certainly is there any signs of the disappearance of this race, since every day its intellectual and territorial achievements, added to the instruments of a powerful material civilization, invigorate its strength and presage its indefinite duration in forms we are not able to foresee, unless indeed fatal astral or telluric catastrophes should hinder its progress or bring it to an end.

If we compare this race with itself at different epochs, and in the many different peoples into which it was severed, and if at the same time we confront it with the types of other peoples at various stages, from the rudest to the most civilized, it becomes possible to form a clear conception of the genesis and successive evolution of myth and science of which the human race is capable, and in this way we may understand the general law which governs such evolutions. This study also teaches us that humanity, whether we agree with monogenists or poligenists, is physically and psychically in all respects the same in its essential elements; in all peoples without distinction, as ethnography teaches us, the origin and genesis of myth, the implicit exercise of reason and its development, are, at all events up to a given point, absolutely identical. All start from the same manifestations and mythical creations, and these are afterwards developed according to the logical or scientific canons of thought, which are applied to their classification. Both among fetish-worshippers and polytheists there was a tendency towards monotheism, although sometimes it could only be discerned in a vague and confused manner.

If myth is, as I have said, to be considered from another point of view, as the spontaneous effect of the intelligence, and a necessary function, relatively to the primary act from which it begins, it might appear that myth would never cease to be, and that humanity, even as it is represented by the elect and enduring race, must always remain in this original illusion; so that every man would have to begin again for himself in his own peculiar cycle of myth. But history shows that this is not the case, and that the mythic faculty gradually wanes and becomes weaker, even if it does not altogether cease to exist, a result which would not occur if myth were a necessary function of the intelligence.

I shall presently reply to such an objection; in the meanwhile, regarding the question superficially, I need only say that if the mythic faculty diminishes in one direction, and with respect to some forms and their corresponding substance, it has certainly not ceased to appear in another, exerting itself, as we shall see, in other forms and other substance. The common people, both urban and rural, do for the most part adhere to primitive and very ancient superstitions, as every one may know from his own experience, as well as from the writings of well known authors of nearly all the civilized nations of Europe. In fact, every man in the early period of his life constructs a heaven for himself, as those who study the ways of children are aware, and this has given rise to a new science of infantine psychology, set forth in the writings of Taine, Darwin, Perez, and others.

We also propose to show that the scientific faculty, which gathers strength and is developed from the mythical faculty, is in the first instance identical and confounded with it, but that science corrects and controls the primitive function, just as reason corrects and explains the errors and illusions of the senses; so that the truly rational man issues, like the f[oe]tus from its embryonic covering, out of its primitive mythical covering into the light of truth.

Every one must perceive that the study of the origin of myths has an important bearing on the clear and positive knowledge of mankind. In modern times biological science, such as ethnography and anthropology, have not only thrown much light on the genesis of organic bodies, of animals and of man, but they have afforded very important aid to psychological research, on account of the close connection between psychology and the general physical laws of the world. The mythical faculty in man, and its results, have received much light from these sciences, since the modifications induced in individuals and in peoples by many natural causes, organic or climatological, are based upon their physiological conditions. In the first chapters of Herbert Spencer's book on Sociology, there is a masterly investigation into the changes produced by climate, with its accidents and organic products, on the peculiar temperament of different peoples and races, and we must refer our readers to his admirable summary.

We avail ourselves of the aid afforded by all these branches of science in order to comprehend the true nature of man, and the place which he really occupies in the animal creation. Man should be estimated as all other products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to his absolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical and organic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there be in the universe a distinction of modes, there is no absolute separation of laws and phenomena.

The various branches of science are only subjective necessities, consequent on the successive and gradual order of our comprehension of things; they are classifications of method, with no special reference to the undivided personality of nature. All are parts of the whole, and so also the whole is revealed in its several parts. They come to be in thought, as well as in reality, reciprocal conditions of each other; and he who is able to solve the problem of the world correctly in a simple movement of an atom, would be able to explain all laws and all phenomena, since every thing may ultimately be reduced to this movement. It is precisely this which has been attained by certain laws, so that the study of man must not be dissociated from this conception. It is necessary to regard him as a product of the forces of nature, with which he has certain properties in common. Although man may appear to be a special and peculiar subject, yet he is connected with the universal system in which he lives by the elements, phenomena, and forces of which he consists.

It must not be supposed, as it is asserted with ever-increasing clamour, that such a method and theory can ever destroy the civilized basis of society, and the morality and dignity with which it should be informed, as if we were again reducing man to the condition of a beast. Such an outcry is in itself a plain and striking proof that we have not yet emerged from the mythical age of thought, since it is precisely a mythical belief which prompts this angry protest against the noble and independent research after truth.

It is impossible that the results of positive and rational science should in any way destroy the necessary conditions of civilized life and of the high standard of goodness which should form, elevate, and bring it to perfection. We must, however, remember that it was not rational science, nor the ethics of law, which established the a priori rules of a just and free society, but the necessities of society itself led to the a posteriori formulation of laws. Theoretic science subsequently explained these laws, and perfected their form and organism, infusing into them a nobler purpose; but it was the necessities of nature which first dictated the balance, system, and harmony of the alliances and associations of materials and phenomena as