CHAPTER I

Structures and Methods

            An Ambiguous Condition

What if the history of the imaginary did not exist? Beyond all paradox, the question deserves to be raised. Following a hectic and contorted history, this discipline is hindered by theoretical and ideological difficulties.

            Its heritage is ambiguous. Each ideology or view of the world has attempted to make its own part of the imaginary absolute, depreciating alternative forms. This was most of all the case of theology and of modern rationalism, to say nothing of totalitarian ideologies. The result is often a caricature: modern myths are rightist, wrote Roland Barthes in 1957 (in his Mythologies) and the left, especially the revolutionary left, was characterized by straight talk that rendered the mythological artifice useless¹. The writer was unable to avoid the trap of a very common type of polarization: we have the Truth, the others are odd, namely stupid. This state of mind is in itself one of the essential traits of the imaginary.

            This prejudice did not stop the multiplication of particular themes, from the time that Greek historians began to interpret their own myths or to watch with curiosity the mores of the Barbarians, until this end of the 20^th century, which is so much tempted by the invisible side of things. But the synthesis remains to be achieved. Today it has certain advantages. The sidelining of the imaginary, coming most of all from the scientific, rationalist and materialistic trends of the last centuries, is now history. People are beginning to re-discover the fact that history means, most of all, an adventure of the spirit. The imaginary permeates all fields: people are beginning to understand that their scientific research or political projects are touched by it to the same degree as art or mystical ecstasy. On the other hand, the withdrawal of ideologies and a mind that valorizes the diversity and relativity of values seem to be able to alleviate certain contradictions. Mythologies exist both on the right and on the left, with believers and atheists, with us and with the others.

            But there is a long way from premises to achievement. For now, historians are working on segments, on clear-cut issues. They come up with countless histories of the imaginary (in the plural) and no history of the imaginary (in the singular.) This contrast is visible in the history of mentalities, considered an autonomous discipline, carefully landmarked and jealously kept. This was one of the most specific contributions made by the school of the Annales or of the French Nouvelle histoire. A similar operation seeking to promote the imaginary stopped short of the desired effect. In 1978 La Nouvelle histoire presented, with this very title, its report, in an encyclopedic work edited by Jacques Le Goff (with Roger Cartier and Jacques Revel.) Le Goff, who has made remarkable contributions to the research of the Medieval imaginary, had reserved a chosen seat for this aspect of that history. Written by Byzantium scholar Évelyne Patlagean, the twenty pages of this essay on the history of the imaginary² listed this field among the ten key-concepts considered the most characteristic of the Annales current (with historical anthropology, material culture, new history, immediate history, the long time, the history of the marginal, Marxism, the history of mentalities, history structures.)

            The surprise came a few years later. In the Dictionnaire des sciences historiques (1986), edited by André Burguière (in the name of the same historiographic current, centered on the Annales and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales), the imaginary was obviously absent, at the very time when studies on its various departments were multiplying³. Since then, the contrast between the multitude of research studies and works claiming their origin in the imaginary and the absence of a global and coherent discipline, with a recognized historiographic status, has been further augmented. Therefore, today we have to approach the imaginary in an empirical manner, somehow the way Molière’s bourgeois used prose.

            Failure or hesitation owed (apart from traditional resistance) to several reasons. The scope and seeming heterogeneity of the territory do not make a synthesis easy. Through its very nature, the imaginary is harassed by several disciplines that have been established for a long time in historiography and in the intellectual life in general. The history of religions, art and literature history, the history of science, the history of ideologies, the history of mentalities, or, more recently, historical anthropology (to quote just a few examples) share the vast field of the imaginary, discouraging all attempts at “de-colonization.” The very success of mentalities made it difficult for the imaginary, as their numerous areas of contact could create the impression of quasi-identity. Why make an alias of an already established discipline?

            The specialization of historical studies is also in question. A general theory of the imaginary should be based on comprehension rising above epochs and cultures, which the traditional education of the historian falls short of. Following the established categories (which, of course,  have their own virtues), a Medievalist studies the Medieval imaginary, a Hellenist the Greek imaginary, a Sinologist the Chinese imaginary and a contemporary history expert may study the contemporary imaginary (if he does not deem it better to yield this task to a sociologist.)

            But the very definition of the imaginary is precisely its universal, and, to a certain extent, trans-historical character. A psychologist, an anthropologist, a philosopher will find issues of their own there. They come up with a global imaginary to oppose it to the fragmentary imaginary of the historians. A petrified imaginary and one which is very different from the fluid imaginary historians dig deep into, here and there. Anyway, an imaginary that is easier to see and establish in the numbered boxes of a solid and durable structure.

            Anthropologists, philosophers and sociologists have perhaps written less than historians on the imaginary, but they have undoubtedly made more theories about it. Unlike most historians, they have conceived of the imaginary as a separate field. Dozens of research Centers for the imaginary⁴ have been formed to follow in the footsteps of Gilbert Durand (born in 1921), who is himself a disciple of the great philosopher of the imaginary Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). There are debates and publications bringing together philosophers, psychologists and psychoanalysts, literature professionals, sociologists, anthropologists. Sometimes, the fortuitous presence of an historian brings an exotic atmosphere to these events. Even at institutional level, the imaginary is cut into two: on this side, there is the imaginary of those who believe in structures and regularity, namely in what is permanent, on the other side, the imaginary of those who place emphasis on diversity and change. 

In Search of a Definition

The first difficulty in dealing with the imaginary is defining it. How can anyone stand up for the rights of a discipline that does not even have a convincing definition?

            According to Évelyne Patlagean, the “field of the imaginary is made up of the entirety of the representations that overstep the limits established by experience and the deduction chains authorized by them.”⁵ Therefore, everything outside the concrete, indisputable reality, which is perceived either directly, by logical deduction, or scientific experiment, belongs to the imaginary. The imaginary is, therefore, the domain of the false and of the non-verified (or of the non-verifiable), as well.

            This definition implies a rationalistic bet; it is no longer the worst imaginable bet (although one should be suspicious about the presence of Reason as much as about its absence; it has proven capable of begetting monsters no less frightening than those blamed on irrationalism and on the imaginary.) Unfortunately, the fragility of this reasoning is obvious. Where is the border-line between the real and the imaginary? From one individual to another and, even more, from one epoch to another and from one culture to another, this appreciation will always be different. Each culture proposes its own interpretation of the imaginary and of the relationships between it and tangible reality. It would be arrogant and rash to oppose our “knowledge” to other people’s “beliefs.” Let us better admit that our own knowledge of this world, our reason and our science are nourished by the imaginary just as much as any “primitive” superstition. Since the ultimate essence and purpose of the Universe is still hidden from us, all human projects and knowledge are actually part of the imaginary. Therefore, the imaginary is everywhere and nowhere to be found.

