found themselves practising various rituals, and found the rituals generating emotions. The myth explains the purpose both of the ritual and of the emotion. It is the product of the vivid fancy of primitive men in an un- fathomed world.
To primitive man, and to ourselves on our primitive side, the universe is not so much unfathomable as unfathomed — by this I mean undiscriminated, unanalyzed. It is not a complex of definite unexplained happenings, but a dim background shot across by isolated vivid effects charged with emotional excitements. ‘The very presuppositions of a coherent rationalism are absent. Such a rationalism presupposes a complex of definite facts whose interconnections are sought. But the prior stage is a background of indefiniteness relieved by vivid acts of definition, inherently isolated. One exception must be made in favour of the routine of tribal necessities which are taken for granted. But what lies beyond the routine of life is in general void of definition; and when it is vivid, it is disconnected.
