ever watchful guardians of the human race, are and must always remain the sole remedies for the evils which threaten us. I do not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combined with these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if science were eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitude and ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws of science and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declare science and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be as widely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthy life is open to all men. It is a blasphemy against heaven and earth to presume, in the so-called interest of civil order, to keep the majority of the people in the ignoble servitude of ignorance, and men do not perceive that they thus become ready for any disturbance, and the tools of rogues and agitators.

I hope and pray that reverence for science and freedom may ever increase in Italy. It will be an evil day for her if such reverence be lost, and she will become with every other people in like case a wretched spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to become the laughing-stock of every civilized nation. It will be understood that I do not erect science and liberty into fetishes to be generally adored: they are only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to enable men to practise and not merely to apprehend the truth, which in other words is goodness. Science and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach, persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and others; to exercise every private and public virtue; to claim only what is due to ourselves, while making the needful sacrifice to the common good; to have a respect for humanity, and to venerate knowledge only so far as it is combined with virtue; to attempt in every way to alleviate the miseries of others, to deliver their minds from ignorance and error; to do right for its own sake without coveting rewards in heaven or on earth; to submit to no dictation but that of truth and goodness.

With these sacred objects in view, whatever may be said to the contrary, we shall, in addition to the ineffable fruition of truth for its own sake, ever draw nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time will come when an apparent Utopia shall be actually realized, in accordance with the mode and process of growing civilization. Not by excesses, tumults, and folly, but by unshaken firmness and tenacity we shall promote science and freedom. If this modest essay has done anything to show the necessity of such culture, and in what way science and freedom, and these two factors only, have brought forth fruit throughout the history of the human race, my labour will be richly rewarded, and I may say with satisfaction-dies non perdidi!

* * *

FOOTNOTES

[1] Simrock wrote: "Myth is the earliest form in which the mind of heathen peoples recognized the universe and things divine."

[2] Kumaríla, in reply to the opponents who inveighed against the immorality of his gods, wrote that the fable relates how Prajapati, the lord of creation, violated his own daughter. But what does this signify? Prajapati is one name for the sun, so called because he is the lord of light. His daughter Ushas is the dawn, and in declaring that he fell in love with her, it is only meant that when the sun rises, it follows the dawn. So also, when it is said that Indra seduced Ahalya, we are not to suppose that God committed such a crime, but Indra is the sun, and Ahalya is the night; and so we may say that the night is seduced and conquered by the morning sun. This, and other instances may be found in Max Müller's History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature. Other instances might be given.

[3] Vico writes: "The human mind is naturally inclined to project itself on the object of its external senses." And again, "Common speech ought to bear witness to ancient popular customs, celebrated in times when the language was formed." So again: "Men ignorant of the natural causes of things assign to them their own nature...." In another place: "The physical science of ignorant men is a kind of common metaphysics, by which they assign the causes of things which they do not understand to the will of the gods." Again: "Ignorant and primitive men transform all nature into a vast living body, sentient of passions and affections."

[4] See, among other authorities for the most important phenomena of animals in their natural associations, the profoundly learned work by the well-known A. Espinas: Des sociétés animales: étude de Psychologie comparée, Paris, 2nd edit., 1879.

[5] I stated in my former essay on the fundamental law of the intelligence in the animal kingdom that philosophy was only the research into the psychical manifestations of the animal kingdom, and into those peculiar to man, in connection with the respective organisms in which they act, and with the estimate of their power as cosmic factors in the general harmony of the forces of the world.

[6] See, with respect to the primitive unity of the Aryan and Semitic races, the works of the great philologist, T.G. Ascoli, and others.

[7] "Although it (psychology), still makes some show, yet the old psychology is condemned. Its conditions of existence have disappeared in its new environment. Its methods no longer suffice for the increasing difficulties of the task and the larger requirements of the scientific spirit. It is constrained to live upon its past. Its wisest representatives have vainly attempted a compromise, loudly asserting that facts must be observed, and that a large part should be assigned to experience. Their concessions are unavailing, for however sincerely meant, they are not actually carried out. As soon as they set to work the taste for pure speculation again possesses them. Moreover, no reform of what is radically false can be effectual, and ancient psychology is a bastard conception, doomed to perish from the contradictions which it involves."-Ribot, Psychologie Allemande Contemporaine. Paris, 1879.

