We have now carefully considered the acts and dynamic activity of human
thought. We have seen in what animal and human perception consists, and
how it acts; how the subjects developed in our imagination are gradually
united in specific forms or types, and are arranged in a system, whence
follow the first symbolic representations of science. But our task is
not yet accomplished, since much more is needed to display all that this
fact involves, so that we may fully understand the inward evolution of
myth and science in history and in our race, and not merely in the
individual man.

The faculty and its effects, which could primarily be reduced to this
unique and indivisible fact, do not exclusively belong to primordial
ages, but go on through all time, our own included, while assuming
divers forms and fresh aspects as the faculty of the intellect becomes
more developed. It is an indisputable truth that the influence of myth
on thought and fancy, a survival from prehistoric ages, still prevails
among the common people both in town and country, among those who are
uncultivated, and even in the higher classes conventionally called good
society.

It is more difficult to trace the occasional existence of the same
influence among those who think rationally and investigate the laws of
the universe while acquainted with the earlier mythical process; and
yet, as we shall show, the greatest and most able men are not unfettered
by it. Myth has hitherto been regarded as a secondary and fanciful
product of the psychical human faculty, due to extrinsic impulses,
rather than as the primitive and intrinsic necessity of the
intelligence--a necessity which has its roots in animal intelligence
itself; and the unique fact which generates both myth and science has