494 Animal Life and 



and gradual process ; and many degenerate systems of 

 ideas may linger on in the darker corners of the world of 

 men. False or out of harmony as they seem to be with 

 the higher phases of development ; false or out of harmony 

 as they would be with a different and more exalted environ- 

 ment ; they are not false or out of harmony with the 

 environment in the midst of which we find them ; they are 

 not false or out of harmony with " the plain and obvious 

 facts of nature," as these exist for the ill-developed or 

 savage mind. 



The plain and obvious facts of nature, as interpreted by 

 men of science in 1890, have simply no existence for the 

 untutored or the savage intellect. For him they have not 

 emerged into the light of consciousness. But while we 

 cannot blame the savage for entertaining -ideas which are 

 false to facts which for him have no existence, we may 

 none the less believe that his system of ideas is not among 

 those which are destined to become predominant species. 

 So far as we can judge, the winning species among systems 

 of ideas and interpretations of nature are those in which 

 the greatest number of ideas are fused into harmonious 

 synthesis ; in which all the ideas are congruous, few or 

 none neutral ; and in which the abstract or conceptual 

 ideas, when brought into contact with concrete or perceptual 

 states of consciousness, are found to be in harmony and 

 congruity therewith. 



There is one more question in this connection on which 

 I must say a few words. How, it may be asked, has the 

 world become peopled, for many primitive and savage folk, 

 with a crowd of immaterial spiritual essences, so that it is 

 scarcely too much to say that, for some of these peoples, 

 everything has its double ; and there is no material exist- 

 ence that has not its spiritual counterpart ? 



I would connect this almost universal tendency with the 

 origin of abstract ideas (isolates) through language. When 

 the named predominant gave rise to the isolate (see p. 374), 

 it could scarcely fail that the primitive speakers and 

 thinkers should tend to regard those qualities or properties 



