Greeks and Latins, how often the typical myths of Agni, Varuna, Indra,
Asvini, and Maruti; and again, of Zeus, Here, Athene, and the rest, are
changed and reconstituted. This shows how the same human faculty, the
same elements which constitute the perception and primitive
personification of external phenomena, are those also of the specific
and intrinsic phenomena. Just as man, in the primitive conditions of his
existence, by the psychical and physiological law of his perception,
which he has in common with animals, transformed the world and its
phenomena into subjects endowed with conscious life; so by his psychical
faculty of reduplication he personified the mental images of these same
subjects as fetishes and myths; and subsequently invested them with more
distinctly human forms, and also with specific types of humanity. The
same faculty and conditions of animal perception afterwards become the
true and only causes of the superstitions, mythologies, and religions of
mankind. The law of continuity is unbroken, and this is a certain
confirmation of the truth.

This faculty, inward function, and process of mythical and symbolic
facts led in course of time to the evolution and beginning of knowledge,
which is first empirical and then rational. Therefore, we must repeat,
the extrinsic and intrinsic perception, the specification of types, and
their modification into a unity which was always becoming more
comprehensive, are the conditions and method of science itself, which is
only developed by means of this faculty. Hence the elements and
intrinsic logical form of science are identical with those through which
mythical representations and the inward life of the human intelligence
are developed.[25]

Besides, as we have before remarked, the empirical knowledge of things
begins and is perfected in the superstitions of fetishes and myths.