In the delirium of fever, or in various forms of disease, the cerebral excitement is so great that not only the deliberate exercise of reason, but the power of estimating external objects is lost, and the organs of the senses are so completely altered, that the perceptions themselves are exaggerated and confused. In this state hallucination reaches its highest point, and the patient sees, hears, and feels, directly or indirectly, strange and terrible things: wild beasts, enemies of all kind, torments; or again, pleasing and agreeable images. Independently of the alteration in various sensations produced by the morbid alteration of the special organs which induce them, the real cause of this phenomenon consists in the objection of mental sensations and images. Such an objection of images or sensations, considered in the act which transforms them into a reality, depends on the same cause as all other acts of perception; there is always an entification of the phenomenon, which in this case is a vivid internal image, appearing to be external and real.

The entification of images is still more direct and powerful because in this morbid crisis the necessary corrections made by reason cannot take place, since the sick man is for the time deprived of it, and he is in fact a dreamer, whose condition is intensified by abnormal excitement. Entification is now displayed in its nude and native state, and serves to explain the constant mental process, and the true nature of the representations of the intellect. The transition is easy from delirium to madness, for although an insane person is not always delirious, but sometimes calm and composed, yet there is a fundamental resemblance to delirium in the change in his states of consciousness and its relative organs, which imply a constant hallucination. The most famous and acute physicians of the insane estimate that eighty out of a hundred insane persons are subject to hallucinations. The morbid condition which generates them is also produced by debility, by anaemia, and the senile decay of the cerebral organs, since they occur in dementia, idiocy, and old age, and the physiological and mental causes are the same; the power of fixing the attention and governing the thoughts is diminished, owing to the weakening of the vivid consciousness of the external world, produced by a torpidity of the afferent organs. In these cases the recollections which are not altogether lost sometimes reappear as hallucinations. The hallucinations of madness, in its various forms of dementia, idiocy, and dotage, are all, apart from their morbid and organic conditions, derived from the same source which produces myths, dreams, and normal hallucinations; the objective entification of images is due to the innate faculty of the perception, which leads to the immediate personification of any given phenomenon. We have shown that, given a sensation, there naturally arises the implicit notion of a subject and a cause, and this natural impulse is further developed by the influence of heredity; both in man and animals the constant and powerful sense of individual life is infused into the phenomenon perceived.

The various forms of madness throw a clearer light on this necessary and primitive fact of human and animal perception. The act of sensation may then be said to be under its own direction, and generates itself in the automatic exercise of the brain, as in dreams, without the explicit, disturbing, and modifying influence of reflection, and the habit of rational analysis. The act of sensation is spontaneously completed and developed in and with its own constituents, and since it is isolated from other modes and exercises of thought, its real nature appears. The hallucinations of madness, produced by the mental realization of images, either detached or in association, prove that all our mental images or ideas have a tendency in themselves to become real objects of consciousness; with this difference, that a sane man recognizes these mental entifications by their mobility and incessant alterations, which contrast with the fixity and permanence of external and cosmic phenomena.

The following considerations will confirm the truth of these facts. In our advanced state of civilization, thought may, after so many ages' exercise, almost be said to have become part of the organism by the indisputable effect of heredity; and the phenomenon of the recurrence to memory of past facts and distant places is obvious and intelligible, since our judgment of them is never subject to illusion, or only in rare instances and in abnormal conditions. But this judgment is less obvious and easy in the case of primitive savages who have advanced little beyond the innate exercise of the intelligence. The rational analysis of the states of consciousness has not been made, and hence their special and general distinctions are seen with difficulty or not seen at all. Consequently the primitive and natural amazement of man must have been great, when by day, and still more in the lonely silence of night, persons, places, and his own past acts recurred to his mind, and he was able to contemplate them as if they were actually present. He was incapable of giving an explanation of this marvellous fact in the rational and reflective manner which is possible to psychologists and to all civilized men. This revival of the past appeared to him as a fact in its simple and spontaneous reality; he made no attempt to explain it, but it was presented to his consciousness like all other natural facts. The only explanation of the phenomenon appeared to him to be that these images did not recur to the mind by the necessary action of the brain, but that by their own spontaneous power they were recalled to take their part within his breast: he supposed the phenomenon to be objective, not subjective.

Prophecy, for instance, was often supposed to be a recollection, and some primitive accounts of the genesis of things, handed down by tradition, were reputed to be inspired, and objectively dictated to the mind. The Platonic theory of reminiscence relies on these conceptions. The power which recalled the images to memory was supposed to be external, and identical with that which raises up the images of dreams; primitive man traced a fanciful identity between the phenomena of memory and of dreams, and the distinction between them was not supposed to consist in the actual images, but in the modes of their appearance in the waking or sleeping state. The images assumed in the memory a relative reality, somewhat resembling those of dreams. In fact, some savages do not clearly distinguish between the images of these states, and see little difference between the spontaneous recollection of things, the fancy, and dreaming. This also occurs in children, who at a very early age often call by name absent persons and things which recur to their memory; and on the other hand they do not distinguish the facts of real life from those of dreams. I have observed this fact in several children.

Among primitive peoples it often happens that an object with which they are unfamiliar, but which has some analogy with those with which they are acquainted, becomes associated with the latter, and is constituted into a compound being, endowed with life. The Esquimaux believed the vessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars. When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship to be a whale with sails. The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, and imagined that it required the nourishment of grass. When an Arauco saw a compass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has been held by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, which play tunes mechanically. Herbert Spencer mentions similar behaviour in some men belonging to one of the hill tribes in India; when they saw Dr. Hooker pull out a spring measuring tape, which went back into its case of itself, they were terrified and ran away, convinced that it was a snake. From these facts, which might be multiplied indefinitely, it not only appears that everything is spontaneously animated by man, but also that the images of his memory are fused with those which are actually present, since their respective factors are esteemed to be equally real. This primitive objection of the images of the memory also occurs in the mythical representations of dreams, which, as the images of absent objects, have much in common with the images of the memory. In fact, all peoples, as we have seen, have believed in the reality of dreams.

The North American Indians believe in the existence of two souls, one of which remains in the body while the other wanders at pleasure during the dream. The New Zealander supposes that the dreamer's soul leaves his body, and that he meets the things of which he dreams in the course of his wanderings. The Dyak also believes that the soul is absent during sleep, and that the things seen in dreams really occur. Garcilasso asserts that this was likewise the Peruvians' belief. A tribe in Java abstains from waking a sleeper, since his soul is absent in dreams. The Karens say that dreams are what the la or soul sees during sleep. This theory is also found among more civilized peoples, as for instance in the Vedic philosophy and the Kabbala, and it has come down to our days among the common people, and even among those of some culture.

One belief connected with dreams, generally diffused among all savage and civilized peoples, is that of the appearance of dead men, or of their ghosts. Of this all the traditions and popular myths in the world are full. Such a belief, first excited by the vision of the dead in dreams, is easily aroused in the savage or uneducated mind, even when he recalls to memory while he is alone, and especially at night, the image of one whom he loved in life. Affection, and the lively emotion of sorrow and desire give such a life-like appearance to these images that they become objectively present to the mind, to console the mourner, or, on the other hand, to threaten the murderer. I have more than once heard persons of all classes, after the death of children, of a husband or wife, whom they have injured or imagine that they have injured, either during life or by not fulfilling their last wishes, declare in all good faith that the form of the dead is often present to their memory and visible while they are awake; thus implying that the dead mercifully appear to comfort their mourning friends, or else to reproach them for not fulfilling their promises. In a word, these images did not seem to them to be subjective, and an ordinary phenomenon of the memory, but objective and personal apparitions within the soul. The cases are not rare in certain dispositions of mind, in which the projection of these images on the memory gradually produces madness. We must not forget that psychical phenomena in general are very differently regarded by the savage and the civilized man, since the latter is accustomed to analysis, and to the real distinctions of things. If this canon is forgotten we shall fall into grave errors in the attempt to interpret the evolution and primitive history of thought and of humanity.

