THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



animals. The laws of thte psychic life of the savage have 

 been closely studied by mbdem ethnology. It teaches 

 tis that the higher reason is not found in savages, and 

 that their power of abstract thoUght and of forming 

 concepts is at a very low level. Thus, for instance, the 

 Vieddahs, who live in the forests of Ceylon, have not the 

 general idea of trees, though they know and give names 

 to individual trees. Mdriy savages cannot couht up to 

 five ; they never reflect on the grouhd of their existence 

 or think of the past or future. Hence it is a great error 

 fbr Schopenhauer and other philosophers to define mah 

 as a "metaphysical animal," and to seek a profound 

 distihction between man and the animal iii the need for 

 a metaphyisic. This craving has only been awakened 

 and devieloped by the progress of civilization. But even 

 ih civilized communities it (like consciousness) is not 

 found in early youth, and only gradually emerges. The 

 child has to learn to speak and think. Ita harmony with 

 our biogenetic laW, this child reproduces ih the various 

 stages of its mental development the wholfe of the 

 gradations which lead from the savage to the barbarian, 

 and from the barbarian to the half -civilized, and on to 

 the fully educated man. If this historical development 

 of the higher human faculties had always been properly 

 appreciated, and psychology had been faithful to the 

 comparative and genetic methods, many of the errors of 

 the curreiit nletaphysidal sySteins would have been 

 avoided. Kant would not then have pix)duced his theory 

 of d priori knowledge) but would have seen that all that 

 now seems to be a priori in civilized man was originally 

 acquired by a posteriori experiences in the long evolutioil 

 of civilizatiota and science. Here we have the root of the 

 errors which are distinctive of dualism and the prevail- 

 ing metaphysical transcehdentalism. 



Like all science, biology is renlistic^that is to say, 

 it regards its object, the orgailisnls, as really existing 



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