OH. xxi.l GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY, 303 



in the environment which, in the absence of answering func- 

 tional periods, cannot be directly responded to by the or- 

 ganism, may be discerned and indirectly responded to when 

 there arises this ability of numbering days and lunations." ^ 



In the advance to high stages of civilization, the extension 

 of the correspondence in time is most conspicuously exempli- 

 fied in the habitual adjustment of our theories and actions to 

 sequences more or less remote in the future. In no othei 

 respect is civilized man more strikingly distinguished from 

 the barbarian than in his power to adapt his conduct tc 

 future events, whether contingent or certain to occur. The 

 ability to forego present enjoyment in order to avoid the risk 

 of future disaster is what we call prudence or providence ; 

 and the barbarian is above all things imprudent and impro- 

 vident. Doubtless the superior prudence of the civilized 

 man is due in great part to his superior power of self- 

 restraint ; so that this class of phenomena may be regarded 

 as illustrating one of the phases of moral progress. Never- 

 theless there are several purely intellectual elements which 

 enter as important factors into the case. The power of 

 economizing in harvest-time or in youth, in order to retain 

 something upon which to live comfortably in winter or in 

 old age, is obviously dependent upon the vividness with 

 which distant sets of circumstances can be pictured in the 

 imagination. The direction of the volitions involved in 

 the power of self-restraint must be to a great extent deter- 

 mined by the comparative vividness with which the distant 

 circumstances and the present circumstances are mentally 

 realized. And the power of distinctly imagining objective 

 relations not present to sense is probably the most fundamen- 

 tal of the many intellectual differences between the civilized 

 ^an and the barbarian, since it underlies both the class of 

 phenomena which we are now considering;, and the class of 

 phenomena comprised in artistic, scientitic, and philosophio 

 * Spencer, op. cit. i. 326. 