            As far as Jacques Le Goff is concerned, he avoids any and all definition in the Foreword to his collection called L’Imaginaire médiéval (1985). The great medievalist seems to be concerned with defining what is not part of the imaginary, rather than what is. So, despite the inevitable overlappings, the imaginary should not be assimilated with a representation of the outer reality, or with what is symbolic, or with an ideology⁶. Such a limitation could look draconian. Firstly, there is no representation identical to that of the represented object; all images, even the most “realistic” ones, imply an intervention – even if  minimal – of the imaginary. On the other side, it seems that the universe of symbols fully belongs to the imaginary, even constituting its most concentrated and significant expression. And, finally, ideologies can be interpreted in all faith as secularized mythologies.

            Le Goff proposes an interesting and subtle distinction between the Medieval categories of the “marvelous,” the “miraculous,” and the “magic” (the second referring to God, the third to Satan, and the first being somehow neutral); he deals with the transfiguration of space and time, of dreams, of the world beyond. All these images belong to the imaginary, but, once again, what is the imaginary?

            To attempt an answer, we have to overcome the real-imaginary dichotomy and to give up using Reason as the measure of all things. The imaginary is a product of the spirit. Its conformity or non-conformity with what is out there is a secondary matter, although it is important to the historian. The holy obviously belongs to the imaginary, but the fact that people believe in God is not an argument against the existence of God. In fact, it is also no argument in favor of God’s existence. Some people believe in aliens: one of the most picturesque expressions of the contemporary imaginary. This belief has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of the aliens. Even the visit of a cosmic delegation would not change its purely imaginary character. Imagination is blended with  outer reality and it is confronted with it: there, it finds support or, on the contrary, a hostile environment. The imaginary can be either confirmed or rejected. It acts upon the world and the world acts upon it. But, in its essence, it is an independent reality, having its own structures and its own dynamics.

            The image-imagination-imaginary relation also raises difficulties. According to Jean Jacques Wunenburger, “in French, the word imagination means a mental production of sensitive representations, different from  sensory perception, of concrete realities and of the conceptualization of abstract ideas.”⁷ Starting out from this trio, perception, imagination, conceptualization, the issue is to know whether we should or should not leave the imaginary exclusively confined to the area of imagination and the imagination exclusively confined to the area of images.

            Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was right to see the essential difference between perception and image, the fact that the latter is intentional, as a projection of the mind. (L’Imagination, 1936; L’Imaginaire, 1940). But, on the other hand, the same philosopher depreciated the image, considering it the poor relative of true knowledge, a degraded kind of knowledge, some sort of a “shadow,” or a “ghost.” This led to an impasse, which was avoided owing, most of all, to the contributions of Gaston Bachelard and his disciple Gilbert Durand, who placed emphasis on the symbolic dimension of the image and on the organizing dynamism of the imagination.

            So, the image is more than just a “shadow” and the imagination more than a warehouse of images. As far as the imaginary is concerned, its products prove very complex and even extremely rigorous from the theoretical point of view. What can be more complex and more rigorous than a utopia or a religion? To reach the imaginary (or at least its best structured expressions), the imagination must be fecundated by reason. This way, the imagination goes further than the exclusive field of sensory representations. It includes both perceived images (which are inevitably “adjusted,” because there is no such thing as an image that is identical to the object), elaborated images, and abstract ideas that structure such images.

            For now, although we cannot see the substance of the imaginary, we can very well notice its ambiguous status, split between very (or too) restrictive interpretations and, on the contrary, extremely generous interpretations that allow it to incorporate everything (can anyone swear that our very existence is more than just imaginary?)

            To cut the Gordian knot, we propose to go to the archetypes, as component elements of the imaginary. The history of the imaginary can be defined as the history of archetypes. We know fairly well that this term – forged by Plato and taken up by Carl G. Jung – is very often regarded with suspicion and even contested. But we do not wish to ascribe a transcendent meaning to it, nor to apply it, like Jung, to a vague collective unconscious, by way of a psychoanalytical justification. It just seems to us that man is “programmed” to think, feel, and dream in a very well defined manner. His mental constants get crystallized into what can be called “archetypes.”

            So let us define the archetype as a constant or an essential bent of the human spirit. It is an organization scheme, a mold, whose matter changes, but whose contours stay the same.

            The historian always watches out for differences, but, still, he has to acknowledge the fact that throughout epochs and cultures human beings and communities react in a rather similar manner when faced with life, the world, history. The differences attract everybody’s eyes, of course, but they prove minimal as compared to the fundamental unity of the spirit, structured by archetypes.

            The history of the imaginary is structural because even the most sophisticated constructions of the spirit can be simplified, decomposed and reduced to an archetype. But it is also very dynamic, precisely because archetypes are open structures, which evolve, are combined among themselves, and whose contents is incessantly adjusted to the changing social environment. Structural and dynamic history of archetypes: no contradiction between these terms. Any imbalance in favor or against one or the other elements would seriously affect the accuracy of the perspective.

            Here, the hostilities between pure and tough structural thinkers and the supporters of historicity are left hot. The battle is symbolized by the two great patrons of the imaginary in France, Gilbert Durand and Jacques Le Goff. The former says directly in his classical book Les structures anthropologiques de l’imaginaire (1960) that “we feel all evolutionist or historical interpretations of the myths must be trashed (...) History cannot explain the archetypal mental contents, as history itself partakes of the imaginary. And, most of all, in each historical phase,  imagination is there with a double and antagonistic motivation: pedagogy of the imitation, of the imperialism of images and archetypes, tolerated by the social environment, but also opposed fantasies of rebellion, owed to the repression of the various regimes of the image by the environment and the historical moment.” Anyway, there is no question about the “universality (...), both psychological and social, of the great ‘archetypes.’” There can be no such thing as a “progressive view of the human imagination.”⁸

            Such a statement actually annuls all history or lets history deal with anecdotal details only. This is, most of all, the view of structural anthropology and psychoanalysis. Carl G. Jung, Claude Lévi-Strauss (Anthropologie structurale, 1958; La Pensée sauvage, 1962), and Gilbert Durand, despite the differences separating their analyses, place heavy emphasis on crystallized forms of the imaginary, produced by the constants of the human mind. How can anyone require of an historian to trust a method that may devalue his vision of the world and destroy his profession?

