58 PRE-ANIMISM 



tions has been left by the proto-human, typified by the 

 Pithecanthropus erectus, from the fragments of whose 

 skeleton, unearthed from a Pliocene deposit at Trinil, in 

 Java, in 1902, is deduced the theory that " he represents a 

 stage immediately antecedent to the definitely human phase, 

 and yet at the same time in advance of the simian stage." 

 Still more does this apply to the fragments of skull and jaw- 

 bone found in 1911 by Mr. Charles Dawson in a Pliocene 

 gravel bed at Piltdown, in Sussex, which have been named 

 Eoanthropus Dawsonii. The skull is human, the lower jaw 

 has a chimpanzee character, but the molar teeth are human 

 in shape. The mixture of ape-like and man-like characters is 

 remarkable in its bearing on a common ancestry. Neither 

 from the numerous relics of the more remote descendants of 

 these Paleolithic men can there be gathered anything con- 

 cerning the " blank misgivings of a creature moving about in 

 worlds not realized." We are, as yet, chiliads from the ages 

 of belief in gods and ghosts ; of graves as centres of worship 

 of deified man, over whose relics temples were to be raised ; 

 and of creation myths and legends ; in brief, of any specula- 

 tions about anything. We must, perforce, while keeping in 

 mind the barriers which absence of conceptional power, 

 articulate speech, power to record the spoken, and other 

 faculties lacking in him, have set up, come back to the 

 animal. And our conclusions as to what goes on in its mind, 

 like the conclusions which we draw as to what goes on in the 

 mind of our fellows, are based solely on its actions. Whether 

 we watch the behaviour of the wild or of the tame animal, we 

 shall interpret this aright only in recognizing that there are no 

 differences in kind between it and ourselves. "The more," 

 says Darwin, "one lives with an animal, the more he is 

 inclined to attribute to thought and reason, and the less to 

 thoughtless instinct." 



It may be taken for granted that between man in the 

 making shall we say Homo alalus, as the intermediate 

 between Pithecanthropus erectus and Homo sapiens ? and the 

 higher mammals of the upper Pliocene period, there was, in 

 common, similarity of impressions of the outer world made 

 upon them through their sensory apparatus. That outer 

 world, full of movements, sights, and sounds, whose nature 

 and significance neither man nor brute could know, was the 

 sole exciting cause of emotions among which affright had 

 largest play. The animal, the child, and the ignorant, and 

 therefore superstitious, adult, alike tremble before the unknown 



