Even among ourselves, in the midst of the most civilized European nations of modern times, how much mythology still lingers in the lower classes, both in cities and the country.  It flourishes in proportion to the ignorance and want of culture of the people, as those know who have really studied the intellectual conditions of all classes in our time.[10]

In the child just beginning to walk, to move freely, and to talk, and even at a later age, in cases in which the reflective faculty is weak, and when it approximates more to the psychical and organic conditions of animals, such a projection of self and personification of surrounding objects is evident to all.  For this reason a child transforms all which it seizes or plays with into a person or animal, and when alone with them it talks, shouts, and laughs, as if such objects could really feel, act, and obey; in short, as if they were real persons or animals.  So strong is the childish instinct, or, as I might say, the law of its being to project and transfuse itself into objects, that it is apt to speak of itself in the third person.  A child seldom says, “I will,” or “I am hungry,” but “Louis wants,” “Louis is hungry,” or whatever his name may be.  This phenomenon reappears in the second childhood of old age, when the power of reflection is weakened, and there is a reversion to the primitive animal condition.  The same phenomenon also occurs in idiots, in whom there is a morbid defect of reflective power.

This fact of the personification of the objects of perception is therefore evident and constant in the primitive man of civilized races, in the barbarous condition of modern savages, in the ignorant multitude, and in children—­intellectual conditions which approach most closely to the condition of animals—­and conversely it is plain that it belongs in the highest degree to the intellectual life of animals, and that myth, into which such a personification and animation of things must be resolved, has its original and innate necessity in animal life.  We think that this is a new scientific fact, which throws much light on the history of human thought.

M’Lennan observes, “Some explanation of the phenomena of life a man must feign for himself; and to judge from the universality of it, the simplest hypothesis, and the first to occur to men, seems to have been that natural phenomena are ascribable to the presence in animals, plants, and things, and in the forces of nature, of such spirits prompting to action as men are conscious they themselves possess."[11] This fact, indicated by M’Lennan and by all who have devoted themselves to anthropological researches with respect to the origin of religions, and of myth in general, is now recognized as certain; but it seems to me that the interpretation and explanation of it are altogether implete.  They suppose it to be simply the effect of psychological laws as far as man is concerned, whereas we have shown that it forms, in the ultimate causes by which it is produced, the very essence of animal perception.  They ascribe it to man as a rational hypothesis to explain the primitive order of things, whereas it is a spontaneous and primary intuition of the animal intelligence.