            In the meantime, Gilbert Durand brought more nuances to his “anti-history” judgment of 1960. He and his school tried to partially fill the gap that separated them from history.⁹ Generally, anthropology became more open to the historical method. On the other hand, historians, tempted by the “long duration,” began to consider durable structures more closely. But the encounter between the two orientations will not happen overnight. The former will never give up the archetypal tendencies that the latter tends to annihilate in favor of historically determined “models.” The “long duration” is still part of time, it has nothing to do with a-temporality. Le Goff attacks, without the slightest concession, “the suspect ideology of the archetypes” (with reference to Gilbert Durand), explaining that “the models of the imaginary come from science, the archetypes – from mystifying delusions.”¹⁰

            Models versus archetypes. According to Le Goff, the Purgatory, studied in one of his books (La Naissance du Purgatoire, 1981) is such a model. The origin of these waiting rooms to Paradise is historically dated (definitive crystallization in the 12^th and 13^th centuries) and strongly tied to a complex of social, political and mental evolutionary processes (the decline of the temporal power of the Church, now trying to recuperate its lost influence  in the space-time of afterlife, the valorizing of the individual responsibility concept, etc.) The fading of the Inferno today, in the space of western Christianity, could be approached with a similar methodology. The structures of the world beyond change the way the structures of our world change. (But let us notice that an interpretation of the imaginary uniquely centered on historically defined models makes it significantly dependent on social structures and material conditions, which is in tune with the Annales school and, mostly, with Jacques Le Goff’s method.)

            The model proposed by Alain Corbin in his 1988 work on the “maritime imaginary” (Le Territoire du vide. L’Occident et le désir du rivage, 1750-1840) is even more strongly marked by time. The author announces a methodological debate, making a powerful statement against the tendency to despise every temporal insertion in the analysis of mental structures. “This is not a question of adhering to the belief in the anthropological structures of the imaginary regardless of duration.”¹¹ The attack against Gilbert Durand’s school is explicit. Not even the “long duration” concept, coined by historian Fernand Braudel, seems to him sophisticated enough to grasp the decisive turning points. In search of “datable mechanisms,” with a maximum chronological accuracy, Alain Corbin places by 1660-1675 the beginning of an evolution that had to end by dissipating the old abhorrence provoked by the maritime space in favor of a totally new “desire for a shore.”

            The historical method (in history as well as in anthropology) also warns against the trap laid by superficial similarities. Apparently unchanged images can have different functions. Nobody has the right to diffuse the historical and cultural diversity. This is a reproach against James George Frazer (1854-1941), the great classic of this genre, author of the famous Golden Bough (1891-1918); his “primitives” are all alike, none being marked by time or by space; they think and act in an absolutely identical manner. But the justified reaction against such a leveling sometimes leads to a broken universe, where man becomes an alien to man.

            Rejection or valorization of time? Rejection or valorization of spatial departments? Long duration or breaking phases belonging to a more or less restrained temporal framework?

            In fact, everybody is right. Contradictory theses can be endorsed with equally convincing arguments. Everybody will find their own reasons there, except for the interpretation of the imaginary that impoverishes and deforms it. Because, to tell the truth, the issue must not be defined in terms of a choice between immutability and movement, between uniformity and diversity. Despite this apparent contradiction, the same credit should be given to opposed principles. This way, the model of the purgatory is in perfect tuning with the archetypal space-time of the world beyond. Archetypes, models and specific manifestations are but three levels of the same construction.

            Two examples of the contemporary imaginary will help us see this matter more clearly. For this brief demonstration, we will study the end of the world as a totalitarian phenomenon.

Nothing Is New, Everything Is New: the Imaginary Throughout History

Our time has a wide range of means to blow the world to pieces. Dangers (real or imaginary, that matters very little) play a decisive role in the contemporary psychodrama. Their emergence is datable, sometimes even extremely accurately. Nuclear warfare with its multiple possible scenarios begins with a very real event: the Americans dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The imminence of an ecological catastrophe became dominant in the minds of people in the 60s. At the same time came the demographic anxiety triggered by the accelerated growth of the world population (more exactly, of the Third World population, a phenomenon paralleled by the demographic stagnation or decrease in the West.) In 1972 the Club of Rome identified in a famous report the ingredients of an explosive cocktail; the five factors described then were food, population, production, resources and pollution. The population grew too fast, food and raw materials became insufficient, the pollution – owing to badly planned production – was increasingly violent in its aggression against the natural environment. Cosmic perils were also there, such as clashing with a comet or a meteorite. The dinosaur business – their “sudden” disappearance sixty-five million years ago – came forth by 1980 and it is still a star subject. The two masters of the earth, the dinosaur a long time ago and man today may have a similar fate, to dominate the world and to perish stupidly at the climax of their power.

            These solutions seem undoubtedly modern. All the scientific, technological and political ingredients of our time are gathered here. Nobody could have imagined before the end of the 19^th century – and even less in the Antiquity or in the Middle Ages – a nuclear war or an environment degraded by pollution. But people had already made other scenarios to serve the same project: the destruction of the world. One of the most ancient and most universally invoked is that of the Deluge. This myth, in different variants, tells the story of how mankind was destroyed, followed by the story of its rebirth due to a small number of individuals. Nuclear war is the Deluge of our time. With few exceptions, the scenarios about it (strategic simulation, scientific studies, literary or motion picture fiction) place it in the perspective of an incomplete end of the world, just like the Deluge. Most of humankind disappears, civilization collapses, but the human adventure continues, inaugurating a new historical cycle. The same is true of the ecological disaster: this would be the end of civilization (of the modern technological and polluting civilization), but not the end of man.

            Here we find a very ancient imaginary about ends of the world, which is part of the eternal return pattern (studied by Mircea Eliade, 1907-1986, in his Mythe de l’éternel retour, 1949.) Ends and rebirths alternate throughout a (cosmic and human) cyclic history. The constituent elements of this archetype are borrowed from obvious cosmic and natural cycles: the succession of days and nights, of the Lunar phases, of the seasons, of vegetation. Deluge or nuclear war are secondary images, derived from this original pattern of the world.

