S44 PRIMITIVE NUMBERS (ETH. ANN. 19 
kind into the brightness of the known, and educating their native 
dread of all outer darkness. So, too, the more timid tribesmen of dif- 
ferent continents betray, in conduct and speech, a dominant intuition 
of a terrible Unknown opposed through self to a small but kindly 
Known. ‘This intuition is not born of intertribal strife, since it is 
strongest in those innately amicable family groups who (despite an 
implication of their designation) typify lower savagery, and since it is 
slowly modified with the rise of self-confidence among vigorous and 
ageressive tribes in whose minds the good grows large with the wax 
of conscious power; it is merely the subjective reflection of implacable 
environment—yet it is vaguely personified as a grisly and horrent 
bestial power, flaunting specters of death by toothand claw, by serpent 
venom and swallowed poison, by pitiless famine and insidious disease, 
by wracking storm and whelming flood, by hydra-headed chance against 
half-felt helplessness; and oyer against this appalling eyil there 
is a less completely personified good refiecting the small nucleus 
of confident knowledge with its far-reaching penumbra of faith. 
Accordingly, the lowest men and the higher animals seem much alike 
in their interpretation of nature—both rest their deepest convictions 
on a two-side cosmos connected in and through a largely passive Self. 
A yague yet persistent placement of the two ever-present sides 
with respect to Self is clearly displayed in the conduct of animals and 
men—the evil side 1s outward, the good side at the place or domicile 
of the individual and especially of the group, as is shown by the homing 
instinct of the wounded carnivore, by the haste of the fire-crazed horse 
to meet the flames in his familiar stall, by human and equine nostal- 
gia, and by the barbarian longing for burial in native soil. Moreover, 
both animals and men reveal indications of instinctive placement of 
the sides in the individual organism; and the indications consistently 
point to persistent intuition of face and back as the essential factors 
of self. Yet there is a significant diversity in the assignment of the 
sides of the organism to the sides of the good-bad cosmos: In general 
it appears that among the lower and the more timid the back stands 
for or toward the evil, the face toward the good, and that among the 
higher and more aggressive the face is set toward the danger; thus, 
defenseless birds and sheep huddle with heads together, savages sleep 
with heads toward the fire, and timid tribesmen tattoo talismans on 
their backs, while litters of young carnivores lie facing in two or more 
directions, self-confident campers sleep with feet to the fire, and higher 
soldiery think only of facing the foe. The interesting and significant 
growth of self-confidence need not be followed; it suffices to note that 
the primeval concept of the organic ego, as revealed in the conduct of 
animals and men, appears to be that of a face-back (and not bilateral) 
unity, with the two sides set toward the two aspects of a cosmos con- 
ceived in fear-born philosophy. 
