MarcH 22, 1901.] - 
of Mexico and Egypt and the ideographs 
of China are among the clearer vestiges 
of primitive standards, while the fancy- 
wrought constellations of the celestial sphere 
—birth-mates of pre-Cadmean characters 
remaining unchanged by reason of remote- 
ness from practical affairs—still conserve 
the graphic zoolatry in which writing began. 
The way from lowly language linking men 
and beasts in word and sign toa discrete 
graphic vocabulary is long ; yet the earlier 
steps were unquestionably marked by the 
dropping of instincts shared by brutes and 
the substitution of humanitarian concepts 
impressed by ever-widening human associ- 
ations. 
Since Tyler taught the world-wide range 
of animism in 1871, anthropologists have 
grouped the myths and faiths of mankind 
in a series of stages outlining a course of 
development—a natural history of doctrine 
—coming up through a slavish and de- 
spairing hylozoism, and ascending thence 
through higher zootheism and broadening 
worship of nature-powers on successive 
planes each brighter and more humane 
than the last. The zoic factors in primi- 
tive arts, industries, laws and languages 
were manifestly made potent in the olden 
time, as they are to-day among lowly folk, 
alike by overweening faith.and ever-pres- 
ent custom ; they were, and still are, kept 
alive not only by recurrent ceremony and 
daily taboo and hourly precept, but by tire- 
less study of animal contemporaries whose 
habits huntsmen must know under pain 
of hunger; so that much (perhaps most) 
of the sentient feeling of primal man 
must have been—as it is to-day among his 
survivors—of animal contemporaries. In 
savage life men and their animal associates 
are compelled to consecrate their best 
efforts to a study of each other ; in affairs of 
‘feeling and faith as in matters of imme- 
diate utility, the association engenders 
habits of body maturing in instincts even- 
SCIENCE 
459 
tually ripening into action-shaping habits 
of mind; and the strongest mentality is 
naturally the more deeply influenced— 
until continued experience of superior fac- 
ulty awakens consciousness of superior 
power, stirs the sleeping giant of self-con-. 
fidence and rends the shackles of zoophobia 
forever. 
Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind 
Sees Beasts in clouds, or hears them in the wind : 
so a modern Pope would write of the 
American natives; and so, too, he might 
write of any and all other aborigines made 
known through the researches of the last 
half-century. The upward way from primal 
beast-faith through concurrent fetichism 
and shamanism, and thence through mys- 
ticism and all manner of occultism, is long 
and need not now be traced ; it suffices 
that all of the earlier and many of the 
later steps were marked by the dropping 
of zoic motives or vestiges, and the substi- 
tution of ever nobler motives and imageries. 
When the scrolls picturing activital 
development are brought together—when 
the natural history of doctrines is outlined 
over those of languages, laws, industries 
and arts—the leading lines are found con- 
sistent in every essential feature; and all 
are seen to rise from a mentality both re- 
flecting and approaching that of lower ani- 
mals (though just how closely may not be 
measured until the sub-human mind is bet- 
ter understood) toward the higher human 
plane revealed in science and statecraft. The 
savage Seri—lowest of American tribesmen 
—is loathed by Caucasian neighbors as an 
uncanny beast, and it is a revelation to find 
that he reciprocates the loathing and glories 
in the contumely, feeling that it allies him 
the more closely with venerated consociates 
like puma and shark, and divides him the 
more widely from the hated white crea- 
tures of unnatural ways; and the sentiment 
of the Seri is measurably common to all 
