ORIENTATION OF MENTAL IMAGERY 297 



tion of nature into the great domains of the organic 

 and inorganic, the living and the dead; always con- 

 scious of his own weakness, and of the larger world 

 forces which must be avoided, or enlisted in his own 

 services, or in some way bribed or propitiated; always 

 moved by fear of destruction and by the greedy appe- 

 tites that ministered to his own growth and preserva- 

 tion, grew the first vague outlines of man's organized 

 knowledge that we call science, religion, and philoso- 

 phy, and the attempts to regulate his acts in harmony 

 therewith, that we call social conduct, social laws, and 

 social discipline. 



These more or less independently organized sys- 

 tems of thought and action have a common origin in 

 vital experience. Their roots penetrate every phase 

 of organic life, extending even beyond instincts and 

 purely organic reactions, into the domain of the inor- 

 ganic world, where life itself has its origin, and from 

 which it still draws its working materials and powers. 



The more immediate basis of these great physico- 

 psychic systems was an elemental, but a very practical 

 nature-science; the ethics and morality of plant and 

 animal life, the self -constructive action of the cat, the 

 mouse, and the nut, of the ape, the fruit, and the tiger, 

 whereby, in varying degrees, the duration and well be- 

 ing of each life was insured by its conformity to the 

 exigencies of the other, and to the chemical and physi- 

 cal properties of a multitude of other agencies. The 

 cat is of necessity a practical student of the physics, 

 chemistry, and biology of the mouse, just as the mouse, 

 of necessity, is a practical student of the dangerous 

 ways of the cat, the attributes of moving bodies, the 

 physical properties of nut-shells, and the chemical 



