behaviour of rational mentality in this regard has an essentially irrational character. We must, therefore, be on our guard, lest, by an air of intellectual superiority we become, like that "monstrously clever fellow" Jurgen, the mere sport of elementary spirits, or, by a culpable naïveté, make of the unconscious a god.

The point of view I want to present in this paper is based upon two postulates:

(a) That the myth, as the psychological currency of the prelogical psyche, can be fully understood only by an intuitional or prelogical attitude.

(b) That mythological formations being adaptation-survivals, gradually elaborated by the psyche through countless ages, are an invaluable guide in the shaping of our instinctual attitude to experience.

This, as you are aware, corresponds to the standpoint of the Zürich school which maintains that beneath the stratum of the personal there exists the impersonal or racial unconscious; so that, through the complicated problems of the personal struggle, there is woven both the wisdom and the blind authority of the ancestors. It seems to me, that unless we can accept the theory of the effective survival of racial inheritance as a constant source of unconscious motivation, the analogy with primitive mentality can have little or no significance.

Quite independent of this psychological view-point Lévy-Bruhl has come to a rather similar view in his own very clear-sighted investigation of primitive mentality.

In his recent book on this subject1 he attributes the primitive's deep distaste for abstract or "discursive operations of thought," his entire lack of intellect as a function of cognition, and his immediate and ineradicable belief in invisible agencies, spirits, souls, mana, etc. to the influence of inherited group ideas which he has termed "collective representations." The immediate certainty and binding authority of these representations spring from the fact, that they express the accumulated experience of the race. The hypothesis that these representations are ancestral survivals is born out by the primitive's well-known identification of the protecting spirits inhabiting the trees, streams, mountains, and even stones of his native land with the spirits of his ancestors. Behind his customs, his beliefs, his magical rites, his inordinate fears there loom perpetually the spirits of the dead. It is literally true to say that the primitive is lived by his ancestors, and it is, I think, impossible to understand the mind of the primitive without this key to the enigma. ■ Primitive Mentality, Lévy. Bruhl.

Med. Psych. IV

3

These "collective representations," which not only motivate the primitive's behaviour, but at the same time provide him with fully prepared interpretations of every unusual or accidental occurrence, are essentially mythological formations. To the prelogical mind a mythological statement is immediately convincing, whereas a rational inference would seem quite beside the mark.

So far as it is possible to determine no inferential step is made between perception and conclusion; hence these group-representations provide a sense of finality and conviction which leaves no margin of interest for further explanations.

The perception of the occurrence and the mythological interpretation of it are synchronous events, so that no thought is demanded. The occurrence is self-explained.

Not long ago I came across an example of this mythological interpretation among our own people. After a thunderstorm of great violence, when unusual phenomena were alleged to have been seen, a Norfolk peasant was overheard asking his neighbour, "Did you see the black horse in the sky?" The black horse is evidently a mythological projection, which carries the notion of destructive energy in a much more emphatic and picturesque way than the paraphrase I have just used. It fulfils a two-fold purpose. Not only does it mark the perception of an unusual occurrence, but gives it, at the same time, an appropriate dynamic or symbolical interpretation. The synthetic value of this mythological or intuitional statement is obvious. A purely intellectual understanding of the matter would at once dissect the experience into categories. We should speak of an outer electrical process taking place in the atmosphere, and an inner physiological coefficient involving the stimulation of certain neuronic elements associated with the concept horse, and the predicate black. The greater economy of the intuitional statement has a two-fold origin. On the one hand, it employs a symbol, which contains within itself associations fitted to express the total psychological reactions; while on the other, it entirely disregards the subject-object distinction and the whole causative sequence which supply the problem for the intellect.

This illustration raises two questions which, in my view, are of paramount importance. In the first place, has the symbolical statement a validity as regards subjective or psychological reality, equal to that of our rational conclusions relating to so-called objective reality? Secondly, is the indifference of the prelogical psyche to the nature of objective reality apparent or real?

I propose to deal with the second question first, coming back to the more important problem at a later stage.

Perhaps the most striking feature in all forms of prelogical functioning is a quite irrational indifference to the real nature of objective facts. We might almost conclude that objective reality was important merely for the purpose of calling forth the appropriate mythological formation. This, however, is not the case, since the primitive has in many ways a contact with his environment of a refinement and subtlety that is more than a match for civilized brains.

Lévy-Bruhl has provided us with yet another psychological concept which helps us to understand this riddle. In his earlier work, Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociétés Inférieurs, he laid especial stress upon the law of participation considered in relation to the principle of identity, and he termed the primitive's state of identity with his environment and tribal group participation mystique.

This concept is, I think, of great psychological importance, because, on the one hand, it explains the amazing cunning and instinctive sensibility of the primitive and, on the other, it helps us to understand his curious indifference to objective reality per se.

From the point of view of this concept the primitive is not yet distinct psychologically from his race, his ancestors, or the world in which he lives. He is continuous with his environment. Theoretically the possibility of psychological objectivity, i.e. the power of apprehending an object relatively uncontaminated by subjective contents, only comes into existence when the subject is able to appreciate himself as an object, i.e. as something distinct from the world.

