Myth and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Myth and Science.

Myth and Science eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 278 pages of information about Myth and Science.

In my book on the fundamental law of intelligence in the animal kingdom, I attempted to show this great truth, and to formulate a principle common to all animals in the exercise of their psychical emotions, by setting forth the essential elements as they are generally displayed.  I think I was not far from the truth in establishing a law which seems indubitable; although, while some men whose opinion is worthy of esteem have accepted it, other very competent judges have objected to some parts of my theory, but without convincing me of error.  I repeat my conclusions here, since they are necessary to the theory of the genesis of myth, which I propose to explain in this work.  I hold the complete identity between man and animals to be established by the adequate consideration of the faculties, the psychical elements of consciousness and intelligence, and the mode of their spontaneous exercise; and I believe the superiority of man to consist not so much in new faculties as in the reflex effect upon themselves of those he possesses in common with the animals.  The old adage confirms this theory:  Homo duplex.

No one now doubts that animals feel, hear, remember, and the like, while man is able to exercise his will, to feel, to remember, deliberately to consider all his actions and functions, because he not only possesses the direct and spontaneous intuition with respect to himself and things in general which he has in common with animals, but he has an intuitive knowledge of that intuition itself, and in this way he multiplies within himself the exercise of his whole psychical life.  We find the ultimate cause of this return upon himself, and his intuition of things, in his deliberate will, which does not only immediately command his body and his manifold relative functions, but also the complex range of his psychical acts.  This fact, which as I believe has not been observed before, is of great importance.  It is manifest that the difference between man and other animals does not consist in the diversity or discrepancy of the elements of the intelligence, but in its reflex action on itself; an action which certainly has its conditions fixed by the organic and physiological composition of the brain.

If it should be said that the traditional opinion of science, as well as the general sentence of mankind, have always regarded reflection as the basis of the difference between animals and man, so that there is no novelty in our principle, the assertion is erroneous.  Reflection, as an inward psychical fact, has certainly been observed by psychologists and philosophers in all civilized times, and instinctively by every one; nor could it be otherwise, since reflection is one of the facts most evident to human consciousness.  But although the fact, or the intrinsic and characteristic action of human thought has been observed, and has often been discussed and analyzed in some of its elements, yet its genesis has not been declared, nor has its

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Myth and Science from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.