Why do humans fill the world with spirits and gods? The Italian anthropologist Tito Vignoli argues that myth springs from a natural faculty of apprehension, present in rudimentary form in animals, that turns perceived things into living agents. He compares animal and human perception, traces the historical evolution from myth to science, and closes with dreams, illusions and hallucination; its ethnology is that of the 1880s.
An ambitious early attempt at a psychology of religion, of interest to students of myth theory. Download the free EPUB.