COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



ability to form generalizations involving abstrac- 

 tion, and the limited area covered by his adjust- 

 ments, are facts which one and all find their 

 ultimate explanation in his relative incapacity 

 for calling up representative states of conscious- 

 ness. 



From this same incapacity results that inflex- 

 ibility of thought in which the savage resembles 

 the brute, and which is one of the chief proxi- 

 mate causes of his unprogressiveness. " 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 rear- 

 range the elements of his beliefs is for the un- 

 civilized 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 childhood, 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 impor- 

 tant 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 

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