The opponents of this doctrine maintain that in the formation of myths, words represent scarcely five per cent. Whatever may be the worth of this assertion, the purely philological explanation remains without value for psychology: it is neither true nor false--it does not solve the question; it merely avoids it. The word is only an occasion, a vehicle; without the working of the mind exciting it, nothing would change. Moreover, Max Mueller himself has recently recognized this.[50] The anthropological theory, much more general than the foregoing, penetrates further to psychological origins--it leads us to the first advances of the human mind. It regards the myth not as an accident of primitive life, but as a natural function, a mode of activity proper to man during a certain period of his development. Later, the mythic creations seem absurd, often immoral, because they are survivals of a distant epoch, cherished and consecrated through tradition, habits, and respect for antiquity. According to the definition that seems to me best adapted for psychology, the myth is "the psychological objectification of man in all the phenomena that he can perceive."[51] It is a humanization of nature according to processes peculiar to the imagination. Are these two views irreconcilable? It does not seem so to me, provided we accept the first as only a partial explanation. In any event, both schools agree on one point important for us--that the material for myths is furnished by the observation of natural phenomena, including the great events of human life: birth, sickness, death, etc. This is the objective factor. The creation of myths has its explanation in the nature of human imagination--this is the subjective factor. We can not deny that most works on mythology have a very decided tendency to give the greater importance to the first factor; in which respect they need a little psychology. The periodic returns of the dawn, the sun, the moon and stars, winds and storms, have their effect also, we may suppose, on monkeys, elephants, and other animals supposedly the most intelligent. Have they inspired myths? Just the opposite: "the surprising monotony of the ideas that the various races have made final causes of phenomena, of the origin and destiny of man, whence it results that the numberless myths are reduced to a very small number of types,"[52] shows that it is the human imagination that takes the principal part and that it is on the whole perhaps not so rich as we are pleased to say--that it is even very poor, compared to the fecundity of nature. Let us now study the psychology of this creative activity, reducing it to these two questions: How are myths formed? What line does their evolution follow? I The psychology of the origin of the myth, of the work that causes its rise, may theoretically, and for the sake of facilitating analysis, be regarded as two principal moments--that of creation proper, and that of romantic invention.