No. .-,-,2] MTOXOMY OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 717 



ics who preceded him, however, does not give us the 

 needed historical background, for the impression that 

 Aristotle was a primitive man, or that science was born 

 in Greece, is surely wrong. Scientific knowledge began 

 with the human race. 



Although the thoughts of early men are for the most 

 part unrecorded, study of the primitive men living to-day 

 shows conclusively that the problem of the origin and 

 nature of life is realized by the savage. In the lore of 

 medicine men, magicians and seers, scientific knowledge, 

 theories and beliefs, fuse into an alloy which, despite the 

 varied conditions of its genesis and growth, presents 

 remarkable homogeneity. In this cultural amalgam the 

 attempt is made to explain the difference between a dead 

 man and a live one, by means of "a thin unsubstantial 

 human image, in its nature a sort of vapor, film or 

 shadow ; the cause of life and thought in the individual 

 it animates ; independently possessing the personal con- 

 sciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or 

 present ; capable of leaving the body far behind to flash 

 swiftly froni place to place; mostly impalpable and in- 

 visible, yet also manifesting physical power, and espe- 

 cially appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantom 

 separate from the body of which it bears the likeness; 

 continuing to exist and appear to men after the death of 

 that body ; able to enter into, possess and act in the bodies 

 of other men, of animals and even of things." 2 



These conclusions, drawn from the experience of 

 dreaming, are not much more primitive than the opin- 

 ions prevalent during the middle ages and surviving in 

 the shadows of church spires to-day. Now and again, 

 however, revolutionary teachings arose, and the most 

 significant of these for our immediate purposes are the 

 doctrines of Rene Descartes. 



In his splendid history of biological theories, Radl 3 

 has traced with considerable detail the fortunes of the 



2 Tylor, Edward B., "Primitive Culture." 



'Radl, Emil, "Geschichte der Biologischen Theorien." 



