268 SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



the hawk that could see its prey from the sky, the plant 

 that could heal or poison, the tornado, the lightning, and 

 the sun these were beings to be regarded with awe, 

 and to be propitiated with the ceremonial respect ac- 

 corded to all-powerful men. ' ' 55 Thus the savage does 

 not believe in One Spirit, but he believes in many spirits 

 of which some are good, others are bad spirits. The lat- 

 ter must be appeased with offerings and ritual, lest their 

 cruel plans work out to the harm of men. Sometimes 

 their evil designs may be overthrown by magic. And so 

 the mind of primitive man seems to us, as Bagehot has 

 so aptly put it, "tattooed over with monstrous images." 6 

 Life experiences are a confused mass of mysterious and 

 inexplicable happenings; for the savage has failed to 

 make that " rigid distinction between the subjective and 

 the objective, between imagination and reality" 57 which 

 the modern man is accustomed to make. Ideas and 

 images are repeatedly confused with facts, a process 

 which leads to blind gropings after wrong causes. 



In primitive culture the different fields of human 

 thought and effort, Law, Religion, Literature, Music, Art, 

 Science and Magic, are not clearly differentiated and 

 conceived of as more or less separate lines of endeavor; 

 consequently many actions which we regard as quite 

 commonplace and unconnected have for the savage defi- 

 nite religious significance or symbolic meaning. The 

 traditional material in their culture has not been so care- 

 fully worked over and checked up as ours. The result 

 is, that the same act will bring to the mind of the savage 

 and the mind of the civilized man, radically different 



55 Giddings, op. tit., p. 247. 



so Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 120. 



57 Tylor, op. tit. 