            But the archetypal image of the circle competes with the no less archetypal image of the straight line. The latter, applied to the march of humanity, can point either to a continuous route or, on the contrary, to a brutal and definitive end. In the case of a brutal end, the image of death – one of the permanent obsessions of the imaginary – is projected over the destiny of mankind. Individual death becomes collective death, the extinction of the species. Nuclear war can signify, according to some scenarios, the absolute end of mankind. Without any chance of survival. This alternative has its own precedents, too. All we have to do is go to the Apocalypse – the apocalypses –where the end of the world is orchestrated by a giant conflagration. Still, a religious Apocalypse associates the end of terrestrial existence to a new reality, situated in a transfigured universe. This is often missing with the nuclear Apocalypse or with other contemporary apocalypses that are characteristic of a partially desecrated civilization. The end, if it is really “complete,” does not seem to be accompanied by any compensatory solution. It is the end.¹²

            So, under new “clothes,” we find obviously ancient structures. Therefore, it is perfectly justified to reduce modern end of the world scenarios to archetypal formulas. But, on the other hand, the historian has the right to place emphasis on the novelty of phenomena and on the new relationships between the “real” history and the structures of the imaginary. No one should minimize the specific function of the contemporary “great fears,” their connection with politics, science or religion, which are considerably different from those of the Deluge or of the strictly religious Apocalypse. The desecrated end, the technological anxiety, the decline of the west and the rise of the “others” are new images, even if they, too, can be decomposed into archetypal elements.

            While the end of the world comes from far back in time, the totalitarian phenomenon seems to be a characteristic element of the 20^th century. It is but vaguely suggested by traditional tyrannies; the Jacobin terror alone anticipates it, owing to its “single party” system, its ideologizing work and general mobilization, its “industrial” organization of repression. An incomplete and evanescent experience as compared to the accomplished totalitarian model of our time. The quasi-perfection of totalitarianism is explained by the existence of a material capacity for organization, propaganda, surveillance and repression that were not in place in preceding epochs, but, to the same extent, by the affirmation of an extremely virulent “totalitarian imaginary.” The crisis of the 20^th century – one of the most profound rifts in the history of civilizations – the failures of the technological civilization but also its real or presumed potential have been sublimated into an ideal of surpassing history by creating a new world and a new human being. Fascism, Nazism and Communism planned not only to control people as any ordinary tyranny does, but, first and foremost, to change the course of history and to change human nature.

            The totalitarian experience may essentially belong to recent history, but its components come from far back. Without claiming to do a complete review, let us quickly point to a few archetypal elements.

            The rejection of history and the desire to egress one’s own condition seem to define the universal reaction of humans confronted with history and with the limits of the human condition. This project has to do with the evasion from a turbulent and unpredictable space and the refuge to a protected area that can ensure harmony and happiness. This one is symbolized, at the most basic level, by archetypal images such as the island or the cave (and, even more basic, the maternal womb.) It is the recurrent dream of a closed, tribal society, to refer to the well-known theory of Karl Popper (1902-1994) put forth in La société ouverte et ses ennemis (1945). On the religious plane, the struggle against the real world and history has been manifest in the millenarian ideologies and movements (teaching about the establishment of a one-thousand year Messianic Kingdom.) The totalitarian solutions of the 20^th century – most of all Nazism and Communism – are in some way nothing but secularized millenarianism. The charismatic leader (Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc.), an indispensable image in the system of the totalitarian imaginary, also belongs to an archetypal lineage, personified by the Messiah or the Savior (or by the Antichrist, to his adversaries.) So, we come close to the sacred, despite secular, materialist and scientific  appearances, a deformed and corrupted sacred, but one which is very much present in the ideologies structured as religions (dichotomy between Good and Evil, triumph of an absolute truth, flourishing of the human spirit, universal harmony), in the cult of the leader, or in the ritual of ceremonies. The rejection of the Other (the class enemy in the Communist system, the biologically impure being according to the Nazi doctrine) and the cohesion of a community freed from its undesirable elements also belong to an archetypal structure: the quest of Unity and the dialectics of the relations between Us and the Others.¹³

            New construction, archaic materials. Archaic materials, new construction. The fabrics incessantly evolve and generally become more complex as mankind continues its journey forward on the road of history, but the constituent molecules are the same. The end of the world is by far more diversified and sophisticated today than the flood or the universal fire, to quote the two most common traditional solutions. The contemporary totalitarian regimes are far more complex than the simple pattern of  traditional millenarianism or utopias (to say nothing of the archaic symbols.) But, if we want to focus on essence alone, the end of the world is always the same end of the world and the evasion of history is inspired from the same fantasies, one epoch after another.

            The words of the Ecclesiastes: “nothing new under the sun” and “Pantha rhei,” the famous phrase attributed to Heraclitus, do not exclude each other at all. They are the two basic principles of the Universe, also shedding light, better than any demonstration, on the rules and logic of the imaginary.

The Imaginary and Reality

At the beginning of this century, the French Hellenist Victor Bérard (1864-1931) attempted to track Ulysses. He found in the shores and islands of the Mediterranean Sea all the places described by Homer and gathered into a beautiful album a rich collection of photos proving a striking correspondence between the descriptions in the poem and the landscape as it is today (see the four volumes of Navigations d’Ulysse, 1927-1933 and its iconographic supplement Dans le sillage d’Ulysse, 1933.) A seducing inquiry, but one which is basically wrong, the perfect example of what should not be done to the imaginary.

            The imaginary has its own structures and evolution principles. It would be absurd, of course, to deny its relations with the “reality.” Nobody will ever invent new colors, but only combinations of the existing ones. A new face will most probably be drawn starting from very well known traits of the human face. A utopia will do nothing but arrange otherwise certain components of the real relationships between people. An historical myth will include characters, landscapes and situations that should fit the concrete world. The sensory material used by the imaginary is not essentially different from the material of tangible matter, but it is re-forged and poured into a specific mold. It is not the matter, but the structures that count, and they have an incontestable degree of autonomy. How can anyone take a sacred tree for an ordinary one? How can anyone mistake the terrifying octopus imagined by the Europeans or the erotic octopus of the Japanese for the very common “real” octopus? Roger Caillois (1913-1978) described everything that separates them in an exemplary study: La Pieuvre. Essai sur la logique de l’imaginaire (1973).

            Therefore, the worst caricature is to consider the imaginary just another disguise of reality. More than two thousand years ago, Greek historians and philosophers began to rationalize myths. Their method was not very sophisticated: they just evacuated the supernatural and kept the rest. To them, “the Trojan War had taken place because a war had nothing supernatural in it: if the supernatural is taken out of Homer’s work, this war will be left.”¹⁴ The historians of our time sometimes fall into the same trap the moment they try to identify historical facts under the polish of legends, be they the Trojan War or the foundation of Rome. Of course, a legend can include bits of real historical information. But it can also be exclusively nourished by archetypes. This is what Georges Dumézil demonstrates regarding the foundation of Rome, a subject we will come back to.

