CH. XXI.] GENESIS OF MAN, INTELLECTUALLY, 315 



freedom of thought goes along with that higher represeata- 

 tiveness accompanying further mental evolution." ^ 



If now we inquire for a moment into the causes of this 

 higher representativeness of civilized thinking, we shall see 

 most beautifully exemplified the way in which intellectual 

 Drogress, as it goes on in the human race, is determined by 

 social evolution. Intellectual progress is indeed a cause as 

 well as a consequence of tlie evolution of society ; but amid 

 the dense entanglement of causes and effects our present 

 purpose requires us to single out especially the dependence 

 of progress in representativeness upon social complexity, 

 since herein will be found the secret of the mental pre- 

 eminence of civilized man. !N"ow the integration of small 

 tribes into larger and more complex social aggregates, which 

 is the fundamental phenomenon in civilization, tends directly 

 to heighten representativeness of thinking by widening and 

 varying the experiences of the members of society. The 

 member of a savage tribe must think indefinitely, concretely, 

 rigidly, improvidently, because his intellectual experiences 

 are so few in number and so monotonous in character. In- 

 crease in social complexity renders possible, or indeed directly 

 produces, fresh associations of ideas in greater and greater 

 variety and abundance, so that the decomposition and re- 

 combination of thoughts involved in abstraction and genera- 

 lization is facilitated ; and along with this, the definiteness 

 and the plasticity of thought is increased, and the contents 

 of the mind become representative in higher and higher 

 degrees. Thus in every way it is brought before us that 

 sociality has been the great agent in the achievement of 

 man's intellectual pre-eminence, and that it has operated by 

 widening and diversifying human experience, or in other 

 words by increasing the number, remoteness, and hetero- 

 geneity of the environing relations to which each individual's 

 actions have had to be adjusted. An inquiry into the 



* Spencer, op. cit. ii. 624. 



