THE RELIGION OF NATURE 



Perhaps an imaginary incident will bring out 

 this difference clearly. Let us suppose that a 

 leopard had been the terror of a wood which was 

 haunted by a troop of monkeys and a company of 

 savages, and that in a final encounter with either 

 of these it had been beaten off, fatally wounded 

 and bleeding from the lungs. Now, it is practi- 

 cally certain that a monkey which chanced to come 

 upon the blood on the ground later would at once 

 recognize the dreaded scent of the leopard and 

 bound away in terror, chattering to his tribe to 

 flee. A man, on the other hand, would note the 

 bright color of the blood, and, knowing by experi- 

 ence that creatures always die when they shed 

 blood of that color, he would joyfully summon his 

 comrades to come and search for the corpse. 



Thus man, from his power of thinking about 

 the leopard instead of merely thinking of it, would 

 gain a great advantage ; and similar advantages 

 would await him at every turn of circumstance. 

 The habit, moreover, of thinking about things 

 would necessitate the use of language. What you 

 think of a thing can always be expressed by a 

 single ejaculation of fear, pleasure, contempt, 

 etc., such as other animals use ; but what you may 

 think about it can only be expressed in human 

 speech. 



In many other ways the human habit of think- 



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