gifted with the best memories. If these reached a period when
their memories became vague, it did not follow that their
recollections had carried them back to the beginnings of their
lives. Indeed, it is contrary to all experience to believe that
any man remembers all the things he has once known, and the
observed fallaciousness and evanescence of memory would thus tend
to substantiate rather than to controvert the idea that various
members of a tribe had been alive for an indefinite period.

Without further elaborating the argument, it seems a justifiable
inference that the first conception primitive man would have of
his own life would not include the thought of natural death, but
would, conversely, connote the vague conception of endless life.
Our own ancestors, a few generations removed, had not got rid of
this conception, as the perpetual quest of the spring of eternal
youth amply testifies. A naturalist of our own day has suggested
that perhaps birds never die except by violence. The thought,
then, that man has a term of years beyond which "in the nature of
things," as the saying goes, he may not live, would have dawned
but gradually upon the developing intelligence of successive
generations of men; and we cannot feel sure that he would fully
have grasped the conception of a "natural" termination of human
life until he had shaken himself free from the idea that disease
is always the result of the magic practice of an enemy. Our
observation of historical man in antiquity makes it somewhat
doubtful whether this conception had been attained before the
close of the prehistoric period. If it had, this conception of
the mortality of man was one of the most striking scientific
inductions to which prehistoric man attained. Incidentally, it
may be noted that the conception of eternal life for the human
body being a more primitive idea than the conception of natural
death, the idea of the immortality of the spirit would be the
most natural of conceptions. The immortal spirit, indeed, would
be but a correlative of the immortal body, and the idea which we
shall see prevalent among the Egyptians that the soul persists
only as long as the body is intact--the idea upon which the
practice of mummifying the dead depended--finds a ready
explanation. But this phase of the subject carries us somewhat
afield. For our present purpose it suffices to have pointed out
that the conception of man's mortality--a conception which now
seems of all others the most natural and "innate"--was in all
probability a relatively late scientific induction of our
primitive ancestors.

5. Turning from the consideration of the body to its mental
complement, we are forced to admit that here, also, our primitive
man must have made certain elementary observations that underlie
such sciences as psychology, mathematics, and political economy.
The elementary emotions associated with hunger and with satiety,
with love and with hatred, must have forced themselves upon the
earliest intelligence that reached the plane of conscious
self-observation. The capacity to count, at least to the number
four or five, is within the range of even animal intelligence.
Certain savages have gone scarcely farther than this; but our
primeval ancestor, who was forging on towards civilization, had
learned to count his fingers and toes, and to number objects
about him by fives and tens in consequence, before be passed
beyond the plane of numerous existing barbarians. How much beyond
this he had gone we need not attempt to inquire; but the
relatively high development of mathematics in the early
historical period suggests that primeval man had attained a not
inconsiderable knowledge of numbers. The humdrum vocation of
looking after a numerous progeny must have taught the mother the
rudiments of addition and subtraction; and the elements of
multiplication and division are implied in the capacity to carry
on even the rudest form of barter, such as the various tribes
must have practised from an early day.

As to political ideas, even the crudest tribal life was based on
certain conceptions of ownership, at least of tribal ownership,
and the application of the principle of likeness and difference
to which we have already referred. Each tribe, of course,
differed in some regard from other tribes, and the recognition of
these differences implied in itself a political classification. A
certain tribe took possession of a particular hunting- ground,
which became, for the time being, its home, and over which it
came to exercise certain rights. An invasion of this territory by
another tribe might lead to war, and the banding together of the
members of the tribe to repel the invader implied both a
recognition of communal unity and a species of prejudice in favor
of that community that constituted a primitive patriotism. But
this unity of action in opposing another tribe would not prevent
a certain rivalry of interest between the members of the same
tribe, which would show itself more and more prominently as the
tribe increased in size. The association of two or more persons
implies, always, the ascendency of some and the subordination of
others. Leadership and subordination are necessary correlatives
of difference of physical and mental endowment, and rivalry
between leaders would inevitably lead to the formation of
primitive political parties. With the ultimate success and
ascendency of one leader, who secures either absolute power or
power modified in accordance with the advice of subordinate
leaders, we have the germs of an elaborate political system--an
embryo science of government.

Meanwhile, the very existence of such a community implies the
recognition on the part of its members of certain individual
rights, the recognition of which is essential to communal
harmony. The right of individual ownership of the various
articles and implements of every-day life must be recognized, or


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