We have shown what was the origin of the fetish and of myth, and how it arose from the impersonation of all natural objects and phenomena, which are transformed into living subjects.  This shows that the faculty, elements, and results of the apprehension are identical in man and animals.  If man created the fetish which in process of differentiation generated all kinds of myths, he, like animals, was directly and implicitly conscious of the living subject, and in it of an active cause.  Although in man the fetish retains its personality in his memory, and becomes the cause of hopes and fears throughout his life, while its effect on the animal is only transitory, and at the actual moment of perception; yet this does not invalidate the truth of the principle, nor prove that their impulses and genesis are not identical.  Thus the analysis of the faculty of apprehension confirms and explains the proof before given of the origin of myths, and explains their causes.

We have all, however unaccustomed to give account of our acts and functions, found ourselves in circumstances which produced the momentary personification of natural objects.  The sight of some extraordinary phenomenon produces a vague sense of some one acting with a given purpose, and hence of an actual fetish.  A man will sometimes address the things which surround him, and act towards them as if they possessed consciousness and will.  Children, who are still without experience and reflection, will often invest external objects with solidity.

A child, as soon as it can guide its own motions, will grasp anything which is pliant and yielding as firmly as if it were solid, thus implicitly judging the thing from its appearance.  In the same way, a child confidently relies on any support, however weak and insufficient it may be, arguing as usual from the appearance to the thing itself.  Nor must it be said that experience is necessary to correct these errors.  The implicit faculty of apprehension is prior to experience, which only becomes possible by means of this faculty.  The elements of this faculty unconsciously fulfil and pursue their office in the child, aided by the reflex motions which are cerebro-spinal and peripheral, as they have been produced and organized in the species by evolution; but they, as well as these reflex physiological motions, are prior to the same temporary experience.[23]

Thus the new-born infant sucks the milk which serves for its nourishment from its mother’s breast; it is impossible in this case that such a class of elements should not be spontaneously developed; the child feels the nipple and adapts its mouth and mode of breathing to it, while pressing the breast with its hands to express the milk.  If much in this operation might be ascribed to reflex movements, yet in association with them, supplementing and rendering them possible, there is an implicit perception of the external phenomenon through the sense of touch, and he becomes conscious of the object, and of its causative power; such power consisting in this case of its capacity to satisfy his wants.  In short, all animals, man included, in every act of communication with the world, exercise this faculty by means of the three elements which constitute it.  If we consider the actions of infants, and still more of all young animals, this truth will be vividly displayed.