en. XXI.] GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY. 313 



numerous represented cases in whicli degree of likeness is 

 the common trait that is thought about. Hence not only 

 the improvidence of the savage, but likewise the vagueness 

 of his conceptions, his inability to form generalizations in- 

 volving abstraction, and the limited area covered by his 

 adjustments, are facts which one and all find their ultimate 

 explanation in his relative incapacity for calling up repre 

 eentative states of consciousness. 



From this same incapacity results that inflexibility of 

 thought in which the savage resembles the brute, and which 

 is one of the chief proximate causes of his unprogressive- 

 ness. " One of the greatest pains to human nature," says 

 Mr, Bagehot, " is the pain of a new idea." This pain, which 

 only to a few of the most highly cultivated minds in the 

 most highly civilized communities has ceased to be a pain 

 and become a pleasure, is to the savage not so much a pain as 

 a numbing or paralyzing shock. To rearrange the elements of 

 his beliefs is for the uncivilized man an almost impossible 

 task. It is not so much that he does not dare to sever some 

 traditional association of ideas which he was taught in child- 

 hood, as it is that he is incapable of holding together in 

 thought the clusters of representations with the continuity 

 of which the given association is incompatible. This im- 

 portant point is so ably and succinctly stated by Mr. Spencer, 

 that I cannot do better than to quote his exposition entire. 

 After reminding us that " mental evolution, both intellectual 

 and emotional, may be measured by the degree of remote- 

 ness from primitive reflex action," Mr. Spencer observes that 

 " in reflex action, which is the action of nervous structures 

 that effect few, simple, and often-repeated coordinations, tht 

 sequent nervous state follows irresistibly the antecedent 

 nervous state ; and does this not only for the reason that 

 the discharge follows a perfectly permeable channel, but- also 

 for the reason thai no alterxi.ative channel exists. From this 

 stage, in which the psychical life is automatically restrained 



