THE CIVILIZATIONS OF MAN 95 



life. It is much more likely that the belief in death itself was 

 uneasy and uncertain.) When language came, the tradition 

 of the Old Man was strengthened and grew. Along with it, 

 the gentler tradition of mother love and care also developed. 

 Freud and Jung have shown us how great a role these two 

 complexes play in our adaptation to social needs and in our 

 ideas of the supernatural, especially in our desire to replace 

 the imperfection of the earthly father with a perfect 

 Heavenly Father. Fear of the Old Man, fears of animals and 

 storms and sudden sounds and sickness, and even of the mys- 

 tery of women were all mingled in the minds of our child- 

 like ancestors. Children of our day are very easily made 

 fearful of things and places and people and the unhealthy, 

 and can readily be indoctrinated with the ideas of avoidance 

 and repulsion. With speech, all kinds of taboos arose out of 

 these fears, and the evolution of the religious elements in 

 human life was under way. (The origins of language are 

 considered in Chapter 12.) 



By talking together, men and women began to augment 

 each other's fears and to exaggerate their experiences, as 

 they still do. The idea of the unknown, the unclean, and the 

 fearful is easily correlated with the idea of propitiation. The 

 evil is embodied in a spirit and can be bought off by cere- 

 mony and sacrifice, especially if there is in the tribe an indi- 

 vidual who is older and wiser and in communication with 

 the spirit. The pedagogic talent of man being high, these 

 wiser individuals began to tell their fellows something of the 

 attributes of these spirits and what to do to please them. 

 Here was a new way to power and dominance, a "peck or- 

 der" on a different basis and one easily established since all 

 the common man asked was to be reassured that these men- 

 acing things would not harm him. And so, as anthropologists 

 see it, we have the appearance of the gods and priestcraft in 

 the Hfe of man— a complex arising out of the tradition of the 

 Old Man, out of sex emotions, out of desire for luck in the 

 hunt, out of avoidance and repulsion fears, out of awe and 



