religions, but also of science, as it is revealed in the philosophic
systems of every age, in the partial or complete discoveries of genius,
and in the great and stupendous achievements of modern experimental
science. It would require a long treatise to fill so wide a field, which
we must restrict to the limits of a few pages. Since our readers are now
generally acquainted with the course pursued by human thought, and with
the progress of peoples, but few landmarks or formulas are necessary to
enable them to clear away obscurity and estimate facts at their just
value, so as to understand what civilization and science have to do with
the evolution of myth, and of science itself.

A great corollary also ensues from studies undertaken with the aid of
sociology, that is, the genesis, form, and gradual evolution of human
societies. These vary in character, in attitude, in power, form and
duration, with the different characters of races, and thus fulfil in
various ways the cycle of myth and science of which they are capable. It
would indeed be difficult to attain to a clear and adequate conception
of the universal evolution of myth and science, but for the existence of
a privileged race distinguished for its psychical and organic power,
which from its beginning until now, although subject to many partial
eclipses, has on the whole maintained its position in the world so as to
present to us the long historical drama of its evolutions. Other races,
peoples, or tribes have disappeared in the struggle for existence, or
have remained essentially incapable of further progress even in a
relatively inferior degree, so as to afford no aid in following the
successive development of myth and science; while the Aryan family, a
race to which I believe that the Semitic originally belonged,[6]
furnishes the unbroken sequence of events and the stages of such complex
evolution. Nor certainly is there any signs of the disappearance of this
race, since every day its intellectual and territorial achievements,