men are gradually emancipated from them, as they become able to think
more rationally, thus finding redemption, truth, and liberty by means of
science.

We now propose to unite in a single conception this necessity of our
intellect, at once the product and the cause of perception, and of the
spontaneous vivification of phenomena; since the law may be expressed in
a compendious form.

Both in physical, moral, and intellectual myths, and in the substantial
entity infused into abstract conceptions, the external or internal
phenomenon immediately generates the idea of a subject, since it is a
fundamental law of our mind to _entify (entificare)_ every object of our
perception, emotion, or consciousness. If any one should object to this
neologism, in spite of its adequate expression of the original function
of the intelligence, we reply that the use and necessity of the verb
_identify_ have been accepted in the neo-Latin tongues, and therefore
_entify_, which has the same root and form, can hardly be rejected,
since it, like the former, signifies an actual process of thought. We
therefore adopt the word without scruple, since new words have often
been coined before when they were required to express new conceptions
and theories.

The primitive and constant act of all animals, including man, when
external or internal sensation has opened to them the immense field of
nature, is that of _entifying_ the object of sensation, or, in a word,
all phenomena. Such _entification_ is the result of spontaneous
necessity, by the law of the intrinsic faculty of perception; it is not
the result of reflection, but it is immediate, innate, and inevitable.
It is an eternal law of the evolution of the intelligence, like all