[8] Della legge fondamentale della intelligenza nel regno animale. Milano. Dumolard, 1877.

[9] See, among other works on the subject, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks, by Adalbert Kuhn; and Croyances et Légendes de l'Antiquité, by A. Maury.

[10] See Wuttke, Deutscher Volksaberglauber; Tylor, Primitive Culture; Hanusch, Rochholz, and others.

[11] The Worship of Animals and Plants, Part I. Fortnightly Review, 1869. The same argument is generally used; see Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 1865; Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 1870; Herbert Spencer, Fortnightly Review, May, 1870; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturv?lker; Bastian, Mensch in der Geschichte.

[12] See Alger's Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life.

[13] Arbrousset, The Basutos.

[14] Muir, Sanscrit Texts.

[15] Burton, West Africa; Tylor, Primitive Culture.

[16] Pictet, Origines Indo-Eoropéennes.

[17] The Hawa?ans, for example, have only one term for love, friendship, esteem, gratitude, benevolence, etc.-aloha; while they have distinct words for different degrees in a single natural phenomenon. Thus aneane, gentle breeze; matani, wind; pahi, the act of breathing through the mouth; hano, breathing through the nose. See Hale's Polynesian Dictionary. All peoples have slowly attained to typical ideas, and many are even now in process of formation. Thus, the Finns, Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for river, although even the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word to express fingers in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger, etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for pine, birch, ash, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for thumb was afterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for the bay in which they lived came to be used for all bays. See Castren, Vorlesungen über Finnische Mythologie. This original confusion in the definition of scientific ideas, and the successive alternations by which they were re-cast, may be gathered from the analysis of language, and from facts which still occur among uncultured and ignorant people. When the inhabitants of Mallculo saw dogs for the first time, they called them brooàs, or pigs. The inhabitants of Tauna also call the dogs imported thither buga, or pigs. When the inhabitants of a small island in the Mediterranean saw oxen for the first time, they called them horned asses.

[18] See Gaussin's Langue Polynésienne.

[19] This process of the evolution of primitive myth and of fetishes, will be more elaborately considered in Chapter VII., when we come to speak generally of the historic evolution of science and of myth. The repetition is not superfluous, since it is necessary for the complete understanding of my theory.

[20] For example, in ancient Roman mythology the Fons was first adored, then Fontus, the father of all sources, and finally Janus, a solar myth, the father of Fontus. Janus, as the sun, was the producer of all water, which rose by evaporation and fell again in rain.

