Chapter VII · (continued 2)

We know that the intelligence does not only understand objects, but their relations to each other, by means of its comparative faculty; these relations were, as in the case of animals, at first intuitively perceived by direct observation and the alternate and reciprocal motion of the images, and they were first presented to the imagination and then embodied in speech. We have said in the foregoing chapters that in primitive thought these relations involved an active entity, and were in a word entified. Plato, pursuing his intellectual process of reasoning, and the reciprocal properties of ideas, noted the ideality of these relations so far as they are a psychical representation, and hence he was constrained by the unconscious evolution of thought to affirm that an idea was present in every relation, and thus the great, the little, the less, the more, had their ideal representatives in the general construction of his theory. But man is not only an intellectual, but an active, sentient, living being, tending to an object as an individual and a social subject. So that he not only attains to the understanding of ideal truth, but also of the good and the beautiful. According to Plato, the Good and the Beautiful must also necessarily be Ideas of a general character, like those which embrace all ideal relations whatever. Since they are universal, and due to the innate impulse of thought towards concentric ascension, they must rank as the sum and apex of ideas, so that the Good is emphatically the Idea, or God. On turning to the world of sensations, or of particular objects, ideas are the eternal model (paradigm) according to which things are made; these are the images (idoli) of which the others are the imperfect copies (mimesi). The world of sense is itself only a symbol, an allegory, a figure. As in the sensible world there is a scale of beings from the lowest to the most perfect, that is to the material universe, so in the sphere of intellect, the type of the world, ideas are combined together by higher ideas, and these again by others still higher, and so on to the apex, the ultimate, supreme, omnipotent Idea, the Good which includes and sums up the whole.

Plato holds that matter is not the body, but that which may become the body by the plastic action of the idea, as Weber well expresses it; matter considered in itself is the indefinite (apeiron), the indefinable (aoriston), and the amorphous, and it is co-eternal with ideas, and inert; from the union of ideas and matter the cosmos had its origin, the image of the invisible deity, God in power, the living organism (Zoon), possessing a body, sense, a definite object, a soul. The body of the universe has the form of a sphere, the most beautiful which can be conceived; the circle described in revolving is also the most perfect motion.

The stars first had their source in the Idea of Good; first the fixed stars, then the planets, then the earth, created deities; the earth produced organized beings, beginning with man, the crowning work and object of all the rest; the fruits of the earth were made to nourish him, and animals were made to become the abode of fallen souls. Man, the microcosm, is reason within a soul, which is in its turn contained in a body. The whole body is organized with a view to this reason. The head, the seat of reason, is round because this is the most perfect form. The breast is the seat of generous passions, while the bestial appetites are found in the belly and intestines.

The human soul, like the soul of the world, contains immortal and mortal elements; the intelligence or reason, and sensuality. The immortality of the soul is also proved by the memory. The subsequent union of life and matter in the production of the universe is the work of an intermediate, equivocal being, the demiurgos. Thus Plato opposes the eternity of the intelligence to Ionic materialism, and the eternity of matter to the monistic theory of the Eleatics.

In the genesis of nature we again find the synthetic conception of the elements, which he estimates to be four; to which geometrical forms correspond, and the world was finally organized after its human type. He divides the soul into several distinct and independent powers, which are ever revolving between life and death: they inhabit the stars and depend upon them, since the soul which has been righteous on earth will be happy after death in the star to which it was originally destined; but those who on earth only desire here bodily pleasures will wander as shades round the tombs, or will migrate into the bodies of various animals. He constitutes the stars into contingent and sensible gods: they have beautiful and immortal bodies of a round form, and are made of fire. He asserts poetic inspiration and madness to be the result of demoniac possession, and says with Socrates that those who deny demoniac powers are themselves demoniacs.

We see from this account the mythical origin of all that concerns the organization and genesis of the world, the destinies and nature of the soul, since these are sublimated myths; the elements are first regarded as deities, and the world is made in the image of man, and considered to be alive; the stars and the earth are endowed with life and intelligence; the fate of souls before and after death, their recollection of a prior existence, their transmigrations and wanderings around the tombs, demoniac possession in inspiration and madness, are all very ancient mythical representations, which form a great part of the theoretical and spiritual cosmogony of savages in all times and places. We have seen that not only relatively civilized peoples, but those which are quite savage divide souls into distinct parts: throughout Africa, America, and Asia, there is a belief in the transmigration of souls into animals, plants, and other objects. The Tasmanians believed that their souls would ascend to the stars and abide there; and all savages hold the demoniac possession of inspired persons, of madmen, and of the sick, which has led to what may be called a diabolic pathology. The general conception of the world as a living animal, with all the tendencies ascribed to it by Plato, is only the primeval fact of the animation and personification of phenomena applied to the general idea of the universe. Hence it is easy to see how much of Plato's physics and psychology are due to the necessary and historic course of myth, and to the schools into which myth had been modified before his time.

