It usually happens that thought, by the innate faculty of which we have so often spoken, regards the ideas produced by this complex mental labour as material entities endowed with eternal and independent existence; and this produced the Platonic teaching, the schools in Greece and Italy, and other brilliant illustrations of this phase of thought. Such teaching, the result of explicit reflection, is a rival of the critical science which followed from it. It is always active, while constantly varying and assuming fresh forms; and it not only flourishes in our time in the religions in which it finds a suitable soil, but also, as we shall see, in science itself.
In addition to this complex evolution of myth as a whole, special myths follow similar laws; since they are generated from the same facts, and pass through the same phases, they culminate in a partial ideality, and this involves a simple and comprehensive law of the phenomena in question, and even a moral or providential order. For example, we may trace the Promethean myth to the end of the Hellenic era, and the different phases and final extinction of this particular myth are quite apparent.
The origin of the myth, which was directly connected with the perception of the natural phenomena of light and heat, was due to the same causes as all others, but we will consider it in its Vedic phase, as it may be gathered from tradition, and from the discoveries of comparative philology, and we have a sure guide in this research in the great linguist Kuhn, whose remarks have been enlarged and illustrated by Baudry.
The Sanscrit word for the act of producing fire by friction is _manthâmi_, to rub or agitate, and this appears from its derivative _mandala_, a circle; that is, circular friction. The pieces of wood used for the production of fire were called _pramantha_, that which revolves, and _arani_ was the disc on which the friction was made. In this phase, the fetishes are, according to our theory, in the second stage. The Greeks and Romans, and indeed almost all other peoples, knew no other way of kindling a fire, and in the sacred rites of the Peruvians the task was assigned to the Incas at the annual festival of fire. The wood of the oak was used in Germany, on account of the red colour of its bark, which led to the supposition that the god of fire was concealed in it. Tan is called _lohe_, or flame, in Germany. This primitive mode of kindling a fire was known to the Aryans before their dispersion, and friction with this object was equivalent to the birth of the fire-god, constraining him to come down to earth from the air, from thunder, etc.; indeed fire was also called _düta_, the messenger between heaven and earth. The question arose who had drawn fire from heaven, and developed it in the _arani_. A resemblance was also traced between the instruments for kindling fire and the organs of generation, a reciprocal interchange of various myths, as we have before observed. _Agni_ is concealed in _arani_, like the embryo in the womb (Rig-Veda). Thus _pramantha_ is the masculine instrument, _arani_ the feminine, and the act of uniting them is copulation.