The author studies myths, which had been shaped in Europe and Asia in the late primordial epoch, before the class societies and city cultures; those myths kept existing in more or less the same form through the epochs of ancient and pre-feudal civilizations. The author sees the main characteristic of mythological thinking in trope (metonymy, metaphor, etc.), and the myth itself (or its structural core — mythologem) he takes for a statement which reflects social and psychological motivations for emotional consideration on phenomena of the outer or inner world of humans.
The author declares that myth is a wholesome interpretation of world processes, which organizes their perception by human beings in the situation of the absence of abstract (non-object) concepts. As an organizing moment, myth is close to the plot: plot organizes verbal presentation of world phenomena in their movement in the course of an invented story; myth organizes mental perception of actual world phenomena in their movement in the situation of absence of the tools of abstract thinking. Myth is a mental and a verbal trace both of beliefs and thoughts of ancient people, and the way of their thinking. The very term ‘myth’ belongs to the later times, and the ancient human being did not make any difference between the actual and illusory knowledge.