We must dwell more particularly on his theory of ideas, since in this the advance made by Plato in the evolution of myth really consists, and it marks a very definite stage which had and still has a powerful influence on subsequent and modern thought.

We have already shown how, by the logical power of thought, this phase in the ideal evolution of myth was reached, and we have traced it in an inchoate form in various rude peoples, as well as in its ultimate modification in Plato. In his writings it takes the form of a complete, vast, and organic theory. The logical conceptions and representative ideas, idols peculiar to the mind, which were at first involved in fetishtic and anthropomorphic images, are now divested of their earlier wrappings, and are classified as the intellectual ideas which they really are, and which they have become by the innate and reflex exercise of human thought. But on account of the faculty which ever governs our immediate perception of internal and external things they could not in Plato's time, nor indeed in that of many subsequent philosophers, remain as simple intellectual signs of the process of reason. This faculty influenced these conceptions, these psychical forms, whether particular, specific, or general, and they became living subjects, like phenomena, objects, shades, images in dreams, normal and abnormal hallucinations. Thus the Ideas in Plato became, reflectively and theoretically, entities with an intrinsic existence, eternal, divine, and absolute essences. But the fetish, the anthropomorphic idol, was not only regarded as a living but as a causative subject; the same power was likewise infused into the Ideas, and they were held to be causes of particular things, of which they were the earlier and eternal type. Thus the myth in the Platonic Ideas became scientific, but it continued to be a myth; the substance varied, but the form was the same. The objective phenomena of the world had first been personified, or their fanciful images were assumed to be objective; now the world of reason was personified, and mythology became intellectual instead of cosmic.

Those who opposed Plato's theory of ideas said that he realized abstractions, or personified ideas; but no one, as I think, perceived the natural process which led him to do so, nor explained the faculty by which he was necessarily influenced. Plato's theory was only an ultimate phase of the evolution of the vague and primitive animation of the world, which had passed through fetishism, polytheism, and the worship of the elements of nature, and had reached the entification and subjectivity of ideas, which was also attained by natural science, after passing through its mythical envelopment. We have noted the causes, which in the case of the earlier philosophers happened to be objective, while they were in Plato's case subjective, owing to the character and temperament of his mind; both conduced to the development and æsthetic splendour of this teaching among the Greeks. The teaching of Plato, which had more or less influence on all the earlier civilized peoples, of his own and subsequent times, and which was also involved in the mythical representations of later savages, assumed an aspect which varied with the special history, the ethnic temperament, the geographical and extrinsic conditions of different peoples; but considered in itself, it is always the same, and is the necessary result of the evolution of myth and of thought. Since the evolution of myth leads to the gradual genesis of science, which becomes more rational as myth is transformed from the material to the ideal, ideas are substituted for myths, and laws, as Vico well observes, for the canons of poetry.

This noble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideas resembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supreme Idea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to another mythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it was afterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute. This was fused with the Logos, the Platonic demiurgos of Messianic ideas, and afterwards produced the universal philosophy and religion of Catholicism, which dominated and still dominates over thought with vigorous tenacity, and extends into all the civilized world inhabited by European races. We do not only trace the same thought, modified, classified, and perfected in the Fourth Gospel, in the Councils, the Fathers, and the schoolmen, but also in independent philosophies. In our own time it has assumed new forms, derived from the rapid progress made in cosmic and experimental sciences, even in those which are apparently the most rationalizing. It is manifest in Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, nor is it difficult to trace it in the latest and artificial theories of the schools of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In all these cases the entification of logical conceptions is evident; in all there is an arbitrary personification of a conception or of a fundamental Idea.

In order fully to understand the evolution of thought in myth and science, it is necessary to consider the other schools which arose in Greece, prior to, and contemporaneously with, Plato, as we shall thus obtain a more comprehensive idea of the course of such a development. In addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the universe.

In an intellectual people like the Greeks there arose, in addition to the speculative theories already mentioned, other opinions which were derived from minds singularly free from mythical ideas; the world was considered as a concourse of independent atoms; its genesis thus became more conformable with abstract mathematical calculation, effected by this combination of simple bodies and the evolution of elements. This was what Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus undertook to teach, passing beyond the natural and ideal myths, in order to take their stand on the movement of isolated parts as the maker of the universe. Hence followed the theory of atoms, and the mechanical construction of the world, of bodies and souls, their continual composition and decomposition. Since, however, these were mere speculations, not supported by experimental methods and adequate instruments, mythical forms were confounded with the mechanical explanation of the world, such as the altogether anthropomorphic conception of gods who were dissolved and formed again; the sensible effluvium from images, an effluvium which revealed the ancient belief in the normal and abnormal personification of imaginary forms, and of ideas. Yet the character of this teaching was progressive and rational in comparison with the mythical and ideal theory of Plato, and with the schools and religions which emanated from him, even up to our time, and thought was strongly stimulated in its opposition to the continuance of myth.

