of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line
is drawn between men and the other things in the world. This
confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.


We set out to discover a stage of human intellectual development
which would necessarily produce the essential elements of myth. We
think we have found that stage in the condition of savagery. We
now proceed to array the evidence for the mental processes of
savages. We intend to demonstrate the existence in practical
savage life of the ideas which most surprise us when we find them
in civilised sacred legends.

For the purposes of this inquiry, it is enough to select a few
special peculiarities of savage thought.

1. First we have that nebulous and confused frame of mind to which
all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or
inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion and reason. The
savage, at all events when myth-making, draws no hard and fast line
between himself and the things in the world. He regards himself as
literally akin to animals and plants and heavenly bodies; he
attributes sex and procreative powers even to stones and rocks, and
he assigns human speech and human feelings to sun and moon and
stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds and fishes.[1]


[1] "So fasst auch das Alterthum ihren Unterschied von den Menschen
ganz anders als die spatere Zeit."--Grimm, quoted by Liebrecht, Zur
Volkskunde, p. 17.