Myth and Science - An Essay by Tito Vignoli
page 67 of 265 (25%)
page 67 of 265 (25%)
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process, since animals were prior to man, temporally and logically, and
external idols were formed before those which were internal and peculiar to himself.[17] It is true that man unconsciously, that is, without deliberation, not only animates external things and their specific types, but he also, by an exercise of memory, animates the psychical image of these special perceptions. If, for example, the primitive man personifies a stream of water which he has seen to issue from a fissure of the rocks, and ascribes to it voluntary and intentional motion, he also animates the image which reappears in his sphere of thought, and conceives it to have a real existence. He does not merely believe it to be a psychical and what may be called a photographic repetition of the thing, but rather to have an actual, concrete existence. Thus, among all ancient peoples, and among many which are still in the condition of savages, the _shadow_ of a man's body is held to be substantial with it, and, as it were, his inmost essence, and for this reason the spirits of the dead were in several languages called shades. Doubtless it is difficult for us to picture to ourselves the psychical conditions of primitive men, at a time when the objects of perception and the apprehension of things were presented by an effort of memory to the mind as if they were actual and living things, yet such conditions are not hypothetical but really existed, as any one may ascertain for himself who is able to realize that primitive state of the mind, and we have said enough to show that such was its necessary condition. The fact becomes more intelligible when we consider man, and especially the uneducated man, under the exciting influence of any passion, and how at such times he will, even when alone, gesticulate, speak aloud, and |
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