The influence of this school was confirmed by the Aristotelian teaching; if on the one side Aristotle inclined towards the mythical entities of Plato, and the old zoomorphic conception of the world, on the other his theory of perception and of ideas, his amazing observations in physiology and anatomy, and his natural classification of the animal kingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an a posteriori method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposed it to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas of cosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, his conception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in all things, were indeed obstinately maintained by the philosophy of Catholics and schoolmen, and served as an obstacle to the real progress of science; but on the other hand, his general method of observing nature, the discoveries which he made, and the tendency of his researches, as well as the importance he assigned to consciousness in the formation of ideas, did much to foster independent inquiry in the history of human thought; and coupled with the earlier mechanical schools, he prepared the way for the evolution of modern science. This is not the place for tracing the simultaneous course of the evolution of the ideal and mechanical schools during the ages which separate us from their origin; and while the influence of the one gradually waned, the other gained strength, although in a sporadic way, first among privileged minds, and then more generally.

It necessarily happened that as the evolution of thought went on, impelled by its early tendencies, both mechanical and positive, the ideal system was also modified, and gave place to sounder and truer theories. This great fact, the ultimate evolution of our own time, was effected on the one side by psychological analysis, and on the other by the direct and experimental observation of nature. Setting aside the gradual preparation which led up to this point, we can consider Descartes and Galileo as the representatives of these two great factors; since the one by the analysis of thought, the other by natural experiments, overthrew the mythical ideas, although without being aware that the achievement would produce such grand results.

The Platonic Ideas were objective to the mind, and independent of it, since they were regarded as a divine, concrete, absolute world in themselves. The earlier evolution of myth and science relied upon this and were resolved into it. But we know that the process of thought is continuous in historic races, and that myth is gradually divested of its personality and assumes a more intellectual form in the mind. Thus the material Idea passed into an intellectual conception; that which first appeared in an objective and extrinsic form became subjective and intrinsic, a transition which was effected by the nominalists. This gave rise to a cognition which was altogether psychological; at first reality was wholly objective, and the ideas were only a sublime intellectual myth, but now the objective world disappeared, and the intellect which formulated the conception was the only real thing. In virtue of the faculty of entification, only the mind and its ideas were real, the world and all which it contained had a doubtful existence. This tendency had its ultimate expression in Fichte, who created the universe by means of the Ego, thus transforming the earlier objective myth into one which was wonderfully subjective. Descartes doubted about everything beyond the range of his own thought, and was the first to overthrow the former ideal realism, and to lead the way to science, and to more rational analysis. To him the teaching of Spinoza and Kant was really due, as well as the English schools which had so much to do with the destruction of the earlier mythical edifice of ideas.

But, as I have already observed, if this great rational progress were important on the one side, on the other it produced a more spiritualized form of myth, namely the subjective, which became still more powerful in the philosophy of Kant. While some thinkers sought to resolve and dissolve the objective myth, they did it in such a way as to add strength to the subjective form of myth and science, for which Descartes had prepared the way; the theory of Spinoza and of the German school in general fundamentally consists in the substitution of entified forms and dialectics of the mind for the earlier objective forms of ideas. A great error was rectified, and the former phase of the intellectual evolution of myth disappeared, in favour of another which, although still erroneous, was more rational and independent.

The subjective and still mythical representations, either of the mind or of external objects, were afterwards reduced to true science by positive and experimental methods, aided by instruments, and confirmed by the discoveries of Galileo and of his disciples throughout the civilized world. He was in modern times another great factor of the dissolution of myth, so far as it is definitive. Nature was made subordinate to weight and measure, and to their mathematical and mechanical proportions in various phenomena; these were deduced from experiment and the use of instruments, the factors which in the hands of Galileo and his great successors in all civilized nations, destroyed and are still destroying the old mythical conception of the world. In astronomy they overthrew the catholic tenet of the geocentric constitution of the heavens; they shattered the spheres in which they were confined, opened infinite space, and peopled it with an infinite number of stars, and in the attraction of gravity they discovered the universal law of motion in the firmament. Thus all the mythical representations of the system of the world, whether Aristotelian, Ptolemaic, or Biblical, vanished for ever, and the great zoomorphic body of the universe was dissolved; to be replaced by worlds circulating in infinite space, subject to the laws of number and of geometry.