We shall more readily understand the nature and genesis of all these hallucinations, and of normal and abnormal illusions, if we study another phenomenon of frequent occurrence which I myself have often had occasion to observe. I mean the illusion or hallucination which does not consist in the absolute projection of an internal image with an external semblance of reality, but which presents it in the twilight as an object of uncertain form, either in a room or out of doors. It often happens, as I and others have experienced from childhood, that a dress or other object lying by chance on a chair, or on the ground, or hanging on a piece of furniture or a peg, seen in connection with the other things near it, is transformed into a person or animal, in a sitting or standing posture or lying at full length, as if it had been a spectre or phantasm; somewhat like the figures which we all take pleasure in tracing in the strange and mobile forms of clouds. The fantastic figure sometimes appears instantaneously and at the first glance, sometimes it is only gradually made out; but in both cases, as we shall see, its genesis is the same. Although in the former case that which in the latter is gradually developed appears to be developed all at once, yet in reality it passes through the same stages.

Let us now consider the second mode; and in order to be perfectly accurate, I will describe one out of many apparitions which I saw so recently that its gradual formation is retained distinctly in my memory. On a small three-legged table beside my bed there was a little oval mirror, on which hung a woman's cap, which fell partly over the glass: there was also an easy chair, on which I had thrown my shirt before going to bed, while my shoes were as usual on the floor. I awoke towards morning, and as I chanced to look round the large room, in the uncertain light of a night-light which was almost burnt out, my eyes fell upon the easy chair. Immediately I seemed to see a head above it, corresponding to the mirror, and a vague and confused image of a person seated there. As I am accustomed to do in similar cases, I closed my eyes for a little, and on reopening them I looked at the appearance with attention and interest; this time the person or phantasm had a less confused outline, although I did not see the form distinctly, nor the features, nor its precise position. Yet in this second observation, I obtained an idea of it as a whole, and in details.

On further examination the face and person stood out more clearly, and the features became more distinct, the longer I looked. Each accidental fold or shadow on the cap was transformed into bright eyes, strongly marked eyebrows, into the nose, mouth, hair, beard, and neck; so that as I went on I had before me a perfectly chiselled face corresponding to the type which had first flashed across my mind as the confused impression of a face conveyed by the cap and mirror. The same process of evolution was pursued with respect to the limbs, the breast, arms, legs, and feet; parts of the body which at first appeared to be vague and indeterminate gradually, and as if by enchantment issued distinctly from every fold of the shirt, from every shadow, angle, and line, so as to compose what Dante would call una persona certa. Finally I saw before me a man dressed in white, of an athletic form, sitting in the easy chair and looking fixedly at me: the whole body was in harmony with the head, which had first resulted from the rude resemblance to a human face. The image appeared to me so real and distinct that on rising from the bed and gradually approaching it, its form did not vanish, even when I was near enough to touch the object which produced it. An analysis showed that the features, limbs, and position corresponded in every point with the folds and relative position of the articles of dress which had formed it. A similar process, issuing in such apparitions, is a frequent cause of illusions, which in the case of ingenuous, superstitious, and primitive peoples, may lead to the firm conviction that they have seen an apparition. This has certainly been the case in primitive and even in civilized times, and has given occasion to myths, legends, and the worship of tutelary deities and saints.

If we consider the causes of such a phenomenon, and analyze its elements and motives, we shall, I think, discover that it goes far to explain many normal and abnormal hallucinations.

In the first place, there is in man a deep sense of the analogies of things, partly developed by the organic tendency to regard any given object of perception as subjective and causative, and to infuse into it our own animal life, a tendency confirmed by education and the practice of daily life. Such analogies, which find their expression in metaphor, are very vivid and persistent in the vulgar and in those persons who approximate most closely to the primitive ingenuousness of the intelligence. The most frequent analogies are between natural phenomena and objects and animal forms. Analogies are also found between the various forms of inanimate natural objects, but the former are more usual, and especially those which refer to the human form. There are numerous and familiar instances of the names of men or women given to mountains, rocks, and crags, because they have some remote resemblance to some human feature or limb. Every day we may be called upon to see a face in some mountain, stone, or trunk of a tree, in the outline of the landscape, a wreath of mist or cloud. We are told to observe the eyes, nose, mouth, the arms and legs, and so on.[35] Every one must remember to have often heard of such resemblances, even if he has not himself observed them. All the facts and laws which we have observed explain why the sudden appearance of some vague form in an uncertain light, reminding us in a confused way of the human figure, instantly causes us to trace a resemblance to man rather than to any thing else. It must be noted, as my experiment has already proved, that in this first sketch of a phantasm in human form, a general, though indefinite type of the whole figure has spontaneously arisen, to which it is made to correspond. This is the key to the ultimate perception of the phenomenon. What may be called the prophetic type of the figure which will afterwards appear to us in all its details, although it may seem to be produced by external resemblance, is in fact the product of the mind, which has been unconsciously exercised in its construction.

In fact, out of the immense variety in faces, and in the general form of persons, of gestures, fashions of dress, attitudes in rest and motion, which are indelibly impressed on the memory, every one constructs general types for himself; types which are revealed in the allusions made in our daily conversation to the resemblances which we are continually observing. These remain in the memory, with all the manifold resemblances, as well as the ideal of certain types in which the numerous forms we have seen and compared are formulated. We know that when the memory has been dormant, which is often the case, it may be awakened by the stimulus of association, of analogy, or of will, so as to reproduce the forgotten ideas and sensations which are thus again presented to the consciousness. When, therefore, one or more objects are seen in an uncertain light, so as to present a confused appearance of the human form, its general lineaments are unconsciously made by us to correspond with the human type already existing in the memory, and this type presides in the subsequent composition of the reproducing artist who observes the phantasm. The unconscious mental labour which is accomplished in the reproducing cellules of past impressions and ideas by the instantaneous creation of the type, gathers round this type the form and features corresponding with it, which had its earlier existence in our own experience. The external pose and indefinite modification of the objects appear to correspond with the gradual mnemonic revival of the typal form, and they reciprocally stimulate and react on each other. For while a fold, shadow, or line of the objects seen appear to correspond with some feature of the mnemonic type, on the other hand, a fold, shadow, or outline of the object recalls a feature of the inward phantasm composed by the memory.

In this process the mnemonic details which are in accordance with the pre-existing type, and sometimes also in accordance with some remarkable face or person which was the first to present itself to the mind, serve as a model for the accidental form of the external object or objects which correspond to it; this in its turn recalls features which remain in the memory, and in this way the external form of this particular phantasm is gradually chiselled into full relief. The more intently we regard the object which is modified to suit the mental image, the more perfectly they agree together, and the apparition stands out with more vivid distinctness. This will be the experience of every one to whom such a phenomenon appears, and a dispassionate analysis of all the phases of this fact must fully confirm our theory.

Such a fact, which is implicitly included in the general law we have laid down for the origin of myth, will also as I think throw further light on the origin of many hallucinations, both in normal conditions of mind and in the abnormal state of nervous disorders. The different appearances of objects, animals, and men, the voices, words, songs, and conversations seen and heard in these hallucinations, are produced, by an internal impulse as well as by a stimulus from without; they are internal in the images and sensation already unconsciously impressed upon the memory, and they are external in the accidentally modified form in which they occur in sensible objects, so that they act reciprocally as an incentive and impulse to each other.

