This conception of a priori is, it must be admitted, very different from that of transcendental philosophers, who seek to prove either that an independent artificer has not only produced the various organic forms in their present complexity, and has specially provided the spiritual subject with its category of thought, independently of all experience; or else they assert the intrinsic existence of such forms in the spirit, from the beginning of time.

In this way, as we have already said, we must not only collect the facts which abound in history and ethnology respecting the general teaching of myths, but we must also observe introspectively, and by pursuing the experimental method, the primitive and fundamental psychical facts, so as to discover the a priori conditions of the myth itself.  We must ascertain, from a careful psychological examination, the absolutely primitive origin of all mythical representations, and how these are in their turn the actual historical result of the same conditions, as they existed prior to their manifestations.

It must not be supposed that in this primary fact, and in these a priori psychical and organic conditions, we shall find the ulterior cause of the various and manifold forms, or of the successive evolution of myths.  This would be a grave mistake, equal to that of transcendentalists, who imagine that the laws which actually exist, and the order of cosmic and historic phenomena may be determined from the independent exercise of their own thoughts, although such laws and order can only be traced and discovered by experience and the observation of facts.  In the a priori conditions of the psychical and organic nature, and in the elementary acts which outwardly result from them, we shall only trace the origin and necessary source of myth, not the variable forms of its successive evolution.

The ulterior form, so far as the substance of the myth and its various modifications are concerned, is in great part the reflex work of man; its aspect changes in accordance with the attitude and force of the faculties of individuals, peoples and races, and it depends on an energy to which the a priori conditions, as we have just defined them, do not strictly apply so far as the determinate form is concerned.

It is precisely in this ulterior work of the evolution of myth, which in the elementary fact of its primitive essence had its origin in the predisposition of mind and body, that we may discern the interchangeable germ and origin both of myth and science.  If, therefore; the rationale of science cannot be found in the general form of mythical representations, the matter which serves to exercise the mind; yet the mode of its exercise, and of the logical and psychical faculty, and the spontaneous method pursued, are identical:  the two mythical and scientific faculties are, in fact, considered in themselves, fused into one.

As far as the origin of myth is concerned, the mode of considering its evolution, and its organic connection with science, we differ from other mythologists as to the sources to which they trace this immense elaboration of the human intelligence.  We may be mistaken, but we are in any case entering on unexplored ways, and if we go astray, the boldness of an enterprise which we undertake with diffidence pleads for indulgence.