652 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



and myths. Metamorphosis is so frequently discovered among primitive 

 peoples, it is such a frequent motif of myths, it is so familiar a product of 

 folk-lore in fain,' tales (such as " Beauty and the Beast "), and it survives 

 so persistently in superstitions (witches habitually change into cats) that it 

 must spring from some preconception firmly fiked in the human mind. 

 Petrifaction m^'ths in which men or animals change into stones or \^ce versa 

 are widely dispersed and are an integral part of the belief in metamorphosis. 

 The general significance of metamorphosis is clear — it expresses a sense of 

 social community between man and the whole of his surroundings. This 

 fundamental sense of universal social community is a preconception of the 

 primitive mind, and it directs us to an explanation of the universal beUef in a 

 connection between the moon and life in plants, animals, and men. The 

 analogical transfer of decrease or increase from the moon to s^on pathetically 

 responding objects requires an adequate motive, for association of ideas is 

 not haphazard. The primitive preconception of a universal social com- 

 munity pro\'ides a clue and directs us to the source of the belief in lunar 

 control over life and nature. We are thus directed to a psychical centre in 

 the primitive mind, to a psychical source from which many primitive behefs 

 and practices emerged. 



By thinking, said Socrates to Theaetetus, " I mean the conversation which 

 the soul holds M-ith herself in considering of anything. I speak of what I 

 scarcely know ; but the soul when thinking appears to me to be just talking 

 — asking questions of herself and answering them, affirming and denying." ^ 

 " Talking " appropriately denotes an exchange of ideas am.ong members of 

 a group, and " thinking " the origin of ideas in a single mind. Thus when 

 Socrates compares thinking to talking he involuntarily thinks of himself as a 

 group. This comparison of the self to a group of selves is a spontaneous and 

 inveterate habit, ^^^len John and Thomas converse, Oliver Wendell Holmes 

 easily persuades us that six people are talking : the real John, John's ideal 

 John, Thomas's ideal John, John's ideal Thomas, Thomas's ideal Thomas, 

 and the real Thomas. ^ This multiplication of selves comes easily as a 

 metaphor, and in the struggle between the Old Adam and the New often 

 successfully imposes itself as a reality. Because man is so essentially a 

 creation of society and so essentially a social creature he thinks of himself so 

 persistently as one of a group that if he is ob\'iously alone he makes a group 

 of himself. There is the less reason for surprise, therefore, when primitive 

 man is discovered making not only himself, but everything else, including 

 the moon, into a social group. He is so bom and bred among human beings, 

 he is so constantly in intercourse with them, he has so unintermittently to 

 respond as if he were addressed by persons or addressing them that he, on 

 the one hand, multiplies himself and, on the other hand, attributes social 

 qualities to everything because he is insensibly impelled to think and act in 

 terms of social intercourse. This fundamental and engrained habit reserved 

 for his posterity two hardly won discoveries. The singleness of the human 

 mind or soul, its essential unity and selfhood, is the counterpart discovery 

 within the man himself, improbable as the parallel may appear, of the 

 discovery in the outer world of nature that the nature of things, and even 

 of living things, excludes them from the human social circle. It is a common 

 remark that " the ancients were generally wanting in the distinct concept 

 of per?onahty,"3 and that even in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus personality 

 is inadequately considered and conceived.* This imperfect conception of 



^ Plato, Thecsteius, 190. 



- Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, iii. 

 2 Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy (trans, by Alleyne and Goodwin), 

 p. 287. 



♦ Idem, Presocraiic Philosophy (Allejme's trans.), i, 150. 