If in normal hallucinations the vividness of the internal image is in certain physiological conditions projected outwardly, the configuration and accidental form of the external objects contribute to complete the composition in accordance with the nature and design of this internal image. Sometimes the physiological conditions of hallucination are so powerful that it is at once produced by the appearance of an object which has some analogy with the mental image. Whatever may be the genesis and primitive character of the idea of space, and its psychical and physiological relations to actual space—a question which has been the theme of so much discussion in our time—it is certain that first habit and then hereditary influence cause us to have the sensation and apprehension of a psychical space, which may be termed artificial and congenital, and upon which the various impressions of the senses are spontaneously projected. Of this there is an evident proof in the fact that if we look at the sun or any bright object, such as the windows of a room in the day time, and then close our eyes, so as to make the vision of external space impossible, the image of the sun, sometimes of a different colour, or of the window, is projected into the darkness at some distance from us, and moves about this psychical space. This phenomenon also occurs in the subjective sensations of hearing, since the sounds do not appear to be close to the ear, but at a distance. We are not here called upon to discuss the causes which generate the appearance of this psychical space, but the fact is indisputable; so that conversely it becomes intelligible how the internal image may be projected in the same way, or may at least appear to be externally projected in hallucinations. This surprising phenomenon is only a modification of the ordinary exercise of the psychical and physiological faculties in the projection of images; of which, after the idea of space has been formed by primitive experience, habit and education are the chief factors.

Hallucinations, in the cases observed above, are due to an external impulse; and this is especially the case in madness and other nervous disorders; since a critical observation and clear discernment of things is wanting, some object of vision, a voice, phrases, or sounds are much more apt to act as a stimulus to a vast field of visual hallucinations, or to a long succession of sentences and speeches. It is not, therefore, wonderful that in an ecstasy, for instance, in which all the faculties are concentrated on very few ideas and images, or perhaps on one only, every external sign, whether obvious to sight or hearing, combined with the mnemonic effort already explained, is modified to correspond with these vivid and exalted images; thus constituting the wonderful phenomenon of ecstasy. In such a case the ecstatic phenomenon in persons subject to these nervous affections is often invested with fresh wonders by the additional sensations of light and subjective colours; this is not uncommon even in persons of a sane mind and body, but undoubtedly it is more frequently the case in those whose mental and physical conditions are abnormal. It is not rare to hear an ecstatic person recount divine visions, suffused with extraordinary light and glory.

In order to contribute to the researches of others into the nature of this phenomenon, I must be permitted—not from vanity, but from a desire that my own imperfections may serve the cause of science however slightly—to relate some facts, personal to myself, which bear upon the question, facts of very general experience. From my childhood I have had, both by day and night, various subjective sensations of light which I was, as a person of perfectly sane mind, able to observe dispassionately. After reading for a long while, or when fatigued by sleeplessness, mental excitement, or some temporary gastric derangement, I see clear flames circling before my eyes. These are in a small, oblong form, arranged at brief intervals in concentric curves, and composing a moving garland projected upon space, tinged with a yellowish light, shading into vivid blue. Sometimes this figure is changed for stars, twinkling in a vast and remote space, as in a firmament. In addition to this phenomenon, I have about twenty times in the course of my life experienced other subjective and more extraordinary sensations of light, not unknown to others. This phenomenon occurs when I am in a normal condition of health, and always begins with a confusion of sight, so that I am unable to see objects and the faces of people distinctly; after which everything within the range of vision becomes mobile and tremulous. This state continues for ten minutes, and then clear and distinct vision returns. Next a lucid circle, zig-zagged in acute angles, appears close to the eyes, now on the right, now on the left. It moves in a somewhat serpentine course, and is broken in the centre of the lower half. It withdraws from the eye into subjective space, and the shining band of which it is composed gradually loses its sharp angles, and becomes wider and undulated, while still in motion.

Another remarkable sensation follows. The shining band, which has dilated until it is withdrawn from the eyes, whether closed or open, to an apparent distance of several yards, becomes tinted with all the colours of the rainbow, standing out in such vivid splendour on the dark background that I have never seen them equalled in nature. Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole space, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Throughout the phenomenon I continue to be perfectly collected and free in mind, so that I can observe it in all its details with perfect calmness, and can also impart my observations to the persons with whom I happen to be. Only when the subjective sensation has ceased, I feel an obscure pain in the brow of the eye in which the phenomenon occurred. This is readily explained by the well-known interlacing of the nerves, and the action of the hemispheres.

Supposing that such phenomena occur, as they more readily do, in persons predisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and in a society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habitually contemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if in moments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to the images proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is very likely to be the case, or the iridescent aureole we have described, they would certainly accept and glorify the heavenly vision revealed to them. The revolution of the bright stars or iridescent band, preceded by the obscurity of vision which accompanies the ordinary ecstatic hallucination, would certainly be ascribed to the saints or angels, and would thus become more supernatural and consonant with the believer's idea of heaven; and these very subjective sensations might often produce the ecstatic vision, so ready to appear in the morbid conditions which lead to hallucination.

According to the process previously described, by which the phenomenon of natural hallucinations is produced by an external stimulus, these luminous phenomena would revive the memory of angelic and saintly forms, of which men were so profoundly conscious in times of religious excitement, and would be regarded as their external signs, while they would at the same time stimulate the appearance of such angelic visions. Ultimately this would lead to the vast drama of celestial hallucinations described for us in the accounts of many ecstatic visions. They do not only occur in modern religions, but in those of the old heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of savages. The ethnography of the most savage peoples of our time teaches us that the origin of very many myths is to be found in normal and abnormal hallucinations, and in the luminous visions which conform to their mental conditions. Persons subject to nervous affections, from simple epilepsy to madness and idiocy, were and still are supposed to be inspired, and endowed with the power of prophesying and working miracles; they are also venerated for relating the strange visions presented to them in the crisis of their disorder. Africa, barbarous Asia, America, Oceania, and the ignorant and superstitious people in Europe itself, abound with such facts; they have occurred and are likely to recur in civilized peoples of all times, including our own, as we know only too well.

We have thus reduced the primitive origin of myth, of dreams, of all illusions, of normal and abnormal hallucinations, to one unique fact and genesis, to a fundamental principle; that is, to the primitive and innate entification of the phenomenon, to whatever sensation it may be referred. This fact is not exclusively human in its simple expression and genesis, since it occurs in the lower animals; evidently in those which are nearest to man, and by the necessary logic of induction in all others, according to their sensations and modes of perception. In the vast historic drama of opinions, beliefs, religions, mythical and mytho-scientific theories which are developed in all peoples; and again, in the infinite variety of dreams, illusions, mystic and nervous hallucinations, all depend on the primitive and unique fact which is also common to the animal kingdom, and identical with it; in man this is also the condition of science and knowledge. I think that this conclusion is not unworthy of the consideration of wise men and honest critics, and that it will contribute to establish the definitive unity of the general science of psychology, considered in the vast animal kingdom as a whole, and in connection with the great theory of evolution.

This primitive act of perception, the radical cause and genesis of all mythical representations, and the physical and intellectual condition of science itself, is also one of the factors and the aesthetic germ of all the arts. The constraining power which generates the intentional subjectivity of the phenomenon, and the entification of images, ideas, and numerous normal and abnormal appearances, also unconsciously impels man to project the image into a design, a sculpture, or a monument. Since an idea or emotion naturally tends, as we have seen, to take an external form in speech, gesture, or some other outward fact; so also it tends to manifest itself materially and by means of various arts, and to take the permanent form of some object. It is embodied in this way, as it was embodied in fetishes in the way described in the foregoing chapters. Owing to this innate cause, and by the instinct of imitation which results from it, children as well as savages always attempt some rude sketch of natural objects, or of the fanciful images to which they have given rise. Drawings of animals and some other objects are found among the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians. Nor is this fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which are still in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings and remains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date have been found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age of our flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water. There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitive impulse to imitative arts. A stag's meta-tarsal bone, on which there was a carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny: in a cave at Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs of schist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office, on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and other animals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked man in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known by the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or so-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, going with its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard. Other designs of the chase and of animals afford a clear proof of the remote period at which the primitive instinct towards the imitative arts existed.

