It must not be supposed that such a vast and profound incarnation of myth in social facts is peculiar to the primitive ages; it persists and is maintained in all the historical phases of civilization, even of the higher races, although sometimes in a dormant form. Even in our days, any one who considers our modes of society, the organism, customs, ceremonies, and manifold and complex institutions of modern life, will readily see that religious influences and their rites initiate, sanction, and accompany every individual and social fact, although civil and religious societies are becoming ever more distinct.
Since, therefore, myth is a constant form of sociology, completely invests it, and accompanies and animates its transmutations down to our days, everyone must recognize the necessity of this study in order to understand and explain the true history of thought and of sociology.
The energy, the power, the physical and intellectual worth of a people are revealed as a whole in its mythical products, whether in the quality and greatness of their beliefs, in the greater or less definiteness of their system, or in their development into more rational notions; and from the complex whole we can estimate the worth of their civilization. So that, where other extrinsic testimony is wanting, the study of these primitive creations will reveal to us their psychological worth. This is the origin of the comparative psychology of peoples, a most fruitful science, which not only teaches us to rank the various families of peoples according to their relative value, but it is of great use in making man acquainted with himself, and with psychology in general.
In fact, modern psychology can only advance by means of observation and experiment, which constitute it one of the natural sciences; and this is abundantly proved by the modern English schools, and the experimental school in Germany. Yet observation of the states of consciousness taken alone is defective, unless it is enlarged by the comparative examination of a greater number of subjects; nor must ethnical peculiarities be passed over, and it is precisely these which are included in the comparative psychology of peoples. The large amount of results, their infinite variety, and at the same time a certain uniformity in their modes of beginning, of their development, and of their place in the universe, give a splendid illustration of the innate exercise of human thought; the likenesses as well as the contrasts are instructive as to its real nature.