The Nature of Myths

Extract

Among the many subjects that come within the range of social anthropology, the one dealt with in this article may at first glance seem the remotest from the border area between biology and social anthropology, the least apt “to reveal a basic problem of bio-anthropology.” Is not the realm of myth that of those incorporeal beings called gods? A realm where the laws of matter and of life are abolished? The one in which thought takes seemingly unrestricted flight and shows itself capable of begetting worlds, monsters, stories without visible root in reality?

But the same might be said about dreams; and the detour via dreams may bring us a glimpse of an unexpected shortcut. It is now known that sleep devoid of dreams is not restorative; if one is waked at the outset of the phase in which dreaming occurs, intolerance in both animals and humans is very rapid, and experiments upon animals have shown that this deprivation, if prolonged, can be a cause of death. Hence from the standpoint of survival, dreaming is quite as necessary as sleeping. Now, certain characteristics of myths, characteristics through which they are related to dreams, lead us to wonder whether they are not indispensable to the smooth functioning of waking thought as are dreams with respect to sleep.