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Tito Vignoli - Myth and Science

T >> Tito Vignoli >> Myth and Science




If we examine this word with Pictet and others, we shall find that the
name of the plough comes from the Sanscrit _krt, krnt, kart_, to cleave
or divide. Hence _krntatra_, a plough or dividing instrument. The root
_krt_ subsequently became _kut_ or _kutt_, to which we must refer _kuta,
kutaka_, the body of the plough. This root _krt, kart_, is found in many
European languages in the general sense of cutting or breaking, as in
the old Slav word _kratiti_, to cut off. It is also applied to labour
and its instruments: _kartoti_, to plough over again, _karta_, a line or
furrow, and in the Vedic Sanscrit, _karta_, a ditch or hole. Hence the
Latin _culter_ a saw, _cultellus_, a coulter, and the Sanscrit
_kartari_, a coulter. The Slav words for the mole which burrows in the
earth are connected with the root _krt_, or the Slav _krat_. In very
remote times, men not only understood the object indicated in the word
for a coulter, but they were sensible of the image of the primitive
_krt_ and its affixes, which were likewise derived from the primitive
images, and with these they included the cognate images of the several
derivatives from the root. In these days the word coulter and the
Sanscrit _kartari_ are simply signs or phonetic notations, insignificant
in themselves, and everything else has disappeared. But in primitive
times an image animated the word, which by the necessary faculty of
perception so often described was transformed into a kind of subject
which effected the action indicated by the root. As this personality
gradually faded away, the actual representation of the image was lost,
and even its remote echo finally vanished, while the phonetic notation
remained, devoid of life and memory, and without the recurrence of
cognate images which strengthened the original idea by association. All
words undergo the like evolution, and this may be called the mythical
evolution of speech.

Thus the Sanscrit word for daughter is _duhitar_; in Persian it is
_dochtar_, in Greek [Greek: Thugater], in Gothic _dauhtar_, in German
_Tochter_. The word is derived from the root _duh_, to milk, since this
was the girl's business in a pastoral family. The sign still remains,
but it has lost its meaning, since the image and the drama have
vanished. This analysis applies to all languages, and it may also be
traced in the words for numbers. The number _five_, for example, among
the Aryans and in many other tongues, signifies _hand_. This is the
case in Thibet, in Siam, and cognate languages, in the Indian
Archipelago and in the whole of Oceania, in Africa, and in many of the
American peoples and tribes, where it is the origin of the decimal
system. In Homer we find the verb [Greek: pempazein], to count in fives,
and then for counting in general; in Lapland _lokket_, and in Finland
_lukea_, to count, is derived from _lokke_, ten; and the Bambarese
_adang_, to count, is the origin of _tank_, ten.

When the numerical idea of five was first grasped, the conception was
altogether material, and was expressed by the image of the five-fingered
hand. In the mind of the earliest rude calculators, the number five was
presented to them as a material hand, and the word involved a real
image, of which they became conscious in uttering it. The number and the
hand were consequently fused together in their respective images, and
signified something actually combined together, which effected in a
material form the genesis of this numerical representation. But the
material entity gradually disappeared, the image faded and was divested
of its personality, and only the phonetic notation five remained, which
no longer recalls a hand, the origin of the several numerals, nor words
connected with it. It is now a mere sign, apart from any rational idea.
The same may be said of the other numerals.

We give these few examples, which apply to all words, since they all
follow the same course, beginning with the real and primitive image,
subjectively effecting their peculiar meaning. Hence we see how the
intrinsic law of myth is evolved in every human act in diverse ways, but
always with the same results.

In fact, before articulate speech, for which man was adapted by his
organs and physiological conditions, was formulated into words for
things and words for shape, man like animals thought in images; he
associated and dissociated, he composed and decomposed, he moved and
removed images, which sufficed for all individual and immediate
operations of his mind. The relations of things were felt, or rather
seen through his inward representation of them as in a picture,
expressing in a material form the respective positions of figures and
objects which, since they are remote from him, can only be expressed by
such words as _nearer, lower_ or _higher, faint_ or _clear_, by more
vivid or paler tints, such as we see in a running stream, in the forms
of clouds, in the reciprocal relations of all objects represented in
painting.

In order to understand the primeval process of thought by means of
images, it is necessary to conceive such a picture as living and mobile,
and constantly forming a fresh combination of parts. Animals have not,
and primeval man had not, the phonetic signs or words which give an
individual character to the images, and so represent them that by
combining these images in an articulate form, thought may be
represented by signs; and in and through these a universal and objective
mode of exercising the intellectual faculty of reasoning has been
created.

