50 THE AIM AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD. 



support of facts which have been taken to be verifications 

 of them ; there must, at least, have been a widespread belief 

 that they " worked." Formally, then, the processes are 

 unexceptionable, and differ from a modern investigation 

 apparently only in the material circumstance that now-a-days 

 we should not fix upon these particular " cores of identity " 

 in the situations contemplated as having any relevance to the 

 similarity between the courses of their subsequent development 

 alleged to be observed. Since, however, mistaken beliefs as to 

 the significance of certain elements of phenomena have been 

 common in the history of Science, if we are to find an 

 essential difference between Science and Magic we must look 

 elsewhere. 



We can find the differentia we are seeking only by con- 

 sidering the whole primitive attitude towards the Objective, 

 the system of beliefs and interests by which new phenomena 

 were " apperceived." The primitive thinker had not reached 

 the clear distinctions we make between the dead world and 

 our living and conscious selves, and peopled the physical 

 environment with active individual principles whose wills had 

 constantly to be reckoned with. Moreover, his attitude 

 towards this environment was determined to a predominant 

 extent by considerations that touched the immediate safety 

 and wellbeing of himself and of his tribe. To a very large 

 extent it was the attitude of a being who combined with 

 the passions and vices of a man the terror of the child in the 

 presence of the unknown. Bearing these two facts in mind, 

 the failure to distinguish between the animate and the 

 inanimate which made him regard the environment as a great 

 community of beings, for the most part to be dreaded or 

 placated, and the constant pressure of the needs of defence 

 and preservation, which made it necessary that something should 

 le done, we can understand his at first sight capricious logic, 

 and can see the psychological force of the considerations 

 which led ultimately to his submission to the burden of a 



