THE NATURE OF TRADITION 409 



2. Before we go on to consider how tradition — the product 

 of conceptual thought — is passed on and stored up, it should 

 be noticed that we have not to regard the process of conceptual 

 thought as one which sprang into being in its present form and 

 continued as such ever since. There has been a movement of 

 thought up from dim and rudimentary beginnings to its present 

 stage. This movement may be considered as consisting essentially 

 in the clarification of concepts. It is possible to examine the 

 nature of this movement without reference to the question as 

 to how far the later stages are dependent upon the evolution of 

 innate mental characters. It may be that the higher stages of 

 conceptual thought are possible only when the evolution of the 

 intellect has proceeded beyond the point where lower stages of 

 thought alone are manifested. This question may be neglected 

 for the present and we may consider very briefly the nature of 

 this movement, which is best illustrated if we contrast in a few 

 words the stage which conceptual thought has reached among 

 primitive peoples as a whole with the stage it has reached in the 

 everyday life of the so-called civilized races of the present time, 

 and in so doing we may follow Professor Hobhouse's recent 

 exposition.^ 



With the origin of language arises the first sign of the power 

 to grasp the data of experience in accordance with their afiinities 

 and so to build up conceptions of individuals, groups, and classes 

 as the subject of rough-and-ready generalizations. ' With regard 

 to matters standing out very plainly in experience or very close 

 to practical interests there is not room for much divergence in 

 method. . . . But outside the limited area of readily tested belief 

 lies a mass of more doubtful ideas of great significance in human 

 life. In this region we find in the first stage that the movements 

 of fancy under the sway of feehng take the lead in forming 

 beHef, and that the ideas formed are so obscure and inconsistent 

 as to blur the deepest lines of distinction drawn for more developed 

 thought in the logical categories. We may then consider the first 

 stage in human thought to be one of which the process of organiz- 

 ing experience into common categories is incomplete, and the 

 evidence for the truth of an idea is not yet separate from the 

 quahty which renders it pleasant.' ^ This is the stage charac- 



> Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, chs. vi, vii, viii. and ix. ^ Ibid., 



p. 96. 