It is peculiar to man to portray things and animals, and to erect monuments out of a superstitious feeling, or to glorify an individual or the nation; the bower-birds and some cognate species may perhaps be regarded as an exception, since they show a certain sense of beauty, and an extrinsic satisfaction in gay colours, which indeed appears in many animals. But art in the true sense and in its essential principle are the act and product of man alone, of which I have demonstrated the cause and comparative reasons in another work, so that it is unnecessary to repeat them here. Some rare cases indicate an artistic construction which is not an essential part of animal functions, and the sense of form and colour occurs in some species. But this only shows that there exist in the animal kingdom the roots of every art and sentiment peculiar to man, subsequently perfected by him in an exclusive and reflex manner, and this confirms the general truths of heredity and evolution.

When primitive man draws or carves objects, he does not merely obey the innate impulse to give an external form to the image already in his mind, but while satisfying the aesthetic sentiment which actuates him, he is conscious of some mysterious power and superstitious influence. This sentiment is not only apparent in our own children, but among nearly all savages, of which many instances might be given; some of them are even afraid to look at a portrait, and shrink from it as from a living person.

As time went on, a belief in spirits was developed from causes already mentioned, the rude theory of incarnation followed as its corollary, and this sentiment was naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images; for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of men and animals. In these figures the amulet, talisman, or gris-gris of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superstitions. The belief in spirits, resulting from the personification of shadows, or of the image of a man's own soul which was supposed to return from the tomb, had a mythical influence on the mode and ceremonies of sepulture, on the position of corpses, on the orientation of tombs, and their form. In fact, the mythical ideas of spirits, and the fanciful place they took in the primitive idea of the world, produced the custom of burying corpses in an upright, stooping, or sitting position, and their situation with reference to the four cardinal points. In America the cross which was placed in very early times above the tombs is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been a symbol of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb itself and to the human remains enclosed in it. One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the head and feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the attitude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have special customs in burying their dead.

All the primitive artistic representations of the human form, the orientation of tombs and temples and their peculiar form, were prompted by these spiritualist and superstitious ideas; they expressed a symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the constitution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends. This assertion might be verified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among all peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those of our times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, and particularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, beginning with the Greeks and passing through the Latins down to the Christianity of our day; nor need we exclude the Oceanic races, and those of the two frigid zones.

Doubtless the purest aesthetic sentiment was gratified in the productions of the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was at its highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment. At the same time, for the great majority of peoples in early and subsequent ages down to our own time, there was and is the consciousness of a numen, in the proper meaning of the word, within the statue or effigy, and these were unconsciously entified by the same law which leads to the entification of natural phenomena; the august presence of the gods and an artificial symbol of the living organism of the world were contained in the material form. While this sentiment took a higher development in art, and was gradually emancipated from its mythical bonds, it never altogether disappeared in artistic creations; and there are still many who would, like some uncultured peoples of early and modern times, cover up their images when they are about to commit some action which might be displeasing to these idols of the gods or saints. If we were to gauge the sentiments which really animate a man of the people, even when he; looks at the statue of a great man, we should find that in addition to his aesthetic satisfaction, he unconsciously imagines that the spirit of the dead man is infused into the image and is able to enjoy the admiration of the observers.

The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded on this belief in the incarnation of spirits and the numen of fetishes. There is indeed no real difference between the superstitious adoration of a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in many religions of modern civilization. Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and gris-gris of savages. This fetishtic and idolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development been infused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hung on plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbol of perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills. We have analogous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or the words of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn round the neck. The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lamps kept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help and favour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thus transforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous or civilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, for instance, and some other American peoples regarded the number "four" as sacred.

In addition to the cherished remembrance always inspired by portraits of those we love, a breathing of life, as if the dead or absent person were communicating with us in spirit, is perhaps unconsciously infused into the picture while we look at it. These are transient states of consciousness, of which we are scarcely aware, although they do not escape the notice of careful observers. Any dishonour or insult offered to images, whether sacred or profane, deeply moves both the learned and unlearned, both barbarous and civilized peoples, not merely as a base and sacrilegious act against the person represented, but from an instinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in the image. Any one who analyzes the matter will find it impossible to separate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinary scenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resulted from the identification of the image with the thing represented.

Even when a man of high culture and refined taste for beauty stands before the canvas or sculpture of some great ancient or modern artist, his spiritual and aesthetic enjoyment of these wonderful works is, as he will find from the observation of his inmost emotions, combined with the animation and personification of what he sees; he is so far carried away by the beauty and truth of the representation that the passions represented affect him as if they were those of real persons. This relative perfection of a work of art, either in the way the objects stand out, in the varied diffusion of light and shade, in the movement and expression of figures, in the effect of the whole in its details and background, is all heightened and confirmed by the underlying entification of images. The process we have before described by which a confused group of objects appear to us as a human form or phantasm is also effected in this case in a more subtle way and with less effort of memory; it is all ultimately due to the primitive fact of animal perception. Our imagination can supply the resemblance, the limbs, colour, and design in a picture in which a face, figure, or landscape are slightly sketched, or in a roughly chiselled statue. We often hear the complaint that a work of art is too highly finished, and it wearies and displeases us because it leaves nothing for the imagination to supply. The remark reveals the fact, of which we are all implicitly conscious, that we are ourselves in part the artificers of every external phenomenon.

We need not stop to prove a truth well-known to all, that architecture and all kinds of monuments lend themselves to a symbolism derived from ancient and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in India, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Judaea, Greece, Ancient and Christian Rome, and in the ancient remains found in savage countries and in America. The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the earliest and most varied traditions with the symbols of Christianity. We unconsciously carry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, although the meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs in the open air which enclosed a spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacred buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture, both religious and civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, the development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth were reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archaeology, and the history of all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader. Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as human speech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were an algebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive and concrete image whence it proceeded. The arts also, like other human products, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course; the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritual beliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformed into symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and give place to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fully satisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends.

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin and evolution as the others. Vico, Strabo, and others have asserted that primitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark. Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocal modulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulate emotion. In truth, the mental and physiological effort which tends by vocal enunciation to present the image or emotion in an external form, is on the one hand not yet fully disintegrated, and on the other the greater or less intensity of feeling involved in primitive languages a corresponding vocal modulation to supplement it, just as it required gesture and pantomime. Thus speech, gesture, and song, in the larger sense of the word, had their origin together. This is also true of many of the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection; in this case the frequent repetition of the same monosyllable conveys a different meaning, not only from its relative position, but from the modulation and tone in which it is uttered. The same thing may be observed in children who are just beginning to talk.

Rhythm, or the graduated and alternate action and reaction with which a vibration begins and ends, is a universal law in the manifestation and movements of all natural phenomena; a law which is revealed on a grand scale in all the recurring periods of nature, whether astral, telluric, or meteorological, as well as in the form and manifold phases of organisms and their modes of reproduction. This universal law also applies to the whole mental and organic system of animals and men, whenever they become conscious of their own existence. The same universal rhythm constitutes the fundamental form of sound in the vibration of metallic bars, or of strings, and becomes perceptible to the external senses by means of our organ of hearing, as also by the external and innate necessity slowly developed by our habits of consciousness, which may be termed the external causes of its organic evolution and constitution.

By these organic and cosmic tendencies, and by the intrinsic impulse towards modulation of sound already explained, speech first issued from the human breast in harmonious accents and rhythmic form, and these became in their turn the causes and genesis of versification and metre. The classic experiments of Helmholtz show that each note may be regarded as a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompany it in its complete development. With reference to our own race, the genesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by the researches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, and the Greeks, since the fact that their metres were the same implies a common origin. The demonstration is complete, if we compare the iambic metre of Archilochus with that of the Vedic hymns. There are in both three series of iambuses—the dimeter, the cataleptic trimeter, and the acataleptic.[36]

This observation applies to the physical and physiological conditions of the phenomenon, since primitive men could not speak without rhythmic modulation of words. We are not quite without hope of discovering by induction the origin of wind or stringed instruments which accompanied the songs, after the specification of the modes of speech was so far advanced as to distinguish singing—which had already become an art—from the daily necessity of reciprocal communication in words. In this research we must proceed step by step, aided by minute observation, lest we should accept an hypothesis which does not correspond with the facts.

