34^ MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



man has developed from a state in which he had solely to 

 rely on the aid of his organs — a state, therefore, in which he 

 differed little in his habits from the brute creation, and with 

 respect to the enjoyment of his existence, nay, to his preser- 

 vation, depended almost entirely on whatever lucky chance 

 presented to him." * 



Now, to this special illustration on the general principle of 

 "fundamental metaphor" it will doubtless be said — Very 

 interesting in itself; but, after all, it merely amounts to a 

 philological proof that tools arc younger than words ; that 

 men did not always possess tools ; that tools were gradually 

 invented ; and that, when invented, they were named by a 

 metaphorical application of words previously in use. — Well, 

 if we are all agreed so far, I will proceed to adduce my 

 illustration. 



Judging from the now extensive literature which is opposed 

 to evolutionary teaching in the case of man, I gather that the 

 great majority of writers are quite as much impressed by the 

 moral and religious aspects of human psychology as they are 

 by the intellectual. Now, as already stated in the Preface, 

 I reserve for a future volume a full consideration of these 

 distinctively human faculties. In the present part of my 

 work I am concerned exclusively with the question as to the 

 origin of those powers of conceptual thought which, under any 

 point of view, must be regarded as the necessary and 

 antecedent condition to the possibility both of conscience and 

 religion. Nevertheless, merely for the sake of supplying an 

 illustration touching the point now before us, I may here fore- 

 stall a little of what I shall hereafter have to present in detail 

 touching the evidence that we have of the genesis of conscience. 

 And this I will do by another quotation from the same 

 philologist, seeing that he is an authority whom none of my 

 opponents can afford to ignore. 



" If we examine the words, those oldest pre-historic 

 testimonies, we shall find that all moral notions contain 



* Geiger, Address delivered before the International Congress for Archaology 

 atid History at Bonn, 1868. 