Speech can, by means of reflex memory, produce at will the particular
images already classified in the mind, and this makes the process of
reasoning possible; since such a process becomes more easy by the use of
signs to which the attention can revert. The relative size of objects,
and the like qualities, which are at first regarded as so many different
intuitions in space, are defined by words or gestures, and are thus
subjected to comparative analogy; but in the early stages of language
these relations were presented in an extrinsic form by phonetic signs,
and became images which in some sort represented one particular state of
consciousness with respect to the two things compared. Galton, speaking
of the Damaras, tells us that they find great difficulty in counting
more than five, since they have not another hand with which to grasp the
fingers which represent the units. When they lose any of their cattle,
they do not discover the loss by the diminution of the number, but by
missing a familiar object. If two packets of tobacco are given to them
as the regulation price of a sheep, they will be altogether at a loss to
understand the receipt of four packets in exchange for two sheep. Such
examples might be multiplied to any extent.

We repeat that when not endowed with speech, or some analogous means,
animals and man think in images, and the relations between these images
are observed in the simultaneousness and succession of their real
differences; these images are combined, associated, and compared by the
development of reflex power, and hence arises the estimate of their
concrete relations. Of this we have another proof, observed by Romanes
in a lecture on the intelligence of animals, and confirmed by myself, in
the condition of deaf-mutes before they are educated, in whose case the
extrinsic sign and figure takes the place of the phonetic and articulate
sign. Where speech is wanting, it is still possible to follow a
conscious and imaginative process of reasoning, but not to rise to the
higher abstract ideas which may be generated by such reasoning. The
thought of deaf-mutes always assumes the most concrete form, and one who
was educated late in life informed Romanes that he had always before
thought in images. I know no instance of a deaf-mute who has
independently attained to an advanced intellectual stage, or who has
been able without education to form any conception of a supernatural
world. R.S. Smith asserts that one of his deaf-mute pupils believed,
before his education, that the Bible had been printed in the heavens by
a printing press of enormous power; and Graham Bell speaks of a
deaf-mute who supposed that people went to church to do honour to the
clergyman. In short, the intellectual condition of uneducated deaf-mutes
is on a level with that of animals, as far as the possibility of
forming abstract ideas is concerned, and they think in images. There is
a well-known instance in the deplorable condition of Laura Bridgman, who
from the time she was two years old, was deaf and dumb, blind, and even
without the sense of taste, so that the sense of touch was all that
remained. By persevering and tender instruction, she attained to an
intellectual condition which was relatively high. A careful study of her
case showed that she had been altogether without intuitive knowledge of
causes, of the absolute, and of God. Howe doubts whether she had any
idea of space and time, but this was not absolutely proved, since as far
as distance was concerned, she seemed to estimate it, by muscular
sensation. Everything showed that she thought in images. Although
without any sensation of light or sound, she made certain noises in her
throat to indicate different people when she was conscious of their
presence or when she thought of them, so that she was naturally impelled
to express every thought or sensation, not externally perceived, by a
sign; and this shows the tendency of every idea and image towards an
extrinsic form. She often conversed with herself, generally making signs
with one hand and replying with the other. It was evident that a
muscular sign or the motion of the fingers was substituted for the
phonetic signs of speech, and in this way ideas and images received
their necessarily extrinsic form. The image was embodied in a muscular
act and motion, and in this way thought had its concrete representation.
The same results would, as far as we know, be obtained from others in
the same unhappy conditions as Laura Bridgman.

It is therefore clear that primitive language was only a vocal and
individual sign of material images, and it was for a long while
restricted to these concrete limits. Since the vocal signs of the
relations of things are less easily expressed, these relations were at
first set forth by gestures, by a movement of the whole person, and
especially of the hands and face. This preliminary action is helped by
the imitative faculty with which children and uncultured peoples are
more especially endowed, of which we have also instances in the higher
animals nearest to man. The negroes imitate the gestures, clothing, and
customs of white men in the most extraordinary and grotesque manner, and
so do the natives of New Zealand. The Kamschatkans have a great power of
imitating other men and animals, and this is also the case with the
inhabitants of Vancouver. Herndon was astonished by the mimic arts of
the Brazilian Indians, and Wilkes made the same observation on the
Patagonians. This faculty is still more apparent in the lower races.
Many travellers have spoken of the extraordinary tendency to imitation
among the Fuegians; and, according to Monat, the Andaman islanders are
not less disposed to mimicry and imitation. Mitchell states that the
Australians possess the same power.

This fact also applies to the languages of extremely rude and savage
peoples. Some American Indians, for instance, help out their sentences
and make them intelligible by contortion of their features and other
gesticulations, and the same observation was made by Schweinwurth of an
African tribe. The language of the Bosjesmanns requires so many signs to
make the meaning of their words intelligible that it cannot be
understood in the dark. These facts partly explain the natural genesis
of human languages.