Not only man, but some animals—among others a species of mouse found in South Africa—naturally uses his limbs to moderate or strengthen the light of vision. This mouse was observed to shade its eyes with its forepaws in order to look at some distant object under a blazing sun, as we should do in like conditions. In man, whose arms and hands are readily adapted to this primitive art, the habit is common, even among the rudest savages. Putting sight out of the question that we may consider hearing, which is our present theme, reflex movements, either casual or habitual, have certainly induced primitive men to place their hands on the mouth, either so as to suppress the sound or to augment it by using both hands as a kind of shell. It is easy to imagine the use of shells or other hollow objects as a vehicle of sound, either for amusement or some other cause, and these rude instruments might serve as the first step to the invention of wind instruments. Reflection on these spontaneous experiments would readily lead to the search for some mode of prolonging or imitating the voice. In these attempts men might be guided by their observation of the whistle and song of birds, whose beaks may have served as a model for the construction of the flute and reed-pipe. Pott traces the word for sound to the root svar, and hence, after some natural phonetic changes, we have in Lithuanian szwilpti for the song of birds. Of all natural objects, different kinds of reeds and the hollow stalks of plants are, owing to their hollow and cylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak and the sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for a flute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, vanca and venu mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, na and nay mean a flute and reed; in Greek [Greek: donas], and in Latin calamus, have the same double meaning, and many more examples might be given.

Stringed instruments are a more elaborate invention, and may have been suggested by the vibration of a bow-string when it is twanged. The bow is common to all modern savages, and was also found among extinct peoples and those which are now civilized, as well as in prehistoric times. The Sanscrit word for a stringed instrument, tata or vitata, is derived from the root tan, to stretch. Pictet observes that one name for a lute is rudri, from rud, to lament, that is, a plaintive instrument; in Persian we have rod for song, music, or a stringed instrument. The etymology of arcus is the same; the root arc not only means to hurl, but to sing or resound. Homer and Rannjana often allude to the sonorousness of the bow and its string. Homer says in speaking of the bow of Pandarus, "stridit funis, et nervus valde sonuit." And when Ulysses drew his avenging bow, the cord emitted a clear sound like the voice of a swallow. Locaka, another name for a cord, also means one who speaks, from loc, loqui; and the Persian rud, roda, a bow-string, also means a song. In the Veda the root arc' is used in speaking of the roaring wind, or of a long echoing sound. Again tavara, a bow-string, is from tan, to stretch, to sound. The Greek [Greek: tonos] must be referred to the same root, and signifies, a bow-string, a sound, an accent, a tone. Benfey traces the Greek [Greek: lura], in which this root is wanting, through [Greek: ludra], or rudra. Kuhn confirms this transformation by the analogy between the Vedic god Rudra and the Greek Apollo, both of whom are armed with a bow. Rudra, like Apollo, is a great physician; the former is called kapardin, from his mode of wearing his long hair, and vanku from his tortuous gait as the god of storms; to the latter the epithets of [Greek: achers echomes] and [Greek: loxias] are applied; the mouse was sacred to Rudro, and Apollo had the surname of Smintheus, from the mouse, [Greek: Smintha], which was his symbol.

These wind and stringed instruments were not, in their primitive forms, at once used as an accompaniment to song. Before such use was possible, there must have been considerable progress in the specification of language, and special songs must have been disintegrated from common speech, which was at first an inchoate song. Possibly some rude instruments were invented for amusement or some other purpose before this specification had taken place. At any rate the use of various instruments for accompaniment was preceded by gesticulation, or the spontaneous striking of some object which coincided with animated speech, or which accompanied it in sonorous cadences.

The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to speak in song, also impelled them to accompany it with gestures and movements of the body, and this was the origin of the dance, which, when the body moved in correspondence with cadenced utterances, was at first merely the accompaniment of song. Tradition, modern ethnography, and the primitive habits of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to the rhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there is the practice of spontaneously beating time with the hands and feet, which were doubtless the first instruments used by man as a musical accompaniment. Hence, owing to the facility of, construction, there arose percussion instruments, which were at first made of stone or pieces of wood. So that singing, dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some rudely fashioned object arose almost simultaneously, as soon as the process of specification had established a distinction between song and ordinary speech. The first simple instruments which we have described only made the song, shout, war-dance, or religious ceremony more effective.

When chanted speech was formulated in a fixed order by means of rhythm and the modulations of the voice, it became verse, and the melody itself, as the simple expression of the song which had been cast into verse, or even into an inarticulate chant, was naturally evolved from it. An artistic education is not needed in order to experience the pleasure of rhythmic order in the succession of sound, for a predisposition of the nervous system will suffice. Savages, children, and even animals are sensible of rhythm, which is the order and symmetry of sensations. The dance, as Beauquier justly observes, is the practical form of rhythmic motion and the gesture of music. The motion impressed by sound on the internal organism tends to manifest itself in external gesture, and in fact, the rhythm of the music is repeated in dancing in the limbs and in the whole body of the dancer. The rhythm, regarded in its material cause, need not be accompanied by any very musical sound. The percussion instruments were at first only used to mark and intensify the rhythm.

Melody may be termed a fusion of rhythm and sounds of different pitches, united in time, and assuming a regular and symmetrical form; melody, as others also have observed, constitutes the whole of music, since without it harmony itself is vague and indefinite. Notwithstanding the numerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labour implied in its analysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation of man, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorant of music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we have instances in popular and national songs, which are generated by the musical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has an independent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, and conduces to its subsequent progress among peoples capable of developing it in all its power.[37]

Music has a powerful influence upon all the senses. It has at all times been supposed to have a healing power, and in the Middle Ages it was believed to cure epilepsy, madness, convulsions, hysteria, and all forms of nervous affections; while in our own time it is usefully employed in cerebral diseases, since it has both a stimulating and soothing effect. Women, since they are generally more nervous and sensitive than men, are more especially affected by music. Animals as well as man are influenced by it, as it has been shown by exact and numerous experiments. Every one knows that many birds can be taught airs, which they sing with taste and lively satisfaction. The major key, with its regular proportions, its full and gradual sounds, arouses in man a sense of life and joy, while the minor key excites languor and invincible sadness, and animals are affected in the same way.

It is evident that the formation of the scale, the essential foundation of music, varies with, the epoch, climate, habits, and physiological conditions of the different races which have successively adopted the diatonic, the major, and minor scales. The music of the Chinese differs from our own, and while it is equally elaborate, it does not quite please us, and the same may be said of the music of the Indians, of the ancient Egyptians, and others. Undoubtedly our scale is more convenient and conformable to art, setting aside the physiological conditions of race, since the notes separated by regular intervals form a more spiritual and independent, in short a more artistic system.

Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and of music, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effect on man and animals. We must now consider the subject from the mythical point of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts. We know that the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and this fanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in its expression. It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneously and unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea or emotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as a whole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflective manner, in consequence of intellectual development. Among all civilized peoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not only personified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified. It is well known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified the Graeco-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted upon it. If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed against men or things. Kar means to bewitch, as in German we have einem etwas anthun, in low Latin facturare, in Italian fattucchiere, and from Kar we have carmen, a song or magic formula. The goddess Carmenta, who was supposed to watch over childbirth, derived her name from carmen, the magic formula which was used to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as Carmenta, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs were termed carmentes.[38] The Sanscrit maya, meaning magic or illusion and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from man, to think or know; from man we have mantra, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, manthra is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse manadh, incantation or juggling, and moniti in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from the same root.

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to use exorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with the noise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology, and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the first rude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms down to our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to Pius IX. by M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water against the innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people the cosmic spaces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of all modern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fanciful personification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song, and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories, and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets, as if these contained the spirit of God. The Patagonians, to quote a single instance from among savages, drive away the evil spirits of diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons are painted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees, which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing.

