NOTES ON MYTH
343
ternatural force toward certain ends, by capturing the impersonal
forces of the world and directing them toward the fulfilment of cer–
tain emotional needs. Within this broad definition, we may notice
three functions of myth.
1. In his
Myth in Primitive Psychology
Malinowski discusses
especially those serious primitive tales which include statements about
the origin of man or which comment on his rituals and social institu–
tions. These commonly invoke what the savage conceives as a prime–
val period of the world. This was a time of wonderful magic; it is a
special projection into the past of the preternatural forces which in
other stories (particularly those usually labelled folktales) are repre–
sented as ever present and capable of effective interference in the life
of man. The' serious myth, says Malinowski, is "a narrative resurrec–
tion of a primeval reality." This primeval reality is for the moment
more relevant to human problems than the reality of the ordinary
world; and the myths are told in order to preserve the meaningful–
ness and purposefulness of social customs and institutions. They "come
into play when rite, ceremony, or a social or moral rule demands
justification, warrant of antiquity, reality, and sanctity." There can
be no doubt that these myths sometimes have the efficacy of dogma.
But unlike dogma they are plastic and dynamic. They look to the
present and the future. As Malinowski says, they are made
ad
hoc
and are "constantly regenerated." No one deduces a way of life
from the myths; they are not a canon of behavior or thought. The
way of life is given; the myths are life grown literary.
The myths discussed by Malinowski, however, have mostly social
and moral functions. Myths, both serious and playful, have a more
purely psychological function.
2. Our culture provides innumerable substitutes for what Wil–
liam James called "the pungent sense of effective reality," the sense of
"the possibilities of nature." Much of primitive man's life-like much
of ours-is spent in apathy and routine; yet primitive man is capable
of a precise and dynamic attention which we can equal only with
great difficulty. Primitive culture, writes Goldenweiser, is "dynamic
and vibrant;" it has to be, like any other organism for which survival
is a perpetual ordeal. Our society allows us to let the world run down,
grow cold and inoperative, without exposing ourselves to danger. But
to primitive man a vibrant sense of present reality is vitally necessary.
Paul Radin shows in his
Primitive Man as Philosopher
that to the
savage reality is pragmatic.The world is not a museum of objects or a
textbook of science; it is a theater of dynamic activities, of richly mys-