We have learned from our earlier observations that phenomena appear to
the perceptive faculty of primitive man as subjects endowed with power.
The subjectivity of these phenomena, their intrinsic conditions and
actions are fused into speech, which is their living and conscious
symbol; and it is clear that the evolution of language from the concrete
to the symbolical, and hence to the simple sign of the object, divested
of its original power, is analogous to that of myth.

This law of evolution also applies to the art of writing, which is at
first only the precise copy of the image; it is next transformed into an
analogous symbol, and then into an alphabetical sign, which serves as
the simple expression of the conception, divested of its originally
representative faculty. Hence it is apparent that the evolution of myth
conforms to the general law of the evolution of human thought, of all
its products and arts in their manifold ramifications. From the image,
the informing subject, from the conception and the myth, the necessary
cycle is accomplished in regular phases, wherever the ethnic temperament
and capacity and extrinsic circumstances permit it, until the rational
idea is reached, the sign or cipher which becomes the powerful
instrument of the exercise and generalization of thought. In order to
show the efficacy of the mythical and scientific faculty of thought
comprised in the systems of ancient and modern philosophy, and its slow
progress towards positive and rational science, we will adduce an
instance from the people in whom such an evolution was accomplished,
aided by all the civilized peoples in reciprocal communication with
them. Let us see how this faculty was manifested in the Greeks at a time
when they first attempted to reduce the earlier and scanty knowledge of
nature to a system.

In Greece the historical course of this faculty ramified into two
classes of research, which were at that time objective, the Ionic and
the Pythagorean schools. In the former, the phenomenon and nature were
assumed to be the direct object of knowledge, while in the latter the
object in view was the idea and harmony of things. Influenced by earlier
and popular traditions, a mythical and philosophic system arose in the
Ionic school, which was exclusively devoted to physical speculations. In
Lower Italy, on the contrary, and in colonies which were for the most
part Doric, a science was constituted which, although it included
physics and natural phenomena, did not only consider their material
value, but sought to extract from their laws and harmony a criterion of
good and evil. Ritter observes that the intimate connection between the
Pythagorean philosophy and lyrical music--of which the origin was sought
as a clue to explain the world--shows how far this philosophy was
consonant with Doric thought. This historic process is quite natural,
since the speculations of philosophy are first directed to physical
phenomena, as they are displayed in inward and in external life, and
then rise to the consideration of specific types, in a word, to the
general and the universal.

Throughout this philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from
the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the
intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with
the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of
things, Ionic speculation was developed before the Doric. The Eleatic
school followed from the two former, although its development was
contemporary with the more perfect stage of these, and its influence
upon them was to some extent reactionary.

Thales taught that everything was derived from one unique principle,
namely water. The ancients believed that the land was separated from the
water by a primitive and mythical process, a belief which had its source
in the appearance of aqueous and meteorological phenomena; so that the
teaching of Thales followed the earliest popular traditions, of which we
find traces in the Indies, in Egypt, in the book of Genesis, and in many
legends diffused through the world even in modern times. He said that
everything was nourished by moisture, from which heat itself was
derived, and that moisture was the seed of all things; that water is the
origin of this moisture, and since all things are derived from it it is
the primitive principle of the world. We see how much this theory is
concerned with natural phenomena in their life, nutrition, and birth by
means of seed. He regarded the world as a living being, which had been
evolved from an imperfect germ of moisture. This mode of animating the
world, which consists in tracing the development of a germ already in
existence, reappears in other parts of his philosophy. He saw life in
the appearance of death, and held the loadstone and yellow amber to be
animate bodies, declaring generally that the world is alive, and filled
with demons and genii.[32]

We trace the basis of these ideas in traditions prior to Thales,
declaring the world to be a living being, and that everything was
derived from a primitive condition of germs. The same opinion was held
by Hippo, by Diogenes of Apollonia, by Heraclitus, and by Anaxagoras.
Aristotle states that the theory of development by germs was extremely
ancient in his time. The other philosophers of the Ionic and successive
schools mingled these fanciful ideas with the systematic arrangement of
their theories as to the origin and constitution of the world, so that
it is unnecessary to refer to them, since the method and conceptions are
identical.

It is evident from this sketch that while thought gradually evolved a
more rational system of general knowledge, the earlier idols and
primitive mythical interpretations were not abandoned, although they
assumed a larger and more scientific form. Thales and others assigned a
mechanical origin to things, such as water, fire, or the like, which was
contrary to anthropomorphic ideas; yet they still regarded the world as
a living being, developed and perfected by the same laws and functions
as all plants and animals, and they peopled it with genii and demons,
thus handing on the earliest and rudest traditions of the race.