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves, and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughout Polynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole of Africa. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers in Africa give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such a worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerial space, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, their secret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearance both by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, must necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of Hurakau, the god of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers and images of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which they were animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia.[39] It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus. Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, of the raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament speaks of the worship of groves at Ashtaroth in Canaan, of sacrifices under the green trees, and we know that such worship occurred in the Semitic races of Numidia and elsewhere.

The simultaneous elaboration of myths relating to trees and birds as objects of worship, as beneficent or malign powers, and as the transmitters of oracles, necessarily confirmed and extended the personifications of speech and song, and were fused through many sources into a whole, which represented a supernatural agent, endowed with the power of a mediator, of a good or evil spirit or idol. This ultimately led to a universal conception of the efficacy of sound, considered as the manifestation of occult powers. In this mythically spiritual atmosphere, all peoples formerly lived and in great part still continue to live.

As the innate impulse led to the entification of speech and of the singing of men and animals, so it also led to the mythical personification of dancing and instrumental music, in which nearly all peoples have recognized a demoniac and deliberate power. For this reason, dancing and the noise of rude instruments generally accompanied solemn religious and civil ceremonies, and any remarkable cosmic, astral, or meteorological fact; and in polytheistic times the deities of poetry, dancing, and music served to accentuate and classify ideas.

The instrument became a fetish, and was invested with a mysterious power resembling that which was supposed to exist in all utterances of the animal world. Indeed, instruments were, and still are among savages, regarded as sacred and as an integral part of public worship, so that each had its definite function and office. This need not surprise us, since for such men every object is a fetish, which contains a soul. The Karens, a tribe in Burmah, believe that their arms, knives, utensils, etc., have all a kelap or soul, which is termed a wong by the negroes of West Africa. The same belief is found in a more explicit form among the Algonquins, the Fijians, and the aforesaid Karens, whose beliefs are characteristic of all peoples which have reached this stage of mythical conceptions. The different objects belonging to a dead man, and his instruments, arms, and utensils, are laid in his tomb, or burnt with his body, and this is owing to the belief that the souls of these objects follow their possessor into another life. The same custom unfortunately extends to persons, and there are instances of this evil practice among relatively civilized nations; the massacre which takes place at the death of a king of Dahomey is well known, and is revolting from the number of victims and from the mode of their sacrifice. It is therefore easy to imagine the way in which musical instruments and the sounds produced by them were personified, since these manifestations seemed to approximate more closely to those of animals.

Fetishtic beliefs concerning magic songs or sounds were, as we have seen, confirmed by the influence naturally exerted on men and animals in their normal or abnormal state by rhythmic and musical sounds, however rude and unformed they may be. Theophrastus tells us that blowing a flute over the affected limb was supposed to cure gout; the Romans recited carmina to drive away disease and demons: the old Slav word for physician, vraci, comes from a root which means to murmur; in Servian, vrac is a physician, and balii, an enchanter or physician. The use of incantations as a remedy prevailed among the Greeks in Homer's time. The Atarva-Veda retains the old formula of imprecation against disease, and the Zendavesta divides physicians into three classes, those which cure with the knife, with herbs, and with magic formulas. Kuhn believes that the Latin word mederi refers to these proceedings, comparing with it the Sanscrit meth, medh, to oppose or curse. Pictet traces the meaning of exorciser in another Sanscrit word for a physician: Bhisag from sag, sang, tojurbo gate.

As the civilization of the historic races advanced, poetry, singing, and musical instruments became more perfect, and were classified as reflex arts. Among the more intellectual classes the earlier fetishtic ideas connected with them almost disappeared, while in the case of the common people, the fetish was idealized, but not therefore lost; it persisted, and still persists, under other forms. Polytheism, modified to suit the place, time, and race, and yet essentially the same, offers us a more ideal form of the arts, each of which was personified as a god, and taken together they formed a heavenly company, which generated and presided over the arts. The greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity retained a sincere belief in the inspiration of every creation of art; and this was only a more noble and intellectual form of the first rude and indefinite conception by which the arts were embodied in a material shape.

Of all the Aryan peoples, Greece represented her Olympus in the most glorious mythical form, set forth by all the arts of description. From the polytheistic point of view, nothing can be aesthetically more perfect than the myths of Apollo and the Muses, which personify harmony in general, and whatever is peculiar to the arts. Such conceptions, by which the arts of speech, song, vocal and instrumental music were embodied in myths, did not disappear as time went on, but were perpetuated in another form. Music, which was always becoming more elaborate, continued to be the highest inspiration, a divine power, an external and harmonious manifestation of celestial beings, of eternal life, and the order of the world. This conception was shadowed forth in the Pythagorean theory of the mythical harmony of the spheres: that school regarded the world as a musical system, an harmonious dance of planets.

The fetishtic and mythical origin common to all the arts is clearly shown by the fact that at a period relatively advanced, but still very remote, they were formulated in the temple, a symbolic representation of their deities, to be found even among the most primitive peoples. The evolution of the arts towards a more rational conception, divested of mythical and religious influence, took the form of releasing each art from bondage to the temple, and enabling it to assume a more distinct, free, and secular personality, an evolution which was however somewhat difficult and slow in the case of vocal and instrumental music. Although in our own time it has achieved a field for itself, yet in oratorios and ecclesiastical music the old conception remains.

The joys of the Elysian fields and of Paradise, as rewards of the good and faithful after death, varying in details with the moral and mythical beliefs of various peoples, were heightened by concerts and musical symphonies, as, owing to natural evolution and the introduction of Oriental ideas, if appears even in the Christian conception of Paradise. For the great majority of believers, earthly music is only an echo of that celestial music, and participates in its divine efficacy. In the Christian Paradise there were saints to preside over the instruments, the singing, and music; the visions of the ecstatic, the hallucinations of the mystic, and the precious memories and images of the dead, are often combined with sweet and heavenly music, and this completes the fetishtic idea which enters into every phenomenon with which man has to do. For if inanimate objects and instruments were supposed by the primitive savage to have a soul which followed the shade of the dead man into the mythical abode beyond the grave, in modern religions the earthly instruments, the fanciful idols of the common people and of mystics, also resound in Elysium and the heavens, touched and inspired by choirs of angels and by seraphic powers.

The deep and sonorous music of bells, of organs, and other ecclesiastical instruments, the chants which resound through vaulted roofs amid the assembled worshippers, ecclesiastical lights, and the fumes of incense, inspire many Christians with a deep and aesthetic sense of the divine presence; and at such moments their vivid faith joins heaven and earth in the same harmonious emotion. The music, chants, and harmony, combined with other solemn rites, are unconsciously embodied by us, entering into our hearts as they circle round the church, and they become the mysterious language of celestial powers. We are once more immersed in the world of fancy and of myth, purified however by the evolution it has undergone. This exalted state of mind is also experienced by those who listen to profane music, since the harmony and modulation of sound, and the expression given to it by the combination of various instruments, immediately affect the soul of the listener as a whole, without the aid of reflection, and a substantial entity which deliberately fulfils its spontaneous cycle of development is thus created; in a word, the harmonies they hear are unconsciously personified. Any one who makes a deep and careful analysis of his states of consciousness in these circumstances will admit the truth of this assertion.

The ordinary modes of expression respecting music, which are in use not only among uneducated people, but among those who are educated and civilized, display the earlier and innate belief in the mythical representations of this art. The expressions may be often heard: What divine music! What angelic harmony! This song is really seraphic! and the like. Such expressions not only bear witness to the old mythical sentiment, and to the ultimate development of its form, but they also indicate the actual sentiments of the speaker. The personifying power of the human intelligence is such as to recur spontaneously, even in one who has abandoned these ancient illusions, if he surrenders himself for a while to his natural instinct. It has often happened that a man who listens to a melodious and beautiful piece of music is gradually aroused and excited by its sweet power, so as to be carried away into a world of new sensations, in which all our sentiments and affections, our deepest, tenderest, and dearest aspirations blossom afresh in our memory, and are fused into and strengthened by these harmonies; we seem to be transported into ethereal regions, and unconsciously surrender ourselves to their influence. This kind of natural ecstasy is not produced merely by the physiological effects of music on the organism, by the education of our sense of beauty, and of our reminiscences of earlier mythical emotions, but also by the innate impulse which still persists, leading us to idealize and vivify all natural phenomena, and also our own sensations.

