270 LIFE: ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 



Not only are we limited in our efforts to make physical measure- 

 ments and to understand the vast complexities of nature, but the 

 very ultimates of both mind and matter continue to elude us. As 

 Herbert Spencer said, they are unthinkable. 



Science and Religion 



Science and religion originated together as a duplex reaction 

 of the developing human mind to the physical universe, and to the 

 needs and yearnings of the individual and of family and social life. 

 Contact with physical nature led to primitive sciences (skills, 

 manufacture, agriculture, and the household arts), while at the 

 same time fear, love, wonder and introspection gave rise to primi- 

 tive philosophies and religions. Primitive man looked with awe, 

 love, or fear upon the gigantic forces of nature, and the early 

 "medicine man" was both scientist and priest, striving to under- 

 stand nature and to propitiate the many potent man-like gods to 

 whom a naive animism attributed control of rain and crops, light- 

 nings and storms, and the mysteries of life, illness, and death. 



Science and religion have undergone and are undergoing par- 

 allel evolutions, and we must not scorn "the base degrees by which 

 we did ascend." There is a wealth of wisdom concealed among 

 the many errors of folk-lore. 



A few examples may be mentioned. In No. 11 of a series of 

 books on "Tales from the Outposts," there is a chapter on "The 

 Savage as Scientist," from which the following is quoted: 



"Kinga, who was one of the most famous chiefs and rain-doctors in 

 East Africa, refused to be moved from his kraal at Mandi on the Daua 

 Plateau down to Sekenke in the Wambare Plains, as medicine-man 

 Mgendu urged: and Mgendu came to ask advice of the writer, who was 

 then administrative officer in charge of the Iramba tribe. (Kinga was 

 suffering from general paralysis.) 



"Said Mgendu: 'The vidudu of paralysis must fight with the pilintu 

 of malaria so that the pilintu may be devoured; then must Kinga eat 

 of the nzizi chungu (bitter roots), and he will be strengthened' . . . 

 Vidudu are mysterious insect-like things; a pilintu is a strange un- 

 known wormlike thing . . . that half-naked savage doctor was prescrib- 

 ing the most up-to-date medical treatment for paralysis based on the 

 most recent discoveries of medical science . . . Sekenke is one of the 

 worst malarial districts in all Africa. 



"Many tribes, not only the Masai and Nandi of Kenya, knew the 

 cause of malaria. The Somalis knew, for a British traveller in their 

 country was told by Somali tribesmen thirteen years before Ross's 



