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 developed; when our functions of reason and intelligence still reach back involuntarily to those primitive forms of conclusion, and we live about half our lives in this condition."

We have already seen that Freud, independently of Nietzsche, has reached a similar standpoint from the basis of dream analysis. The step from this established proposition to the perception of the myths as familiar dream images is no longer a great one. Freud has formulated this conclusion himself.23

Rank24 understands the myths in a similiar manner, as a mass dream of the people.25 Riklin26 has insisted rightly upon the dream mechanism of the fables, and Abraham27 has done the same for the myths. He says:

"The myth is a fragment of the infantile soul-life of the people."

and

An unprejudiced reading of the above-mentioned authors will certainly allay all doubts concerning the intimate connection between dream psychology and myth psychology. The conclusion results almost from itself, that the age which created the myths thought childishly—