            Suppose the historians only have, for a few thousand years, a corpus of “nuclei” stories as the only pieces of information about the second half of the 20^th century. Will they have the right to infer from our evident obsession that a real catastrophe has taken place?

            As far as the imaginary is concerned, the starting point remains, in fact, a secondary matter. Real or invented, partially invented or composite, the facts and the characters are actually part of an ideal typology. Whoever wishes, at any price, to interpret the imaginary by way of the concrete reality, or to recompose that concrete reality starting out from the imaginary, confines himself into a false question. There are numerous interdependencies and permanent exchanges between those two realms, but these are very sophisticated relationships that are established through “mental climates” rather than by the brutal invasion of facts into the ethereal domain of the spirit.

            On the one hand, it is easy to see the persistence of  structures, themes and models in the rhythms of historical life, changing them, bringing them to stardom, or, on the contrary, withdrawing them from center-stage. The resistance against the “real” and the dialogue with that same “real” coexist.

            The resistance against the “real” sometimes acts by way of a remarkable capacity to deny what is obvious or to reverse its meaning, which proves the autonomy of the imaginary and the durability of its models. People generally see what they want to see and learn what they already know. The exploration of this planet at the beginning of the modern epoch offers a striking example. Columbus, the discoverer of America, defiantly ignored his own discovery because it was not in tune with the accepted image of the world (where the American continent did not exist.) An imaginary geography handed over from the Antiquity proved stronger than the real geographical facts. Following the same inherited pattern, navigators searched in vain, for two or three centuries, the great southern continent that had to occupy the southern hemisphere of the earth. Contrary arguments were systematically turned into favorable ones (each discovered isle became a fragment of the searched sea shore), for the only reason that the ideal pattern presumed there was a southern continental mass which was allegedly symmetrical to the northern world.¹⁵

            The purpose of the imaginary is not, however, to annihilate the real in order to take its place. Its strategies pursue the checking of the concrete world by adjusting the ideal models to the heaviness of matter and to the changing circumstances of history. In a real world that can only be deceiving, the imaginary plays a compensatory role. It is at work everywhere and permanently, but most of all,  the periods of crisis augment its manifestation, as it is summoned to compensate for disappointment, to build a screen against fears and invent alternative solutions. Ends of the world, millenarianism, utopias, exacerbated contrasts, providential characters, occult practice and so many other formulas that belong to a quasi-permanent stock become strident at the time when men are desperate because they are faced with the “real” history. This way, the imaginary can be used as a very sensitive barometer of the historical evolution.

The Globalism of the Imaginary

The imaginary is omnipresent – we have already said it. Each thought, each project, each action possess an imaginary dimension, embracing a very wide range, from conjecture awaiting its validation to most peculiar phantasms. Its themes challenge traditional divisions: historical periods, civilizations, specific domains of history. There is no question of denying the legitimate claims of history – be it the history of religions, of art, of literature, of science, of political ideas… But when it comes to seizing the imaginary, its partition along criteria that belong to other disciplines and methodologies results in a damaging and methodologically defective fragmentation. The imaginary of a society is global and congruous; its throbs pervade all compartments of historical life. The same theme is to be found a bit everywhere. How can we limit the holy, for instance, to the area of religions alone? Do millenarianism and Messianic cults belong in the religious or rather political sphere? Is extraterrestrial life a philosophical speculation, a scientific hypothesis, a literary and cinematographic motif, a religious-like creed? The researcher of the imaginary is decidedly condemned to encyclopedism.

Historians are wont to divide history in “domains”. One should however consider more carefully history’s own perspectives, its various perspectives. There are as many histories as perspectives. History can be approached from a material and economic angle, as Braudel did. It can be observed from the point of view of demography, mentalities, facts and political structures… Each perspective aims for globalism. Each one is liable to shape a global history. The history of the imaginary is one of those perspectives, capable of offering a global view of man and his evolution.

Eight Archetypal Structures

In the beginning were the archetypes. We must start, of course, by sublimating their essences. However, nothing is more delicate than propounding a repertoire. The archetypal substance is well entrenched in the human spirit, no doubt, but the manner in which it is being conceptualized, and its elements dissociated or amalgamated, depends, as any historical reconstruction, on the historian’s perspective – that is, on a diversity of viewpoints. One can divide or combine almost ad infinitum: a seductive game, swinging between synthetic solutions or detailed inventories.

The archetypes identified by Carl G. Jung proved to be less than convincing. It is hard to accept without reservation his anima, the feminine principle dwelling in the male unconscious (and, respectively, animus, the male principle of the female unconscious). Gaston Bachelard conceived the four natural elements as “hormones of the imagination” (the titles of his works sum up an entire program: Air and Dreams; The Psychoanalysis of Fire; Water and Dreams; Earth and the Dreams of Repose; Earth and the Reveries of Will). The greatest effort of systematization belongs, undoubtedly, to Gilbert Durand, who divides the domain into two distinct and opposed planes: the daylight regime and the nightly regime of the image, with the former enhancing the contradictions, and the latter, conversely, appeasing them. We also owe him a net distinction among three concepts: the archetype as universal matrix, the individualized and fluctuating symbol, and the scheme, a dynamic and affective generalization of the image (thus, to the archetype sky correspond the ascensional scheme and a variety of symbols: ladder, flying arrow, supersonic jet, high-jump champion).

Aiming for a complete “census” is unrealistic. The island, the cave, or the maternal womb are archetypal images: we have already encountered them. The tree also, as remarked by Jung. Milk, to cite Gilbert  Durand, is an “archetype aliment”. Wine, at least in certain civilizations, may pursue the same status. Doubtless archetypes – the day and the night, the lunar cycle, the black and the white, or the “center”; archetypal schemes – the circular movement, or the rise and fall… These are only a few examples randomly culled from a virtually inexhaustible stock. Gilbert Durand’s classic offers the best illustration of this type of survey. It remains to be seen what a historian can do with the ladder symbol, ascensional scheme, and sky archetype. His mission is to work on complex societies, hence a composite, sophisticated imaginary. He must follow the way in which archetypes fuse into dynamic structures, as well as the connections between them and other structures and processes of history. Instead of extending the archetypes’ list, we had rather proceed to a supple, synthetic cut (perhaps “coarser”, but less contestable and more efficient). Underneath are eight batches, or archetypal structures, susceptible of covering, in our opinion, the essentials of the imaginary applied to historical evolution.

