COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



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 in- 

 volved in the power of self-restraint must be to 

 a great extent determined by the comparative 

 vividness with which the distant circumstances 

 and the present circumstances are mentally real- 

 ized. And the power of distinctly imagining 

 objective relations not present to sense is prob- 

 ably the most fundamental of the many intel- 

 lectual differences between the civilized man 

 and the barbarian, since it underlies both the 

 class of phenomena which we are now consider- 

 ing, and the class of phenomena comprised in 

 artistic, scientific, and philosophic progress. The 

 savage, with his small and undeveloped cere- 

 brum, plays all summer, like the grasshopper 

 in the fable, eating and wasting whatever he can 

 get ; for although he knows that the dreaded 

 winter is coming, during which he must starve 

 and shiver, he is nevertheless unable to real- 

 ize these distant feelings with sufficient force to 

 determine his volition in the presence of his 

 actual feeling of repugnance to toil. But the 

 civilized man, with his large and complex cere- 

 brum, has so keen a sense of remote contin- 

 gencies that he willingly submits to long years 

 of drudgery, in order to avoid poverty in old 

 age, pays out each year a portion of his hard- 

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