[21] The Sanscrit word Vayúna, meaning light, was personified in Aurora, and afterwards signified the intelligence, or inward light; a symbolical evolution of myth towards a rational conception. The worship of heaven and earth, united in a common type, is found among all Aryan peoples, and among other races. The Germans worshipped Hertha, the original form of Erde, earth. The Letts worshipped Mahte, or Mahmine, mother earth. So did the Magyars, and the Ostiaks adored the earth under the Slavonic name of Imlia. In China sacrifices to the divine earth Heou-tou and to the heaven Tien were fundamental rites. In North America the Shawnees invoked earth as their great ancestress. The Comanchi adored her as their common mother. In New Zealand heaven and earth are worshipped as Rangi and Papi. (Grey: Polynesian Mythology.) The myth of Apollo, light, sun, heat, combined also with serpent worship, is found modified in a thousand ways among all peoples, savages included. See Schwartz, Urspung der Mythologie; J. Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship; Herbert Spencer, The Origin of Animal Worship; Maury, Religions de la Grèce Antique. They also appeared among the Hebrew and kindred races. We find in the book of Job that God "by His spirit had garnished the heavens; His hand has formed the crooked serpent" (Job xxvi. 13), expressions which are almost Vedic. From celestial phenomena the myth of the Apollo Serpent descended to impersonate the phenomena of earth, of which we have examples in the Greek fable of the Python, and others. Apollo again appears as the god which agitates and dissolves the waters, and the serpent as the winding course of a river, and also as other sources of water. The sun causes the river water to evaporate, which is symbolized by the dragon's conflict with Apollo, and the victory of the latter. The monster, as Forchhammer observes, is formed during the childhood of Apollo, that is, at a time of year when the sun has not attained his full force. When the serpent's body begins to putrefy, the reptile, in mythical language, takes the new name of Python, or he who becomes putrid. The serpent Python, in accordance with the continual transformations of myth, becomes the Hydra of Lerna, and Hercules, another solar myth, is substituted for Apollo. This Hydra is transformed again into Typhon, a fresh personification of the forces of nature and of the atmosphere, conspiring against heaven. The seven-headed Hydra reappears in another form in the Rig-Veda, where the rain cloud is compared to the serpent whom head rests on seven springs. I have Max Müller's authority for the vigorous alternation of myths in those primitive ages, their extreme mobility, their resolution into vivified physical forms, and the slight consistency of specific types. Aurora and Night are often substituted for each other, and although in the original conception of the birth of Apollo and Artemis they were certainly both considered to be children of the night, Leto and Latona, yet even so the place or island where, according to the fable, they were born is Ortygia or Delos, or sometimes called by both names at once. Delos means the land of light, but Ortygia, although the name is given to different places, is Aurora, or the land of Aurora. (Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie.) Ortygia is derived from Ortyx, a quail. In Sanscrit the quail is called Vartika, the bird which returns, because it is one of the birds to return in spring. This name Vartika is given in the Veda to one of the numerous beings which are set free and brought to life by the Ascini, that is, by day and night, and Vartika is one of several names for the dawn. Vartika's story is very short: she was swallowed, but delivered by the Asvini. She was drawn by them from the wolf's throat. Hence we have Ortygia, the land of quails, the east; the isle which issued miraculously from the floods, where Leto begot his solar twins, and also Ortygia, a name given to Artemis, the daughter of Leto, because she was born in the east. The Druh, crimes and darkness may in their subsequent development be contrasted with these ancient myths. Aurora is represented by them as driving away the odious gloom of the Druh. The powers of darkness, the Druh and Rakshas were called Adeva, and the shining gods were called Adruh. Kuhn believes that the German words trügen and lügen are derived from Druh.

[22] Michel Bréal: Hercule et Cacus.

[23] We are not here concerned with a priori metaphysics, but with the psychical and organic dispositions slowly produced by evolution and by consciousness in its cosmic relations. The organic nature of these reflex phenomena is due to the fact that in the long course of ages their exercise has, through physiological evolution, first become voluntary or spontaneous, and then unconscious.

[24] The double meaning is projected into objects. The primitive meaning of dexter was fitting, capable, and it was then applied to the side of the material body. Sansc. dacs, to hasten. Ascoli, Studi linquistici.

[25] A careful reader will not hold this repetition to be unnecessary, since it explains from another point of view the fundamental fact of perception and its results. It is here considered with reference to the three elements which constitute this fact.

[26] This great truth was observed by Vico, the most advanced of modern psychologists, in his views of primitive psychology.

[27] In Chinese, for example, and in many other languages, there are many words to indicate the tail of a fish, a bird, etc., but no word for a tail in general. Even an intelligent savage does not accurately distinguish between the subjective and the objective, between the imaginary and the real; this is the most important result of a scientific education. Tylor, Primitive Culture; Steinhauser, Religion des Nègres; Brinton, Myths of the World. The objective form of conceptions and emotions, which are subsequently transformed into spirits, are found among the superior races of our day, in the Christian hierarchy of angels, in popular tradition, and in spiritualism.

[28] Fetishism may be observed in the civilized Aryan races, but still more plainly among the Chinese and cognate races, among the Peruvians, Mexicans, etc. Castren, in his Finnische Mythologie says that we find extraordinary instances of the lowest stage of fetishism among the Samoeides, who directly worship all natural objects in themselves. The Finns, who are comparatively civilized heathens, have attained to a higher phase of belief. But numerous examples, in every part of the world, will occur to the intelligent reader.

[29] Numen really means the manifestation of power, from nuere. Varro makes Attius say: "Multis nomen vestrum numenque ciendo." In Lucretius we have mentis numen, and also Numen Augusti. An inscription discovered by Mommsen runs as follows:

"P. Florus, etc. Dianae numine jussu posuit."

[30] The illustrious Du Bois Reymond delivered a lecture a few years ago, in which he made it clear that the Semitic idea of one Almighty God led to the later and modern conception of the unity of forces and the rational interpretation of the system of the universe. This important testimony of so able a man confirms the theory set forth some years ago in the work of which I have reproduced a part in the text.