             The consciousness of a transcendent reality: an invisible, imperceptible reality, yet the more significant than the evident, tangible reality. It is the sphere of the supernatural and its palpable manifestations that constitute the miraculous. Most often, the supernatural bears the mark of the holy. The whole complex defines a prevalent mental characteristic, intrinsic to the human condition. Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) attached the holy to a specific emotional structure: the numinosum (the “numinous”), man’s awareness of being conditioned by a force other than his own will: the Total Other (Das Heilige – The Idea of the Holy, 1917). The holy manifests itself throughout a wide range of mythical systems, from the simplest (totemism, animism, the cult of the ancestors, fetishism) to the most complex (polytheist and monotheist religions). It also appears in the consecration of numberless objects or segments of geographic areas (“holy sites” perceived as “centers of the world”), in ritual games, etc. The human conscience thus opens out to a world of symbols: objects, natural elements, stars, shapes, colors, numbers invested with transcendent significance. The concrete world would become no more than a trompe l’oeil concealing structures incomparably more profound and essential. The effort to comprehend them, and also “capture” and make them act in our favor, has been a constant preoccupation of humankind. What is then left of this archetypal vision of an “enchanted” universe in modern technological society, one of the particularities of which is thought to be the disenchantment of the world? Is the holy about to fade away, and desert the spirit of mankind little by little? The assumption seems just, in light of the regress, however relative, of religious beliefs and practices. In reality, the thirst for the Absolute has not lessened. There is no loss of substance, only a “reinvestment”, a new distribution of archetypes. Man has to believe in something, in a superior “reality” – whatever its nature –, the only one capable of conferring sense to the world and to the human condition. The new phenomenon spells the end of the monopoly of traditional religions and the dispersion of the holy, indeed the multiplication of its “altered” forms. From one stage to another, from an ideology to another, science and technology, the nation, the race, the sex, the “new society”, the “radiant future” were hallowed in turn. Cult proliferation is another significant development these days; some remain about or within the confines of the traditional religious grounds, while others congregate around new gospels (extolling the psychic forces, the planetary and cosmic conscience preached by new-age thinking, flying saucers and aliens…) Very characteristic, from this point of view, is the success of parapsychology, which searches in the human being for the miraculous powers formerly reserved to the supernatural. As long as man remains what he is, he will continue to invest in a transcendent reality and imagine purports beyond appearances. 16  In the social imaginary (and social practice), it is the holy again that gave rise to a category of chosen people destined to serve as mediators between human society and the transcendent world: the sacerdotal and royal offices in the first place – priests, kings, priest-kings or, god willing, god-kings. Monarchy enjoyed supernatural attributes, some of which survived until quite recently (in France, till the 18^th and even early 19^th century; the king was king by the grace of God; he was anointed; he had thaumaturgic powers).17 In fact, each exceptional career had the signature of the holy. Greek heroes were half-gods. Joan of Arc was hearing celestial voices. Those presently in charge of the destiny of nations would rather invoke the voice of history (no less transcendent than the divine voice). The “desecration” has not brought about any major change: in its heroes, society materializes its dreams and the always present ideal of surmounting history and the human condition. Nowadays, a political leader is charismatic and a show-biz or sports celebrity is a star: the vocabulary attests to the extension of a magical source. From this dialectics also results the current interpretation of history, based on the personality and acts of great men chosen by fate; it is to them that history owes the cachet of a higher meaning.                                                                      

             The “double”, death, and the hereafter. This mental structure reflects the conviction that the material body of the human being is doubled by an independent, immaterial element (double, spirit, soul, etc.).18 According to some beliefs, it can detach itself from the body even during man’s lifetime (the explanation of ecstatic trips, witches’ peregrinations, werewolves, etc.); in any case, it continues to exist after death. Indestructible and immortal, the “double” settles in a hereafter that is either close-by and open to the world of the living (the ancestors’ cult of the primitives), or, conversely, remote and closed up (the Hades of the Greeks). Out there it lives the dim life of a shadow, no matter what its previous merits or sins (the classical Inferno), or, on the contrary, it is punished or rewarded (as in the Christian religion); in that case, it is given the chance of communion with God. Finally, it can remain “attached” to the material world, reincarnating successively into a variety of carnal envelopes (reincarnation or metempsychosis). The migration of the “double” to the hereafter stimulated all kinds of imaginary constructions, occasionally ending up in very sophisticated “topographies” and “sociologies” of the Infernos and Paradises (see, as insuperable models, the infernos of Buddhism, with their numerous “sub-sections” and a particularly complex bureaucratic organization, or, on the Christian side, Dante’s Divine Comedy). Between the world of the living and that of the dead, separation is never absolute; there are gates allowing the passage of some of the chosen to the other side (a type of initiatory voyage recurrent in mythology and literary fiction that also characterizes mystic rapture). But the spirits can also dwell among us, reveal themselves or be contacted, a belief perpetuated since primitive times till modern spiritualism.

             The otherness. The connection between I and the Others, between We and the Others, is expressed through a complex system of otherness. This game works at all levels, from minimal difference to radical otherness, the latter pushing the Other beyond the limits of humanity, into an area close to animality or to the divine (either by distortion of a real prototype, or by pure fabrication). Every social intercourse, every discourse on man must inevitably go through this screen of the imaginary. In a broader sense, otherness refers to a whole body of differences: different regions and landscapes, different beings, different societies, thus associating an imaginary geography with fantastic biology, and social utopia. Its ultimate consequence is a blown up world, fascinating and disquieting at the same time.                                                                                        

             The unity. This archetype seeks to submit the world to a unifying principle. Man endeavors to live in a homogenous and intelligible universe. Religions, magical thought, philosophies, sciences, interpretations of history, ideologies – all attempt, each in its own manner, to confer a maximum of coherence to the diversity of phenomena. The myth of the epicene is a perfect reflection of this way of conceiving the absolute, illustrating the harmonious pristine synthesis, where the male and female principles were not yet separated.19 Unity is evinced at all the levels, in the cosmic sense (laws governing the Universe, the integration of man into Creation, similarities between microcosm and macrocosm), as well as on a human-communities scale, whose coherence must be secured by a series of myths and rites (since primitive times up to modern national ideologies).                                                                                                           

             The reiteration of the origins. In all the communities, the origins are firmly honored. It is the role of foundation myths to throw a bridge between past and present, by incessantly evoking and conjuring up the decisive facts which gave birth to the present realities: the origin of the Universe (cosmogony) and of its particular elements, the origins of man, religions, communities, nations and states. Invoking a genesis means grasping the essence and the destiny of current configurations. Each human group recognizes itself in its foundation myths that ensure its specificity when compared to others and offer it the warrant of a certain everlastingness. Thus, paradoxically, nothing is more present in the conscience of man than the origins – a mythicized, ideologized, politicized domain.                                                                                                                            

