since the mind and consciousness and intrinsic faculty of the
intelligence are identical. And when once these ultimate types were
formed, the same necessity impelled their animation and personification
in anthropomorphic images. Of this we have abundant instances in all the
traditions of nearly all the peoples of the world.




CHAPTER IV.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.


In the preceding chapters we have considered and, as we hope,
demonstrated the origin and genesis of myth in general, an origin and
genesis which had their first impulses and causes in the animal kingdom
as a whole, since these beginnings were the necessary result of the
psychical exercise of the perception and intelligence. We next
discovered in man, as he issued from a simply animal condition and
attained the power of reflection, the origin of the special myth or
fetish, which was a higher evolution of that which is proper to animals;
hence the origin of the specific myth was altogether anthropomorphic,
whether physical or moral; and hence came also the development and
ramification of all mythologies, and of universal polytheism.

It may be seen from the reality and truth of this theory how much
mistaken those men are who hold, owing to their religious prejudices or
to their systems of logic and history, that monotheism was the first
intuition of man, or at any rate of the privileged races. This is