But if among the common people, the devout, and occasionally also among people of culture, this highest art is not divested of its mythical environment, which still persists, although in a more ideal form, yet it has followed and still follows the general evolution of human ideas. The art of music was identified with song and with the mythical personality ascribed to it, of which these instruments were the extrinsic and harmonious echo; at first, like the other arts, it, was a religious conception and entity pertaining to the Church, but it gradually assumed a character of its own, was dissociated from the Church, and became a secular art, diverging more and more from the mythical ideas with which it had before been filled. When instruments increased in number, and became more perfect in quality; when harmony, strictly so called, was developed and became more efficient, instrumental music still continued to be the servant of vocal music, and was employed to give emphasis, relief, warmth, and colour to the art of song, which continued to be supreme. Song had its peculiar musical character, and the human voice, alone or in a chorus, might be regarded as the type of instrumental music, rendered more effective by the words which expressed the ideas and sentiments of such songs by harmonizing the various vocal instruments in accordance with their tones and varying timbre. Instrumental music, by the melodious harmony of artificial sounds, had however a vast field peculiar to itself, and an existence independent of the human voice. This was and is, in addition to its release from the bonds of myth, the necessary result of the evolution of this highest art.

Instrumental music, considered in itself, with the symphony as its highest expression, has been declared by a learned writer to be the grandest artistic creation, and the ultimate form of art in which the vast cycle of all things human will find its development. A symphony is an architectural construction of sounds, mobile in form, and not absolutely devoid of a literary meaning. Yet we must not seek in instrumental music for that which it cannot afford, such as the ideas contained in words. Any one must admit the futility of the attempt to give a dramatic interpretation or language to instrumental music, who reads the description attempted by Lenz and other writers of some of Beethoven's sonatas. Instrumental music does not lend itself to these interpretations, since it is an art with an independent existence. We have observed that in its first development it was used as an accompaniment to the voice, or associated with the movements of the body, or with the dance, and consequently had not the independence which was gradually achieved, until it culminated in the symphony. Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, nor to the expression of ideas and sentiments, but in it pure music consists, and it is the very essence of the art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order of ideas and emotions; music is only able to afford musical ideas and sentiments. Instrumental music has its peculiar province as the supreme art which composes its own poems by means of the order, succession, and harmony of sounds; it delights, ravishes, and moves us by exciting the emotional part of our nature, and thus arouses a world of ideas which may be modified at pleasure, and which may, by the powerful means at its disposal, produce effects of which instruments merely used for accompanying the voice are incapable. When instrumental music was released from all servitude to other arts, as well as from all positive sense of religious emotions or mythical and symbolic prejudice, thought was able to create the art of sounds, which contains in itself a special aim and meaning.

We have thus reached the term of our arduous and fatiguing journey. We flatter ourselves that a truth has been gleaned from it, and this conviction is not, due to a presumptuous reliance on our powers, but on the conscientious honesty of our researches, combined with a great yet humble love of truth. Others, who are better endowed with genius and learning will judge of our success, and we shall willingly submit to their criticism and correction, so long as they are fair and unprejudiced and only aim at the truth. From animal perception, and the mental and physical fact into which it is to be resolved, we have traced the root which in man's case grows into a mighty tree; the first germ of all the mythical ideas of every people upon earth. The subjectivity of which animals and man are spontaneously conscious in every internal and external phenomenon, the subsequent entification of ideas, even after thought has attained to these more rational forms, are the great factors of myth in all its forms, of superstitions, of religions, and also of science. We have reduced all the normal and abnormal sources of these fanciful ideas to that single source which we have just indicated. Penetrating below the kingdom of man into that of animals, we have there discovered where the germ was formed, and this completes the doctrine of evolution and bears witness to its truth. The evolution of myth went through the regular process, by which it was formulated and simplified, until it was resolved into all the sciences and rational arts, and was thus transformed into a positive science, passing through an ulterior stage of myth and science before it took the definitive form of a purely intellectual conception.

We have seen that the source of myth is the same as that of science, since perception is the condition of both, and the process pursued is identical, although the subject on which the faculty of thought is exercised is changed. Therefore the problem of myth, which includes every achievement of the human understanding, and fills all sociology, is transformed into the problem of civilization. Thought has run its course in the vast evolution from myth to science, which is rendered possible by the permanence and duration of a powerful and vigorous race, and hence came the gradual transition from the illusions which involve the ignorance and servitude of the majority of the people to truth and liberty, since these are released from their earlier wrappings, and the human race rises to a sense of its nobility and highest good. We have considered this evolution as a whole and in its details, and have seen that every achievement of the human understanding passes through the same phases, and reaches the same goal. We have adduced witnesses to confirm our own observation from history and ethnography in general, apart from any bias for a religious and scientific system. We believe that in this way alone there can be any true progress in the science which we have undertaken to consider in this essay.

The result of the inquiry shows that by a slow yet inevitable evolution man rose from his primeval condition of error, illusion, and servitude to his fellow man, to that degree of truth and liberty of which he is capable: he was so made that he necessarily advanced to the grand height which has been attained by the most laborious and intelligent of the human race. He rises higher, and is more sensible of his own dignity, in proportion as he becomes, within the limits of his nature, the artificer of his own greatness and civilization. While many peoples have become extinct, others have, owing to their natural incapacity, remained in a savage and barbarous condition, while others again have attained to a certain amount of civilization, but their mental evolution has stopped short. Our own race, originally, as I believe, Aryo-Semitic, for it is possible that these two powerful branches were derived from a common stock, has persisted without interruption in spite of many adversities and revolutions, and has displayed in successive generations the progress of general civilization, and the goal which man is able to reach in his highest perfection of mind and body, favoured by the physical and biological conditions of climate. In this race, whether with respect to myth and science or to civilization, the theory of evolution has practically been carried out in all its phases and degrees.

Science and freedom were the great factors of civilization, or of progress in every kind of conceptions, sentiments, and social conditions: the first dissolved and destroyed the matrix of myth in which the intelligence was at first enveloped, and liberty, which was wholly due to science, made steady progress a matter of certainty. So that it may be said that the whole web of human history, so far as it consists in civilization or the progress of all good things, of the arts, and of every intellectual and material achievement, was the conflict of science, and her offspring freedom, against ignorance, and the despotism which results from ignorance, under all the social forms in which they are manifested. So that all good and wise men, sincere lovers of the dignity of mankind and of the welfare of society and of the individual, ought to feel a deep reverence and love for these two powers, and to be ready to give up their lives to them. For if—which in the present condition of the world is an impossible hypothesis—they were to fail, the human race would be irretrievably lost, since these are our real liberators from barbarism, which have upheld mankind in the struggle against it, under whatever name these principles have appeared.

I am aware that my theory will meet with many obstinate and zealous opponents in Italy, since I use the simple terms of reason and science, unqualified by other arguments, and I maintain the absolute independence of free thought. Opposition is the more likely since science and freedom have been held responsible for sectarian intemperance, for the disturbances of the lower orders, for the inevitable disasters, the social and intellectual aberrations both of the learned and of the common peoples: science and freedom are held to have repeated the wiles of the serpent in Eden. But I am not uneasy at the thought of such opposition, since the progress of the human race has been owing to the fact that men convinced of the truth took no heed of the superstitious and interested war waged against them, sometimes from ignorance of things in general and of the law which governs civilization, sometimes from honest conviction.