[31] Some Jewish Christians of the Semitic race took refuge in a district of Syria, and retained their primitive faith without further development, under the name of Nazarenes or Ebionites. In the fourth century, Epiphanius and Jerome found these primitive Christians constant to the old dogma, while Aryan Christianity had made gigantic strides, both in its ideas and social organization. Among the Semites, even when they have partially accepted the dogma, it was and is unproductive.

[32] Aristot., De anima; Cic., De legibus; Diog., Lae.

[33] A new thought entered my mind, whence others, differing from the first, arose; and as I roamed from one to another I was tempted to close my eyes, and thought was changed into a dream.

[34] See the theory by Lotze of local signs in the formation of the idea of space, completed and modified by Wundt and others.

[35] Sometimes the name of a person, or of some part of the human form, has been bestowed on a natural object without reference to their analogy, but in this case the epithet has the converse effect of leading us to imagine that it possesses the features or limbs of the human form. And this is of equal value for our present inquiry.

[36] While these sheets were passing through the press, I was informed of Berg's work on the Enjoyment of Music. ("Die Lust an der Musik." Berlin, 1879.) Berg, who is a realist, inquires what is the source of the pleasure we experience from the regular succession of sounds, which he holds to be the primary essence of music. He finds the cause in some of Darwin's theories and researches. Darwin observes that the epoch of song coincides with that of love in the case of singing animals, birds, insects, and some mammals; and from this Berg concludes that primitive men, or rather anthropoids, made use of the voice to attract the attention of females. Hence a relation was established between singing and the sentiments of love, rivalry, and pleasure; this relation was indissolubly fused into the nature by heredity, and it persisted even after singing ceased to be excited by its primitive cause. This applies to the general sense of pleasure in music. We have next to inquire why the ear prefers certain sounds to others, certain combinations to others, etc. Berg holds that it depends on negative causes, that the ear does not select the most pleasing but the least painful sounds. He relies on Helmholtz's fundamental theory of sounds. It seems to me that although Helmholtz's theory is true, that of Berg is erroneous, since he is quite unable to prove his assertion that the effect produced by music is a negative pleasure. Moreover, the Darwinian observations to which he traces the origin of the enjoyment of music, not only rely on an arbitrary hypothesis, but do not explain why males should derive any advantage from their voice, nor what pleasure and satisfaction females find in it. And this, as Reinach justly observes in the Revue Philosophique, is the point on which the problem turns.

Clark has recently suggested in the American Naturalist another theory worthy of consideration. A musical sound is never simple but complex; it consists of one fundamental sound, and of other harmonic sounds at close intervals; the first and most perceptible intervals are the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Each of the simple sounds which, taken together, constitute the whole sound, causes the vibration of a special group of fibres in the auditory nerve. This fact, often repeated, generates a kind of organic predisposition which is confirmed by heredity. If from any cause one of these groups is set in motion, the other groups will have a tendency to vibrate. Therefore, if a singing animal, weary of always repeating the same note, wishes to vary its height, he will naturally choose one of the harmonic sounds of the first. The ultimate origin of the law of melody in organized beings is therefore only the simultaneous harmony, realized in sounds, of inorganic nature. This theory is confirmed by the analysis which has been often made of the song of some birds: the intervals employed by these are generally the same as those on which human melody is founded, the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Reinach, however, observes that Beethoven, who in his Pastoral Symphony has reproduced the song of the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the quail, makes their melodies to differ from those assigned to them by Clark.

The method and direction of the theories proposed by these authors are excellent; but I do not believe that they have discovered the real origin of the sense of music and dancing. I think that the suggestion given in the text, although it requires development, is nearer the truth. Consciousness of the great law by which things exist in a classified form seems to me to be the cause of the sense of graduated pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all the arts.

[37] See Beauquier's "Philosophie de la Musique."

[38] Serv. on the ?neid. What the oracles sang was termed carmentis: the seers used to be called carmentes, and the books in which their sayings were inscribed were termed carmentorios.

[39] See Girard de Rialle: Mythologie Comparée. Vol. I. Paris, 1878. A valuable and learned work.

[40] The intense character of the worship of groves in Italy appears from Quintilianus, who says, in speaking of Ennius: "Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus."

