Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/233

Rh Elsewhere Vico terms the first epoch the poetic epoch, saying that poets were the first philosophers. In this age we have expression given to the outlook of the senses and the imagination in default of rationalised activity, and the outlook is chieﬂy conditioned by fear. This is the age in which nature is animated and deified by the poetic imagination: self-surrender and piety prevail, whilst manners remain rude and barbarous. There follows an epoch of partial awakening. Still later comes the era of complete awakening, of enlightened reason, and of humanitarianism.

In German philosophy, Feuerbach referred religion to anthropomorphism, becoming thereby the real founder of the Hegelian radical left. In this teaching Feuerbach was followed by Strauss, and above all by Stirner and Marx. In England, Spencer, and Tyler the ethnologist, studying primitive man, perfected Comte's doctrine in certain details.

This problem, or rather these problems, cannot be fully considered here, but for our purposes the following points must be emphasised. First of all I should like to render my terminology precise. Following Plato's example, I wish to take my stand with those who replace the term anthropomorphism by the term myth, and to speak therefore of mythopoiesis, which is contrasted with critical, scientifically precise thought and behaviour of human beings vis-à-vis the world. Behaviour of human beings, let me repeat, for we are concerned, not with religion alone, but also with morality, with the whole conduct of man in relation to the world and to society. At a certain stage of development man is not only characterised by having a mythical religion, but in addition his philosophy is mythical; mythical too are his poetry and his art, his ethics and his economics, his language. To express the matter brieﬂy, the essence of myth is found in man's purely objective attitude, in man's complete self-surrender to the object, in his explanation of the world and of himself by analogies, and by hasty analogies. Contrasted with this are scientific and critical thought and conduct. By the critical mind, things are deduced from other things as a result of careful observation and comparison; the critical thinker generalises and makes abstractions; he thinks, in fact, thinks scientifically and critically.

Thus the historical significance of Kantian criticism arises out of the way in which it conceives the attitude of the