CHAPTER XXV 



THE HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS EVOLUTION 



(A) To THE Stage of Monotheism 



It is becoming a generally accepted conclusion that primi- 

 tive man of the quaternary period lived a social or semi-social 

 life, such as the monkeys in general and the higher types of 

 the apes still present. Like these, and like many savage tribes 

 still existing, man lived largely a bio-cognitic existence, that 

 was elevated and stimulated by a considerable measure of 

 cogitic action and reaction. For, while we may picture hunt- 

 ing, hut-building, weapon-fashioning, boat-building, primitive 

 social cooking, and like occupations as all stimulating to cogitic 

 advance, a large part of every 24 hours of each day would be 

 passed by many groups, as by the Bushmen, the Australians, 

 the Red Indians, and the Fuegians of today, in sleep; in lazy 

 unstimulating indolence; in games that served well to stimu- 

 late alike the cogitic and the cognitic brain centers; in eating 

 often to gorged surfeit, on a bio-cognitic plane that dulled 

 and subdued for the time the higher or cogitic faculties, as 

 such feasts still do amongst higher civilized man. 



But these primitive men inherited, more or less powerfully, 

 those highly complex cognitic and cogitic actions and reac- 

 tions that large groups of animals show, namely, love for 

 their offspring, and clinging attachment of the latter toward 

 the parents. This then with man, as with many large groups 

 of animals, produced consanguineous social sympathies that 

 became family and tribal ties. Furthermore, the birth, the 

 growth, the maturity, the decay, and the death of each indi- 

 vidual would be more and more keenly noted, and as language 

 developed be socially commented on. x\gain the change noted 

 by his fellow from the living active body of a friend to the 



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