             The decipherment of the future. After the history that was – the history that will be. The oracular imaginary comprises a long series of methods and techniques aimed at understanding and controlling the times to come. The particular lot of each individual is in question, but also, and above all, the destiny of man, the sense of history and of the world. Occultism, astrology, prophecies, futurology, teleologies of the universe or of history (cyclic or linear history, end of the world, millenarianism, progress or decadence…) reflect, in close relation with the religions, sciences and ideologies, an obsessive quest, never assuaged.                                                             

             The evasion: consequence of the rejection of the human condition and history. Man strives to escape constraints, get out of his skin, change his condition, in all the conceivable variants: ascension (spiritual elevation, knowledge, supernatural powers, holiness) or regression (to a natural state), forward rush or return to the sources… The invention of another condition also means the abolition of real history, with its host of miseries, and the quest for a different evolution. The solutions are being sought by exalting the beginnings (Golden Age nostalgia), in a purified future (religious or secularized millenarianism), beyond the known space (islands, distant realms, planets, galaxies), or in a conventional space (utopias). The rejection can manifest itself either in a passive manner (escape from history), or in an active, even aggressive manner (attempts to force destiny, impose one’s will in the course of events). The regression dream and heroic action can actually combine (as in millenarian versions). The desperate struggle against history is in fact one of history’s strongest ferments.                                                                                                                         

             The fight of (complementary) opposites. The imaginary is polarized par excellence. Each of its figures has an antithetical counterpart: day and night, black and white, Good and Evil, Heaven and Earth, fire and water, mind and matter, holiness and bestiality, Christ and Antichrist, construction and destruction, rise and fall, progress and decadence, male and female, yin and yang… (each principle, in its turn, raising contradictory attitudes of desire and rejection). This arrangement reveals a strong tendency to simplify, dramatize and invest phenomena with a high degree of significance. The dialectic of contraries is characteristic of religions (with a high point in Iranian Manichaeism) and, generally, of the regular interpretations of the world, man, and history. The conflict of the two cities, quoted by St. Augustine, or Hegel’s and Marx’s dialectics (centered precisely round the fight of the contraries) are no more than avatars of a very powerful archetype. The opposite poles can either be reunited in a comprehensive interpretation – hence compliant with the principle of Unity, or dissociated into antagonistic syntheses (idealism and materialism, classicism and romanticism…) 
           These great archetypal structures have a universal scope. They evince a certain structural fixedness above the cultural and chronological lines: the belief in a reality of a higher essence that commands the material world; the hope of life after death; awe and anxiety in the face of the world’s diversity and, especially, the Other; the attempt to secure a maximum of coherence for the world and the communities; the effort to make comprehensible the origins, essence and significance of the world and history; strategies aimed at control over individual destiny, history and the future; or, inversely, rejection of history and the attempt to evade it in order to take refuge in an even, harmonious time; finally, the dialectics of combat and synthesis of opposed tendencies. We must specify that our subject is meant to cover the historical era exclusively. We believe that most of the above-mentioned mental structures belong to man in general, but it would be adventurous and beside our intention to shift the debate towards prehistoric man or “savage thought” (or, who knows, towards the “post-historic” man of tomorrow). There are differences, no doubt, or at least shifts of accent. For instance, as Claude Lévi-Strauss noticed, savage thought is averse to history; with it, the “rejection of history” applies perfectly, but obviously less so the mental penchants seeking the valorization of historical time (aside from the origins – universally invoked and reawakened). The most characteristic evolution would be precisely the progressive adaptation of the human spirit to time and change, to a fluid, increasingly dynamic history. Once again, we advance in our selected field the moment savage thought has been overcome, and the real historical time begins; however, this will not prevent us from making the necessary associations, particularly when the “savage” stock of historical mentalities becomes conspicuous (or is interpreted as such by authors whose opinions we review). On the other hand, archetypes must be understood as strongly intertwined. Models circulate, combine with one another, amplify, or wane. A myth such as the Savior’s – to cite an already mentioned example – is in variable relationships with several structures at once. Its links to the holy are obvious; he appears as a guarantor of unity, or as a new founder; sometimes, as a millenarian or revolutionary leader, he propounds a solution for exiting history… Consequently, each manifestation of the imaginary displays unmistakable features, while its components belong to a common, invariable stock. Each act or object is likely to be accounted for by the imaginary. Even the most elementary, such as food and sex, often become privileged receptacles where the main archetypes meet, due to a complex (and varying, from one civilization to another) system of taboos and rules, representations and phantasms. People believe they eat and make love in the most natural way, but in fact they do it by the rules deeply embedded in our spirit by the imaginary. On the other hand, sexual connotations can be identified in the most diverse figures of the imaginary (which psychoanalysis has been teaching us for a century). Thus, the foundation or origin myths, recollecting the birth of the universe or peoples, can easily be translated into sexual terms once they refer explicitly to “fecundating” and “birth”. The imaginary culls compartments the rationalist approach has been wont to confine.

            The Degrees of Belief

The levels, the degrees and the meanings must also be defined. The imaginary is not homogeneous and even, it is as varied as life. There is an essential imaginary that surges from the depths. There is also a play of the  imaginary, an imaginary conceived and perceived as fiction. Nothing is gratuitous, though. Each act corresponds to a project, to an aspiration. The play is not exactly a game, it is a way of structuring the world, inventing congruous, meaningful spaces and rules. It is in close relationship with the holy (as revealed by Johan Huizinga, 1872-1945, in his Homo Ludens, 1939). The feast or the carnival are receptacles of the social imaginary, in a fairly wide range, where utopia and the holy are concentrated in high doses (see, to that purpose, Man and the Holy, by Roger Caillois, 1939). The massive utilization of the feast by totalitarian regimes – from the Jacobin dictatorship to fascism, nazism and communism – confirms its potentiality. Literary, artistic, or cinematographic fiction operates with values and symbols that come from the deep (movie-star veneration is to some people an obsession, actually a religion, as proven by Edgar Morin: The Stars, 1957).

