Every one must perceive that the study of the origin of myths has an important bearing on the clear and positive knowledge of mankind. In modern times biological science, such as ethnography and anthropology, have not only thrown much light on the genesis of organic bodies, of animals and of man, but they have afforded very important aid to psychological research, on account of the close connection between psychology and the general physical laws of the world. The mythical faculty in man, and its results, have received much light from these sciences, since the modifications induced in individuals and in peoples by many natural causes, organic or climatological, are based upon their physiological conditions. In the first chapters of Herbert Spencer's book on Sociology, there is a masterly investigation into the changes produced by climate, with its accidents and organic products, on the peculiar temperament of different peoples and races, and we must refer our readers to his admirable summary. We avail ourselves of the aid afforded by all these branches of science in order to comprehend the true nature of man, and the place which he really occupies in the animal creation. Man should be estimated as all other products and phenomena of nature are estimated, according to his absolute value, divested, as in the case of all other physical and organic sciences, of preconceived ideas or prejudices in favour of the supernatural. He should be studied as in physics we study bodies and the laws which govern them, or as the laws of their motions and combinations are studied in chemistry, allowance always being made for their reciprocal relations, and for their appearance as a whole. For if there be in the universe a distinction of modes, there is no absolute separation of laws and phenomena. The various branches of science are only subjective necessities, consequent on the successive and gradual order of our comprehension of things; they are classifications of method, with no special reference to the undivided personality of nature. All are parts of the whole, and so also the whole is revealed in its several parts. They come to be in thought, as well as in reality, reciprocal conditions of each other; and he who is able to solve the problem of the world correctly in a simple movement of an atom, would be able to explain all laws and all phenomena, since every thing may ultimately be reduced to this movement. It is precisely this which has been attained by certain laws, so that the study of man must not be dissociated from this conception. It is necessary to regard him as a product of the forces of nature, with which he has certain properties in common. Although man may appear to be a special and peculiar subject, yet he is connected with the universal system in which he lives by the elements, phenomena, and forces of which he consists.