RESPONSIVE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 



503 



Fig. 282. Social co-ordination. 



crystallized his concepts and gave them currency. They 

 were concepts first of the things he saw and then of their 

 properties; also, of the things he imagined, and then of their 

 imagined properties. Having attained to a discernment of 

 the relation between cause and effect, his mind demanded 

 explanations of the things in the world. Any explanations 

 were better than none. When he had gained ascendency 

 over the powers of the animal world and, by the establish- 

 ment of the rudiments of agriculture and household arts, 

 had foref ended himself against immediate want, he took 

 to thinking: the great problems of birth and death, of 

 times and seasons, and of the heaven and the earth were 

 before him. 



He was interested in the relation between his own body 

 and the breath or spirit that animates it; and out of the 

 consideration of this problem, he evolved ideas that, more 

 than any other, have dominated all the intratribal social 

 intercourse of subsequent history. He conceived of a spirit 

 of like form with the body but impalpable and separable 

 from the body, that goes a-wandering from it in dreams and 

 trances, but returns again; and that leaves the body at 

 death to wander elsewhere as a disembodied spirit, or to 

 take up a new abode. He conceived that animals also 

 possess kindred spirits and he wore the teeth and claws of 



Fig. 283. General sociability. 