Man can pretend to be living in an imaginary world and believing in its phantasms (at least while reading a book or playing a game), being all the while aware of the convention and without severing his ties with reality. On the other hand there is an imaginary in the strong sense of the word, one considered as essential, indeed more so than the actual world: the most evident model is that of religions (political religions aiming at the transfiguration of the world included). Even in that case, man is generally capable of dissociating the two levels: the real and the supernatural, the secular and the holy. The ancient Greeks believed in their myths (to that purpose we shall refer to the already cited book by Paul Veyne), but they placed their gods, heroes and mythical times on a plane distinct from their real life and history. Psychologists know that human thought is not particularly coherent. Man is capable of giving credence to contradictory truths, just as children think the very same toys have been brought by Father Christmas, but also by their parents.20 One is perfectly apt to live – in fact this is what mankind has been doing since its inception – on two planes at the same time: one real and the other imaginary, in a world both prosaic and fabulous. There is only one thing one cannot do: live without the imaginary, or outside it.

The distribution of each particular belief and social receptivity are, nevertheless, very differentiated and fickle. Behavioral patterns are spread along a scale ranging from acceptance without reserve to categorical rejection, with a multitude of intermediate postures. At one extremity, the imaginary submerges outer reality. “Mythical transport” reflects a schizoid structure, that is, a breach from the actual world; it is only the truths of the imaginary that still count. This is the case of the great mystics, new-era prophets, or people contacted by aliens.21 At the other extremity, the imaginary is planned for destruction (of course, the imaginary of the others). The Greek philosophers of antiquity set the fashion by their attempt to de-mythicize myths. The rationalism of the Enlightenment resumed the operation on a larger scale. Eventually, the fight against the imaginary got embroiled in confusion. For two centuries now, myths and counter-myths have been confronting one another. But who could say where Truth stands? In any case, it was noticed that demythification leads straight to a crystallization of new myths. A counter-myth is not necessarily less mythical than the contested myth. It is not more reasonable (nor is it less reasonable) to believe in the big-bang theory rather than God. The imaginary cannot be destroyed, it can only be displaced and made to reemerge under new forms.

Condemning the imaginary of the others is a sign of intolerance. To each his own synthesis: there is not a single color, but an infinity of nuances.

Imaginary and Mentalities

The bonds between the two concepts, imaginary and mentalities, are narrow and complex. In any event, the planes must not be confounded, because this would end in the dissolution of the imaginary into an overwhelming history of mentalities. The imperialism of mentalities is also fostered by problem-posing imprecision (one would search in vain for a complete and clear-cut definition in the extensive articles consecrated to them by Jacques Le Goff and André Burguière’s reference works). Still and all, we can agree that, essentially, their domain borders on psychological response, on “primary” mental stances. Lucien Febvre made the distinction precisely between “history of mentalities” and “history of ideas”, with the former lying on a deeper level of conscience, and even lower, in the unconscious.

The imaginary, although deriving its lifeblood from the abyss of mentalities, is nevertheless marked by distinguishing features. Face to face with the somehow abstract configuration of mentalities, the imaginary assumes an entire collection of sensible images. It reveals itself as another reality, enmeshed in the tangible reality, but no less real. Moreover, the imaginary appears much more elaborated, sometimes even extremely sophisticated. Myths, religions, utopias, systems of otherness, literary fiction, scientific hypotheses: we are on a more “elevated”, more “formal” level, closer to ideologies than mentalities (ideologies being nothing but secularized mythologies, from the point of view of the imaginary). It is the degree of formality and awareness that makes the difference in the end.

In fact, the mentalities’ rage is already a thing of the past. After having upheld its expansion, the vagueness of the concept is nowadays sensed as a handicap. As a working tool, it seems barely efficient. With its more outlined figures, the imaginary is likely to offer more accurate and refined themes and means of investigation.

What Is a Myth?

Myth is a recurrent concept when it comes to the imaginary. Here is a fashionable word: its expansion has been nurturing an augmenting ambiguity for some time. Colloquial speech and dictionaries operate with countless meanings. Ultimately, anything that some way or other strays from “reality” seems susceptible of turning into “myth”. Fictions of any sort, prejudices, stereotypes, distortions or exaggerations are covered, all but unscrupulously, by this concept with an imperialistic turn.

On the other hand, rather restrictive definitions are formulated by the specialists of “classical” mythologies. To them, the domain is actually limited to archaic, traditional societies; it is the myth in its original sense: a fabulous narrative, essentially bent on the origins.

How can the extreme interpretations be reconciled? Abiding by the vagueness is not a solution, nor is reducing the myth to its basic formula alone. The forms and functions evolve, whereas mythical sensibility remains inseparable from human spirituality. The myth is conceived of as an imaginary construction: a narrative, representation, or idea purporting to grasp the gist of cosmic and social phenomena, based on the intrinsic values of the community and with the purpose of ensuring its cohesion.

The narrative as formal structure, the stamp of the holy, and the intervention of supernatural forces and fabulous characters (gods, heroes) are distinctive traits of the traditional myth. Modern myths may continue in like manner (as, for instance, the myth of the aliens or the multiple versions of the Apocalypse), but quite often they come out under the abstract cloak of ideas and symbols. Progress and the nation are undoubtedly myths, insofar as they propose an explanatory scheme of history and underscore solidly shared values. The (relative) retreat of the supernatural leaves an empty spot, without any loss of substance, for science, reason, ideologies…

The myth offers a key that simultaneously gives access to both a system of interpretation and an ethical code (a pattern of behavior). It is a strong integrator and simplifier, reducing the diversity and the complexity of phenomena to a favored axis of interpretation. It introduces in man’s universe and life a principle of order in agreement with the needs and ideals of a given society.

To distinguish, in the case of myths, between the “true” and the “untrue” is a bad way of tackling the problem. The myth is structure, not “matter”; it may use real or fictitious materials, or real and fictitious ones concurrently; the important thing is for it to arrange them by the rules of the imaginary. A precarious, pervious boundary separates it from history; it operates with selection and transfiguration – with what Marcel Détienne called a work of “oblivion and memory”.22 The myth is supposed to render a true story, but its truth strives to be more essential than the shallow truth of things. “The most secret part of a culture’s identity is entrusted to its mythology”.23 Merely deforming reality or reconstructing it is not enough to invent a myth; the essential has to be built into, in a symbolic sense.

Its cognitive function – the quest for profound truths, for hidden truths – bridges the gaps between myth and science. However, the dissimilarities between the two strategies of questioning the world are no less evident. The mythical approach is intuitive, “poetical”, whereas science proceeds by induction and experiment. Owing to their global vision, mythologies are more akin to philosophical systems and to ideologies. Despite that, there is, unquestionably, a mythical ground in the scientific activity. The most pragmatic experimentation itself is determined by a system of values and a particular vision of the world; it is, as a result, dependent upon a mythical penchant. The more we search for answers to the key-problems of nature and existence, the more we are drawn closer to the perspective proper to mythologies.