COMPULSION OF NATURE-ACTION 315 



When man became conscious of this power in him- 

 self, he became an organic, creative will; a new in- 

 strument of nature to constructive Tightness, and a 

 new means to a new era in evolution. The moving 

 power behind this will to create is the compulsion of 

 his possessions in mental Tightness. 



VIII. The Cooperative Factor, Mental and Moral, 



in Animism 



In man's earlier attempts to interpret nature, no 

 fundamental distinction was drawn between animate 

 and inanimate things, and he rarely recognized a con- 

 stant relation between cause and effect. 



Having no written language to symbolize his men- 

 tal imagery, he had no stable means of mental convey- 

 ance from man to man; no reservoir of memory-sym- 

 bols in which to store up the fruits of his experiences 

 neither for his own future use, nor for that of succeed- 

 ing generations. He therefore had little or no means, 

 beyond his own personal experience, of correlating 

 one event with another, especially the ones of less fre- 

 quent, or more irregular occurrence. Being without 

 these means, he was compelled to invent them the easi- 

 est way on the spur of the moment. It is not so sur- 

 prising that his first inventions were so varied or that 

 his trial explanations of natural phenomena were so 

 wide of the mark, as that he should have felt compelled 

 to make any at all. 



The Papuans, a primitive race of New Guinea sav- 

 ages, it is said, do not recognize that there is such a 

 thing as natural death, or death by inevitable internal 

 causes. However that may be, the Papuan is always 