Measure, weight, and proportion were applied to all celestial and terrestrial phenomena, and physics, chemistry, and all the organic sciences became the manifestation of facts, of observed and calculated laws, arranged in a natural order, and in this way an immense advance was made in all branches of science. The history of mankind, first regarded as the arbitrary arrangement of a superior being, as it was formulated in the teaching of Judaism and Christianity, had its own laws in the facts of which it consisted, and thus the mythical conception which endowed it with personal life was dissolved. The origin of things was explained by this method of observation, and by these positive conceptions; the records which had hitherto been regarded as a divine, extrinsic revelation came to be considered as simple documents, in which truth was to be separated from the myth which obscured and encompassed it. So by degrees, from fact to fact, from analysis to analysis, by observation, experiment, and decomposition, the rational, mechanical explanation arose and gathered strength. The generation of things, the variety of phenomena and their order, were derived from the primitive chemical atom, and from the various changes of form and rapidity of motion to which they are subjected. The old conception of atoms, which had never been forgotten, and which had unconsciously swayed and influenced the minds of men, reappears; but it reappears transformed by observation, by weight and measure and experiment, and it has become a science instead of a simple speculation. The atomistic evolution of the ancients, accepted by one school of speculative thought, which sought to overthrow the mythical representation of the world, was only an isolated anticipation of a few philosophers; it has now become a scientific evolution, common to all modern civilization. The theory of descent, transformation, and the general evolution of species, followed as a necessary corollary and immediate result of the dissolution of Plato's mythical conception of specific ideas, and of all the generic but material personifications with which nature had been peopled. When such conceptions of the ideal world were dissipated, those of the actual world of nature soon followed, and this de-personification of natural, mythical species in the vast organic kingdom is one of the most splendid intellectual achievements of the age.

This victory of the natural sciences has reacted on those which are psychological, and on the theory of the mind, and has subjected them to the necessities and form of this new phase of the evolution of thought. The subjective had been substituted for the objective myth and had created the forms of mind, its logical laws and intrinsic process, the objective synthesis of the world, and it was now influenced by the stupendous discoveries and analyses of other sciences, so that psychology was in its turn transformed into a science, not only of observation, but of experiment. Measure, weight, numerical proportion, in short the experimental method, took possession of the facts, acts, and processes of the mind, as of every other object and subject of nature. In addition to the great names of modern psychologists in England, we may mention among other experimental psychologists in Germany, Fechner, Wundt, Lotze, Helmholtz, Weber, Kammler, etc.; illustrious men in France and elsewhere might also be cited to show what progress has been made and is about to be made in this field. The destruction of myth and of the subjective myths of psychology is always going on, and a positive science of mental phenomena has arisen, like that of natural phenomena. The ultimate phase of myth is so near its end that it has been possible to create a psychology implying the absence of a soul. The scientific faculty has now indeed a complete ascendency over the mythical representation with which it was originally coeval.

Yet we do not mean to say that myth is extinct. In the case of the great majority of the human race, a small and elect portion excepted, myth and all the superstitions which proceed from it persist in an ideal, cosmic, spiritual, or religious form, and these are only slowly disappearing among the common people, and even among the educated classes. Owing to the primordial and innate necessity which it is so difficult to overcome, science itself still nourishes myths within its pale, although unconsciously and in their most rational form. Within our own recollection the imponderable was a tenet of physics, and this was indeed, in spite of all the enlightenment of science, a mythical entification of forces. The same mythical entifications were found in physiology, in chemistry, in nearly all the sciences. Undoubtedly these scientific myths had no anthropomorphic value, yet they are notwithstanding truly mythical entifications, inasmuch as they virtually personify laws, or mere modes of motion.

Ether, according to our present conception of it, differing in its laws and influences from the atoms which constitute the world, and working among and above them, is perhaps only a grand myth like that of the imponderable, which has been exploded; that is, it is held to be a material entity, while it may be only another modification of the elementary matter in a state differing from the three already known to us; some of Crooke's late experiments on one condition of extremely gaseous matter leads to this assumption. The divided forces of matter, and the dualism which still survives, are also mythical conceptions. Although so much progress has been made in a rational direction, and truth is widely diffused, yet the old mythical instinct constantly reappears in some form or other. I must be permitted to say that this is an evident proof of the truth of my theory. Unless myth were due to an intrinsic psychical and organic law, it would not so persistently reappear. As soon as men are rationally conscious of this entifying faculty and its immediate effects on knowledge, the illusion will cease. Myth will be destroyed in every kind of facts and phenomena, and science, no longer the unconscious victim of this illusion, will advance with caution and assurance.