PREHISTORIC SCIENCE 



thunder and lightning seemed to menace his existence, 

 he was led irrevocably to think of those human foes 

 who warred with him, and to see, back of the warfare 

 of the elements, an inscrutable malevolent intelligence 

 which took this method to express its displeasure. 

 But every other line of scientific observation leads 

 equally, following back a sequence of events, to seem- 

 ingly causeless beginnings. Modern science can ex- 

 plain the lightning, as it can explain a great number of 

 the mysteries which the primeval intelligence could not 

 penetrate. But the primordial man could not wait for 

 the revelations of scientific investigation : he must vault 

 at once to a final solution of all scientific problems. 

 He found his solution by peopling the world with in- 

 visible forces, anthropomorphic in their conception, 

 like himself in their thought and action, differing only 

 in the limitations of their powers. His own dream- 

 existence gave him seeming proof of the existence of an 

 alter ego, a spiritual portion of himself that could dis- 

 sever itself from his body and wander at will ; his scien- 

 tific inductions seemed to tell him of a world of invisi- 

 ble beings, capable of influencing him for good or ill. 

 From the scientific exercise of his faculties he evolved 

 the all-encompassing generalizations of invisible and 

 all-powerful causes back of the phenomena of nature. 

 These generalizations, early developed and seemingly 

 supported by the observations of countless generations, 

 came to be among the most firmly established scientific 

 inductions of our primeval ancestor. They obtained 

 a hold upon the mentality of our race that led subse- 

 quent generations to think of them, sometimes to 

 speak of them, as "innate" ideas. The observations 



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