action on the world lost almost all trace of arbitrary power and of
their former versatility and caprice. The superstition of polytheism
remained, but it had an inward tendency to more rational conceptions and
principles.

From this brief notice, as well as from the remarks which preceded it,
it appears how the evolution of myth, from its beginning and in its
historic course, led to a more perfect, although empiric acquaintance
with the world, and with the moral principles and civilization of
peoples. The logical faculty by which the development is gradually
effected is the same by which from another point of view science becomes
possible.

We have clearly demonstrated the indisputable fact that the absolute
condition of intrinsic animal perception, and consequently of the
primary perception of man, was the animation and vivification of the
things and phenomena perceived. This primary acquaintance with things
depended on their spontaneous resolution into active and personal
subjects. Nor could it be otherwise. Although the scientific idea or
notion of objective reality in itself could not be grasped by simple
animal intelligence, the impression of the thing perceived was
necessarily that of a subjectivity resembling that of the observer, not
indeed in outward form and figure but in intrinsic power, whatever might
be the extrinsic form and figure of the object or phenomenon.

The original condition of animals, and of man himself in his primordial
life and consciousness, is and was the intrinsic personification of the
things perceived: from this source the human intellect slowly and with
difficulty attained to science, by virtue of that psychical
reduplication which has been so often mentioned.