PREHISTORIC SCIENCE 



would be removed presently in the natural order of 

 things. To a person who had no clear conception of 

 the lapse of time and no preconception as to the limited 

 period of man's life, the infirmities of age might very 

 naturally be ascribed to the repeated attacks of those 

 inimical powers which were understood sooner or later 

 to carry off most members of the race. And coupled 

 with this thought would go the conception that inas- 

 much as some people through luck had escaped the 

 vengeance of all their enemies for long periods, these 

 same individuals might continue to escape for indefinite 

 periods of the future. There were no written records 

 to tell primeval man of events of long ago. He lived 

 in the present, and his sweep of ideas scarcely carried 

 him back beyond the limits of his individual memory. 

 But memory is observed to be fallacious. It must early 

 have been noted that some people recalled events which 

 other participants in them had quite forgotten, and 

 it may readily enough have been inferred that those 

 members of the tribe who spoke of events which others 

 could not recall were merely the ones who were gifted 

 with the best memories. If these reached a period 

 when their memories became vague, it did not follow 

 that their recollections had carried them back to the 

 beginnings of their lives. Indeed, it is contrary to all 

 experience to believe that any man remembers all 

 the things he has once known, and the observed falla- 

 ciousness and evanescence of memory would thus tend 

 to substantiate rather than to controvert the idea that 

 various members of a tribe had been alive for an in- 

 definite period. 



Without further elaborating the argument, it seems 



VOL. i. a 17 