The falsity of the accusation so generally made against science and freedom will appear if we consider that all the benefits we now enjoy, civil, scientific, and material, and which are especially enjoyed by the men who inveigh most strongly against these two factors, are solely derived from science and freedom. Without them we should be in the civil, intellectual, and material condition of the kingdom of Dahomey, and in the savage and barbarous state of all primitive peoples. If the misunderstanding of truth or an imperfect science is injurious, it must not therefore be rejected. Science is the constant and vigilant generator of all social improvement, and the most formidable enemy of the tyranny of a despot, of an oligarchy, or of the multitude, whether it take a religious or secular form. Since sharp instruments are powerful aids to civilization and material prosperity, they are not to be altogether set aside because some persons die miserably by them. As I have always maintained, and now repeat with still stronger conviction, science and freedom, the ever watchful guardians of the human race, are and must always remain the sole remedies for the evils which threaten us. I do not dispute the beneficent influence of other factors combined with these, but, taken alone, they would be powerless, and if science were eclipsed they would be transformed into fresh causes of servitude and ignorance, as it has often appeared in past times when the laws of science and of freedom have been set at nought. I therefore declare science and freedom to be the portion of all, and they should be as widely diffused as possible, since the way to knowledge and a worthy life is open to all men. It is a blasphemy against heaven and earth to presume, in the so-called interest of civil order, to keep the majority of the people in the ignoble servitude of ignorance, and men do not perceive that they thus become ready for any disturbance, and the tools of rogues and agitators.

I hope and pray that reverence for science and freedom may ever increase in Italy. It will be an evil day for her if such reverence be lost, and she will become with every other people in like case a wretched spectacle, and will fall into such abject misery as to become the laughing-stock of every civilized nation. It will be understood that I do not erect science and liberty into fetishes to be generally adored: they are only sacred means to a more sacred end, namely, to enable men to practise and not merely to apprehend the truth, which in other words is goodness. Science and freedom are valuable only so far as they teach, persuade, and enable us to improve ourselves and others; to exercise every private and public virtue; to claim only what is due to ourselves, while making the needful sacrifice to the common good; to have a respect for humanity, and to venerate knowledge only so far as it is combined with virtue; to attempt in every way to alleviate the miseries of others, to deliver their minds from ignorance and error; to do right for its own sake without coveting rewards in heaven or on earth; to submit to no dictation but that of truth and goodness.

With these sacred objects in view, whatever may be said to the contrary, we shall, in addition to the ineffable fruition of truth for its own sake, ever draw nearer to the ideal of the human race, and the time will come when an apparent Utopia shall be actually realized, in accordance with the mode and process of growing civilization. Not by excesses, tumults, and folly, but by unshaken firmness and tenacity we shall promote science and freedom. If this modest essay has done anything to show the necessity of such culture, and in what way science and freedom, and these two factors only, have brought forth fruit throughout the history of the human race, my labour will be richly rewarded, and I may say with satisfaction—dies non perdidi!



FOOTNOTES.

[1] Simrock wrote: "Myth is the earliest form in which the mind of heathen peoples recognized the universe and things divine."

[2] Kumarila, in reply to the opponents who inveighed against the immorality of his gods, wrote that the fable relates how Prajapati, the lord of creation, violated his own daughter. But what does this signify? Prajapati is one name for the sun, so called because he is the lord of light. His daughter Ushas is the dawn, and in declaring that he fell in love with her, it is only meant that when the sun rises, it follows the dawn. So also, when it is said that Indra seduced Ahalya, we are not to suppose that God committed such a crime, but Indra is the sun, and Ahalya is the night; and so we may say that the night is seduced and conquered by the morning sun. This, and other instances may be found in Max Mueller's History of Ancient Sanscrit Literature. Other instances might be given.

[3] Vico writes: "The human mind is naturally inclined to project itself on the object of its external senses." And again, "Common speech ought to bear witness to ancient popular customs, celebrated in times when the language was formed." So again: "Men ignorant of the natural causes of things assign to them their own nature...." In another place: "The physical science of ignorant men is a kind of common metaphysics, by which they assign the causes of things which they do not understand to the will of the gods." Again: "Ignorant and primitive men transform all nature into a vast living body, sentient of passions and affections."

[4] See, among other authorities for the most important phenomena of animals in their natural associations, the profoundly learned work by the well-known A. Espinas: Des societes animales: etude de Psychologie comparee, Paris, 2nd edit., 1879.

[5] I stated in my former essay on the fundamental law of the intelligence in the animal kingdom that philosophy was only the research into the psychical manifestations of the animal kingdom, and into those peculiar to man, in connection with the respective organisms in which they act, and with the estimate of their power as cosmic factors in the general harmony of the forces of the world.

[6] See, with respect to the primitive unity of the Aryan and Semitic races, the works of the great philologist, T.G. Ascoli, and others.

[7] "Although it (psychology), still makes some show, yet the old psychology is condemned. Its conditions of existence have disappeared in its new environment. Its methods no longer suffice for the increasing difficulties of the task and the larger requirements of the scientific spirit. It is constrained to live upon its past. Its wisest representatives have vainly attempted a compromise, loudly asserting that facts must be observed, and that a large part should be assigned to experience. Their concessions are unavailing, for however sincerely meant, they are not actually carried out. As soon as they set to work the taste for pure speculation again possesses them. Moreover, no reform of what is radically false can be effectual, and ancient psychology is a bastard conception, doomed to perish from the contradictions which it involves."—Ribot, Psychologie Allemande Contemporaine. Paris, 1879.

[8] Della legge fondamentale della intelligenza nel regno animale. Milano. Dumolard, 1877.

[9] See, among other works on the subject, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks, by Adalbert Kuhn; and Croyances et Legendes de l'Antiquite, by A. Maury.

[10] See Wuttke, Deutscher Volksaberglauber; Tylor, Primitive Culture; Hanusch, Rochholz, and others.

[11] The Worship of Animals and Plants, Part I. Fortnightly Review, 1869. The same argument is generally used; see Tylor, Early History of Mankind, 1865; Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 1870; Herbert Spencer, Fortnightly Review, May, 1870; Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvoelker; Bastian, Mensch in der Geschichte.

[12] See Alger's Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life.

[13] Arbrousset, The Basutos.

[14] Muir, Sanscrit Texts.

[15] Burton, West Africa; Tylor, Primitive Culture.

[16] Pictet, Origines Indo-Eoropeennes.

[17] The Hawaians, for example, have only one term for love, friendship, esteem, gratitude, benevolence, etc.—aloha; while they have distinct words for different degrees in a single natural phenomenon. Thus aneane, gentle breeze; matani, wind; pahi, the act of breathing through the mouth; hano, breathing through the nose. See Hale's Polynesian Dictionary. All peoples have slowly attained to typical ideas, and many are even now in process of formation. Thus, the Finns, Lapps, Tartars, and Mongols, have no generic words for river, although even the smallest streams have their names. They have not a word to express fingers in general, but special words for thumb, fore-finger, etc. They have no word for tree, but special words for pine, birch, ash, etc. In the Finn language, the word first used for thumb was afterwards applied to fingers generally, and the special word for the bay in which they lived came to be used for all bays. See Castren, Vorlesungen ueber Finnische Mythologie. This original confusion in the definition of scientific ideas, and the successive alternations by which they were re-cast, may be gathered from the analysis of language, and from facts which still occur among uncultured and ignorant people. When the inhabitants of Mallculo saw dogs for the first time, they called them brooas, or pigs. The inhabitants of Tauna also call the dogs imported thither buga, or pigs. When the inhabitants of a small island in the Mediterranean saw oxen for the first time, they called them horned asses.

[18] See Gaussin's Langue Polynesienne.

[19] This process of the evolution of primitive myth and of fetishes, will be more elaborately considered in Chapter VII., when we come to speak generally of the historic evolution of science and of myth. The repetition is not superfluous, since it is necessary for the complete understanding of my theory.

[20] For example, in ancient Roman mythology the Fons was first adored, then Fontus, the father of all sources, and finally Janus, a solar myth, the father of Fontus. Janus, as the sun, was the producer of all water, which rose by evaporation and fell again in rain.