THE BEGINNINGS OF CERTITUDE 51 



the rich, the noble, were to hunt, to fight, to win more property 

 by pillage, to make more slaves by conquest. 



It is to the slave, then, in all likelihood, that we owe the 

 beginnings of experimental knowledge. His simple inventions 

 and contrivances would have sharpened his wits, trained his 

 mind, taught him a rude cunning, developed him intellectually 

 beyond the brute brain of his brute lord. In due time he would 

 have acquired a knowledge of herbs and simples, and become 

 something of a physician. His dexterity in cutting up the 

 prizes of the chase would have made him the first surgeon. 

 His knowledge of cooking and the effect of fire would have made 

 him the first metallurgist. Out of this sprung the beginnings 

 of alchemy. The natural lust of wonder, of mystery, would 

 have early converted these into a primitive diabolism. To 

 the heavy brain of his overlord, sodden with gluttony and strong 

 drink, it would have readily seemed a black art. The slave 

 would not have been long in discovering that in his weakness 

 he had found strength, and that his intelligence had given him 

 power. 



From this would have come the medicine-man, the sooth- 

 sayer, the mage, the priest. A portion of the social fund would 

 have been set aside for their support ; they would have become 

 teachers and prophets, workers of miracles, diviners of omens ; 

 they would have been the interveners between the tribe and 

 the evil spirits which populated the air, the nooks of the forest, 

 the running streams, which came in the tempest, the thunder, 

 the flash of the heavenly fires, and the shakings of the earth. 

 The stages of this evolution are all to be traced in that con- 

 venient image of past days which we call anthropology. There is 

 scarce any phase which may not be illustrated from living tribes. 



It is easy to see that this slave element, become priest element, 

 would have laid hold of every available means for the furtherance 

 of its power. Foreseeing in a dim way that the origin of this 

 lay in a knowledge of phenomena and, in a slender way, in 

 devices for the control of phenomena, the more prescient among 

 them would have observed attentively the varied processes at 

 work about them. 



This is not saying that the higher knowledge was wholly of 

 slave origin. Obviously a large part of the human experience 

 upon which it is based was a racial experience, with which the 

 immediate occupations of the social units had no concern. 



