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] Kumarila, 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 Mueller’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 societes animales:  etude de Psychologie comparee, 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.