Tito Vignoli

“ This remarkable process could only go on in and through those peoples whose vigour and pride equalled their physical strength; to whom it is death to sit still, and life to be always busy, to transform all things to their own image, to dominate over all—over God by the intellect, over the world by science, over other races by force of arms. ”

“ It must not be supposed, as it is asserted with ever-increasing clamour, that such a method and theory can ever destroy the civilized basis of society, and the morality and dignity with which it should be informed, as if we were again reducing man to the condition of a beast. Such an outcry is in itself a plain and striking proof that we have not yet emerged from the mythical age of thought, since it is precisely a mythical belief which prompts this angry protest against the noble and independent research after truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ History speaks clearly; there is an embryo of knowledge, a vacillating science; the infancy, youth, maturity, and death of a theory; morality is crass, the spirit meagre or acute; the mind adapts itself, logic is maimed; there is a conflict of ideas, the inspiration of science, truncated thoughts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thought is itself the source of tormenting cares in this earthly slavery, yet the sense of power makes it invincible, firm in its purpose to endure all sufferings, to be superior to all events; assured of future freedom, and always on the way to achieve it by reverting to the grandeur of its innate perfection ”

“ The primitive and constant act of all animals, including man, when external or internal sensation has opened to them the immense field of nature, is that of entifying the object of sensation, or, in a word, all phenomena. Such entification is the result of spontaneous necessity, by the law of the intrinsic faculty of perception; it is not the result of reflection, but it is immediate, innate, and inevitable. It is an eternal law of the evolution of the intelligence, like all those which rule the order of the world. ”

“ This impulse of the imaginative faculty combined with the process of reason is most plainly seen in the conceptions of the three great poets of the fifth century, Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles. In the words of Pindar: "All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus: he can draw light from darkness, and can veil the sweet light of day in obscurity. No human action escapes him: happiness is found only in the way which leads to him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The unseen wind which rises and falls, the moving cloud, the flash of lightning and roar of thunder, the dawn, the rushing torrent—when any of these things are perceived by animals and primitive men, they are endowed with subjective life and are supposed to act with deliberate purpose; and this is the first form of myth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Science, like myth, observes, analyzes, and classifies observations, and gradually rises to a conception of the specific type, and hence to a unity which becomes ever more complete and universal.
In the composition and mythical animation of the world, whether by special personifications or by those which are typical, and by the sensations corresponding to them, man makes a fanciful classification of phenomena, he observes and studies their beneficial or injurious effects on himself, and in this empirical way is able to estimate their value. ”

“ Yet if we suddenly and unexpectedly see some object move in a strange way, which we know from experience to be inanimate, the innate inclination to personify it takes effect, and for a moment we are amazed, as if the phenomenon were produced by deliberate power proper to itself. ”

“ We do not, therefore, divide man from other animals, but rather assert that many proofs and subtle analyses show the identity of their intelligence in its fundamental elements, while the difference is only the result of a reaction of the same intelligence on itself. Such a theory does not in any way interrupt the natural evolution and genesis of the animal kingdom, while the distinctive peculiarity of man is shown in an act which, as I believe, clearly explains the new faculty of reason acquired by him. ”

“ While the animation of special objects by animals generates actual myths, yet it only occurs in the acts of momentary and transient perception; they are born and die, they arise and are dissolved in the very act of production, and they neither have nor can have retrospective or future influence on the animal. The world, its laws and phenomena, form for him one universal and persistent myth, so far as he feels himself constrained to vivify and transform them into subjects actuated by will. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For if, as in fact is the case, and as the progress of knowledge and, of human civilization will abundantly show, the true and eternal laws which make society possible, and consequently its standard of righteousness, are innate and genuine results of universal laws, it is impossible for science to destroy the inevitable order of things, and to reduce mankind to a hideous chaos. ”

“ When this evolution takes place in peoples and races which are incapable of improvement, or have a limited capacity for advanced civilization, the faculty of myth remains in the ascendant; and as past and present history shows, mythical stagnation and intellectual barrenness may follow, until intellectual development is arrested and even destroyed. If on the other hand the evolution takes place in peoples and races capable of indefinite civilization, myth gradually disappears and science shines forth victoriously. ”

“ In fact, as Silvestro Centofonti observes in a lecture on the characteristics of Greek literature, the grand figure of the Æschylean Prometheus is a poetic personification of Thought, and of its mysterious fates in the sphere of life as a whole. First, in its eternal existence, as a primitive and organic force in the system of the world; then in the order of human things, fettered by the bonds of civilization, and subject to the necessities, lusts, and evils which constantly, arise from the union of soul and matter in unsatisfied mortals. ”

“ Thus every form, every object, every external phenomenon becomes vivified and animated by the intrinsic consciousness and personal psychical faculty of the animal itself. Every object, fact, and phenomenon of nature will not merely appear to him as the real object which it is, but he will necessarily perceive it as a living and deliberating power, capable of affecting him agreeably or injuriously. ”

“ In abstract, intellectual conceptions, such as those of equality, distance, number, and the like, the same faculty and the same elements are at work as in those which express physical and moral qualities. These conceptions, which as civilization advances ultimately become mere intellectual symbols necessary for logical speech, are at first formed by the actual comparison of things, and therefore by the aid of the senses. Even if we were to assert with some schools of thought that they were formed a priori in the mind, sensation would still be necessary as the occasion of displaying them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When Christianity began, pagan rationalism had arrived at the idea of a spiritual and directing power, organically identical with the universe. It was neither the Olympus of the common people, nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the conscious and inevitable order of nature. Although, either as an Olympus or as a dogma, the deity was confounded with men or constrained them to follow a more rational rule of life, yet paganism clearly distinguished the gods from men in their concrete personality, and the action of humanity was therefore distinct from that of the deity. ”

“ Science is, in fact, the de-personification of myth, arriving at a rational idea of that which was originally a fantastic type by divesting it of its wrappings and symbols. In the natural evolution of myth, man passes from the extrinsic mythical substance to the intrinsic ideal by the same intellectual process, and when the types have become ideas, he carries on intrinsically the entifying process which he first applied to the material and external phenomena. ”

“ We are only giving the natural history of the intelligence, which necessarily excludes the analytic and refining processes of rational science. An educated man will, for example, say or write that identity is a most important principle of logic as well as that of contradiction, although he is perfectly aware that such expressions only imply an abstract form of cognition; he follows the natural and primitive process of the intellect, and for the moment expresses these conceptions as if they were real entities in the organism of science and of the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no people, ancient or modern, civilized or savage, by whom it has not been practised; the fact is proved by history, philology and ethnography. But if the worship of the dead is a constant form, manifested everywhere, it flourishes and is interwoven with a multitude of other mythical forms and superstitious beliefs which cannot in any way be reduced to this single form of worship, nor be derived from it. This worship is undoubtedly one of the most abundant sources of myth, and Spencer, with his profound knowledge and keen discernment, was able to discuss the hypothesis as it deserves ”