While the scientific faculty was gathering strength and leading the way
to a more rational consideration of the world and natural phenomena,
really advancing beyond the earlier ideas which had been almost wholly
mythical, myth was still the matrix of thought, although its
envelopment was partly rent asunder and was becoming transparent. From
this brief notice of the Ionic philosophy, sufficient for our purpose,
let us return to the Pythagorean school, in which, although the faculty
at work is essentially objective, there is a closer consideration of the
analogies between thought and the world, and the ground is more often
retraced, so that theory assumes a more intellectual form.

The Pythagoreans represented the origin of the world as the union of the
two opposite principles of the illimitable and the limited, of the equal
and the unequal. Yet they conceive this to be a primitive union, since
they formulated the supreme principle as equal--unequal (Arist. _Met_.
xii. 7.) They held the infinite to be _the place of the one_. There was
an attraction between the two principles, which was termed the _act of
breathing_; hence the void entered into the world and separated things
from each other. Thus their conception of the world was that of a
concourse of opposite principles. They represented its limits as a unity
and as the true beginning of multiplicity. They regarded the development
of the world as a process of life regulated by the primitive principles
contained in the world; its breath or life depended on the breaking
forth of the infinite void in Uranus, and the time which is termed the
_interval_ of all nature penetrates at once and with the breath into the
world. All therefore emanates from one, and all is at the same time
governed by one supreme power. Number is everything, and is the essence
of things, but the _triad_ includes all number, since it contains the
beginning, middle, and end. Everything is derived from the primitive
_one_ and from the principal number; and since this number in breathing
its vital evolution into the void is divided into many units, everything
is derived from the multiplicity of these units or numbers.

Since, by his idea of the source of universal order, Pythagoras partly
accepted the theocosmic monad as the final and necessary root of all
life, and of all that is knowable, he could not fail to see the
convertibility of the unit into the Being. But if the unit must always
precede the manifold, there is a first unit from which all the others
proceed; if this first and eternal unit is at the same time the absolute
being, it follows that number and the world have a common origin and a
common essence, and that the intrinsic causes and possible combinations
of number are virtually accomplished in the development of the world,
and these causes and combinations are ideal forms of this development.
The monad is developed by these laws through all the generative
processes of nature, while at the same time it remains eternal in the
system of the universe; so that things not only have their origin and
essence, their place and time according to numerical causes, but each is
in effect a number as far as its individual properties and the
universal process of cosmic life are concerned. The reason of the number
must depend upon the substance, by the configurations of which it is
defined, divided, added, and multiplied, and to this geometry is added,
which measures all things in relation to themselves and others. This
eternal cause makes it intelligible that if immaterial principles
precede and govern the whole material world, it is also by means of
these that the classification of science is in intrinsic agreement with
that of nature. Numbers have their value in music, in gymnastics, in
medicine, in morals, in politics, in all branches of science. The
Pythagorean arithmetic is the bond and universal logic of the knowable.
But at the same time Pythagoras and his school peopled the world with
demons and genii, which were the causes of disease; they did not abandon
the old mythical ideas of the incarnation of spirits and the
transmigration of souls--theories and beliefs which recur in nearly all
primitive and savage peoples.

In this vast Pythagorean scheme, which contrasts with that of the Ionic
school of physics, thought is more explicitly freed from the ruder
mythical ideas, and rises to a more intelligent and rational conception
of the world, but the ancient popular traditions still persist, and
there is an evident _entification_ of number. The primitive monad,
numbers, their genesis and relations, are not regarded as abstract
conceptions, necessary for understanding the order of nature, and a
merely logical function of the mind; they are the substantial essence
which underlies all mythical representations. Although the essential
life of the world is considered from a more abstract point of view, yet
the mythical analogy of animal life evidently finds a place in the
breath of the void and of time, assumed to be independent entities. The
subsequent train of beliefs in spirits, of their incarnations and
transmigrations, are closely connected with the phantasmagoria of the
past, and display their mythical genesis; yet by their deeper and more
explicit thought they may be said to infuse intellectual life into the
world and into science which relates to it. In this first rational
classification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and its
ideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation of
manifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamental
conceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of being
altogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific.

I must here be allowed to quote a hymn in the Rig-Veda, which was
historically earlier than the primitive philosophy of Greece, but which
reveals the same tendency, the same mythical and scientific teaching in
its interpretation of the world. In this hymn, which has been translated
and explained by Max Mueller, we see how boldly the problem of the origin
of the world is stated (hymn 129, book x.)--

"Nor Aught nor Nought existed; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death--yet was there nought immortal,
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound--an ocean without light--
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind--yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth,
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose--
Nature below, and power and will above--
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
The gods themselves came later into being--
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."

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