Primitive man in the state of mystical participation has not yet achieved this individual orientation. Hence he has no feeling of injustice when arbitrarily arraigned to expiate some crime of which he is entirely innocent. Because a sense of justice is based upon an appreciation of the rights and claims of oneself as an individual distinct from society; and this the primitive still lacks.

On the other hand, this state of participation gives him an instinctive understanding of all natural objects in so far as they are able to affect his welfare. It is an understanding achieved not through a purely objective interest in the thing in itself, but through a spontaneous projection of libido into objects, to which he possesses an archetypal relation. The almost mystical relation existing between the primitive and the objects of his environment springs, therefore, from a subjectobject identification, by which he is intuitionally informed of the nature

of objects without the intervention of the rational process of cognition. The whole basis of objective reality rests upon an appreciation of the world as something distinct from ourselves. That is to say, it is a process of abstraction. To perceive a thing as it is, we abstract, as far as possible, ourselves from the thing. We let the object appear before us in its own right. To the prelogical mind of primitive man this feat of abstraction is not feasible. The world he lives in is entirely determined by his subjective representations. Objects cannot speak to him on their own account; but are immediately translated into their appropriate mythological setting. This does not mean of course that the primitive has not a very clear appreciation of his own interests, in so far as these are merely questions of perception. His perceptiveness, on the contrary, is extraordinarily acute. But a primitive in the state of mystical participation can neither contemplate himself nor anything else objectively. He has not yet achieved an integrated psychological organization.

Being psychologically merged in his group, he does not yet possess an individual judgment which could enable him to draw objective conclusions. All his conclusions are given from a priori representations whose pre-connections are rooted in ancestral or tribal experience.

Since, therefore, the prelogical or primitive psyche is, as it were, precluded from an objective appreciation of reality, we might try to discover whether its mythological formations correspond to some other kind of reality having no immediate relation to empirical fact.

Let us, for example, in the light of Lévy-Bruhl's concept examine one or two of the typical and widespread myths.

A glance at the various agencies claimed by legends to produce supernatural birth might perhaps give us a clue to our problem; since legends dealing with magical impregnation provide the frankest possible affirmation of the mystical connection we are trying to investigate. In the few examples I have chosen I would call your attention to the extraordinary range and variety of symbolified objects.

Bacchus, the son of Jupiter and Proserpine, was said to have been torn in pieces by the Titans, but his heart was pounded up and given by Jove in a drink to Semele, whence he was born again of her. This legend harmonizes with the practice among certain cannibal tribes of eating the heart or other organs of their foes for the alleged purpose of acquiring their virtues. In other myths the mere touch of the magical substance is enough to produce conception. From the blood of the mutilated Agdestis a pomegranate tree sprang up. Nana the nymph gathered and laid some of the fruit of it in her bosom, and hence Attis was born. Danae also

conceived Perseus through the shower of gold. Caeculus the founder of Praeneste was conceived by a spark that leaped into his mother's bosom. The Todas tell how an eagle fertilized a woman by sitting on her head. Medieval painters used to represent the Holy Ghost as entering the Virgin's ear in the form of a dove, or else hovering over her while the babe is carried by a ray of the sun towards the Virgin. Similarly Buddha entered his mother's right side, in the form of a white elephant. The wind and the sea are frequently endowed with fertilizing power in the birth of gods and heroes. Hera, for instance, conceived Hephaistos by simply inhaling the wind. Wenona quickened by the west wind brought Hiawatha to birth. Some of the Algonkins trace the lineage of mankind from two young squaws, who were impregnated by the foam of the sea and produced a boy and a girl. Fishes, flowers, jewels, pieces of bone from a dead man, or particular trees, stones, wells, herbs, etc. also figure largely as instruments of impregnation.

It is not necessary to extend the catalogue. The examples I have quoted are sufficient to show the wide range of libido-symbols1 which can become invested with magical fertilizing power. Some of these symbols, e.g. fish, bone, hand, etc. are frankly phallic, some, e.g. sun, wind, sea, etc. are general symbols of power or fructifying energy. But many have such a local particularity, e.g. certain traditional stones, wells, animals, herbs, etc. that we are driven to conclude that their magic is derived from particular ancestral associations, by which the subjectobject relation receives a tributary from an organized racial complex.

The life-giving release of libido invested in these subjective racial images can only be likened to the birth of some heroic figure, since, as we know, the activation of ancestral libido from its, hitherto, latent condition possesses unconditioned potentiality demanding an unconditioned mythological expression.

The point I want to bring out here is that the principle of participation operates selectively, so that we might almost liken the unconscious psyche to a pyramid whose base would represent such universal symbols as the sun, wind, sea, trees, etc., while the converging lines of the cone would suggest the increasing particularity of symbols linked up with particular tribal experience, e.g. totem animals, etc. This graphic figure representing the historical stratification of the unconscious would in the individual psyche have the personal unconscious as the apex of the pyramid.

I would now like to consider another class of myths, where the notion 1 Cf. Psychology of the Unconscious, Jung.