* * *

INDEX.

A priori ideas, their definition, 7, 8;

the source of myth, 9

Abstraction, unconscious and explicit, 138;

its degrees, 139-150

?schylus, 110

Alger on the doctrine of a future life, 74

Animals and man, their intimate connection, 19;

their embryogenic evolution, 19;

their complete identity, 22;

their self-consciousness, 50;

the projection of themselves on other

animals and phenomena, 51, 53, 54, 55, 161;

experiments on, 60-64

Animation of extrinsic phenomena, 28, 58-65, 111, 125-128

Anthropomorphism, 90, 97, 106, 181

Apprehension, act of, 116;

by animals, 118;

psychical law of, 119;

three elements of, 120;

by a man, 122-127

Arbrousset on the Basutos, 75

Aristotle, his teaching, 231

Aryan family, its primitive unity with the Semitic, 31;

its mythology, 179, 197, 219;

its conception of Christianity, 184-192

Bridgman, Laura, 207

Christ, the apotheosis of man, 187

Christianity, its diffusion, 178-192;

its anthropomorphism, 181

Dead, the worship of, 15

Demoniacal beliefs, 77, 78, 79

Descartes, 234

Doric school, 211

Dreams, 253, 259, 270

Entification, the term, 153;

of speech, 310

Eleatic school, 211

Epicarmos, 109

Evolution, of monotheism, 151;

of the faculties of myth and science, 157;

of language, 201-204;

of writing, 209;

of music, 295-303

Experiments on animals, 60-64

Fetish worship, 78,94-97, 163, 168, 291, 311

Finns, their mythology, 101

Galileo, 235

Greece, her philosophy, 210-217;

her mythology, 99, 130

Hallucinations, 272, 281

Hawa?ans, their concrete language, 86

Ionic school, 210

Kant, 233

M'Lennan on the worship of plants and animals, 73

Man, his intimate connection with animals, 19-23;

his psychical force, 26;

estimated according to his absolute value, 35;

his power of reflection, 23, 52, 163;

his connection with the universal system, 36

Mannhardt, his Deutsche Mythologie, 100

Max Müller, his theory of myth, 11, 99

Mara, incubus, 77

Monotheism, not the first intuition of man, 104

its evolution, 151

Multiplicity of souls, believed by various races, 165

Myth, the spontaneous form of human intelligence, 1;

its persistence, 3, 33, 136;

its germ interchangeable with that of science, 9, 131, 132;

its problem unsolved, 12;

its gradual disappearance, 33;

its constant forms, 40;

its origin in reflex power, 91;

its second form, 95;

its evolution into science, 113;

its various stages, 160-174

Mythology, Indian, 10;

Finnish, 101;

Vedic, Greek, and Latin, 130, 198;

its historic results, 175-192;

Aryan, 179, 196, 219;

Pagan, 184

Music, its evolution, 295-305

New Zealand, original meaning of words, 89

Perception, primitive human, 69;

identical in man and in animals, 133;

the product and cause of myth, 153

Personification, by animals, 66;

by man, 80;

of internal perceptions, 81;

of homologous types, 81;

of specific types, 84;

Pindar, 199

Platonic school, 220-230

Polynesian language, 89

Polytheism, its origin, 98

Pythagorean school, 214-217

Reflex power in man, 23, 52;

its slow growth, 163

Ribot, his Psychologie Allemande, 39

Roman mythology, 95

Sanscrit roots, 201

Science, a factor of intellectual life, 4;

its germ interchangeable with myth, 9, 131, 132;

as a whole, revealed in its several parts, 35;

its effect on myth, 112, 194

Semitic idea, 177;

race, 191

Social life based on the order of nature, 38

Societies, the genesis of, 30

Sociology, its foundation in the study of myth, 41, 45

Sophocles, 110

Spencer, his Sociology, 14

Tahiti, 89

Tasmanians, their customs, 42-44

Thales, his teaching, 212

Transmigration of souls, 166

Tylor on Primitive Culture, 14, 16;

his theory of animism, 16

Veda, the personification of phenomena, 71;

Vedic mythology, 76, 98, 130, 219;

Vedic hymn, 217

Victory of the natural sciences, 237

Zeller on monotheism, 108

THE END.