516 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



would be excited clearly at first, not by the general order of Nature, 

 not by familiar sights and sounds, but by unusual events, more espe- 

 cially by events occurring suddenly and attended or followed by dan- 

 ger or disaster ; and it would not be until a spirit of curiosity was 

 active that such events would be attempted to be explained. Curiosity 

 is of late appearance in the course of mental evolution in animals, as 

 Mr. Romanes has pointed out in his book on that subject : it is most 

 marked in the family of apes, and must have been a principal factor in 

 determining the development of human attributes in certain branches 

 of that or a kindred family of primates. The natural operation of 

 curiosity in those half-animal beings, when directed toward especially 

 unaccountable cosmical events, would determine the nature of primi- 

 tive religion. In what manner such curiosity would be satisfied can 

 be approximately ascertained only by considering the mental opera- 

 tions that at that time had been evolved. 



At the time in question, prior to the existence of definite language, 

 reasoning could be little more than half-conscious, half-unconscious in- 

 ferences from one set of objective phenomena to another, reasoning by 

 analogy, of the crudest, baldest, most unscientific and unphilosophic 

 form. This process of reasoning has its purely physical counterpart 

 in the simplest reflex actions of the least developed organisms, that 

 react in a similar manner to similar impressions. A Venus's fly-trap 

 will clasp and inclose a little stone as well as a fly, although the fly 

 only is digestible ; and it is only by the gradual evolution of more 

 and more delicate organs of sense and of nerves and nerve-centers of 

 corresponding delicacy and complexity, that things apparently, but not 

 really, alike come to be discriminated. The senses do not deceive, but 

 it is the reasoning powers that fail, when a fish rises to a worsted fly, 

 or a bird pecks at a painted cherry, or a little puppy barks and snaps 

 at a rolling ball ; and the method of reasoning, instinctive or con- 

 scious, is in each case the same, from similarity of appearance to simi- 

 larity of cause. The basis of all reasoning is essentially the same, de- 

 pending on the involuntary association of ideas, by which is simply 

 meant the tendency when two ideas have once been associated in the 

 mind for the first idea on its subsequent recurrence to recall the second 

 idea, and vice versa. Similar habits of thought must have been nor- 

 mal among primitive men, largely instinctive, and unmodified by re- 

 flection. To the earliest men the movements of other men would seem 

 to require no philosophical explanation, as to a dog the movements of 

 another dog presumably seem to require none, except so far as their 

 actions might seem indicative of hostility or assistance. To such men 

 the movements of animals would be regarded as not different in kind 

 from the actions of their fellow-men, and until they had learned better 

 by experience or experiment they would tend to regard animals as not 

 widely different from men, proper to coax or to blame, or if very strong 

 and ferocious, to supplicate. In a similar way all moving things might 



