all harmony would be at an end. Certain rules of justice--
primitive laws--must, by common consent, give protection to the
weakest members of the community. Here are the rudiments of a
system of ethics. It may seem anomalous to speak of this
primitive morality, this early recognition of the principles of
right and wrong, as having any relation to science. Yet, rightly
considered, there is no incongruity in such a citation. There
cannot well be a doubt that the adoption of those broad
principles of right and wrong which underlie the entire structure
of modern civilization was due to scientific induction,--in other
words, to the belief, based on observation and experience, that
the principles implied were essential to communal progress. He
who has scanned the pageant of history knows how often these
principles seem to be absent in the intercourse of men and
nations. Yet the ideal is always there as a standard by which all
deeds are judged.


It would appear, then, that the entire superstructure of later
science had its foundation in the knowledge and practice of
prehistoric man. The civilization of the historical period could
not have advanced as it has had there not been countless
generations of culture back of it. The new principles of science
could not have been evolved had there not been great basal
principles which ages of unconscious experiment had impressed
upon the mind of our race. Due meed of praise must be given,
then, to our primitive ancestor for his scientific
accomplishments; but justice demands that we should look a little
farther and consider the reverse side of the picture. We have had
to do, thus far, chiefly with the positive side of
accomplishment. We have pointed out what our primitive ancestor
knew, intimating, perhaps, the limitations of his knowledge; but
we have had little to say of one all-important feature of his
scientific theorizing. The feature in question is based on the
highly scientific desire and propensity to find explanations for
the phenomena of nature. Without such desire no progress could be
made. It is, as we have seen, the generalizing from experience
that constitutes real scientific progress; and yet, just as most
other good things can be overdone, this scientific propensity may
be carried to a disastrous excess.

Primeval man did not escape this danger. He observed, he
reasoned, he found explanations; but he did not always
discriminate as to the logicality of his reasonings. He failed to
recognize the limitations of his knowledge. The observed
uniformity in the sequence of certain events impressed on his
mind the idea of cause and effect. Proximate causes known, he
sought remoter causes; childlike, his inquiring mind was always
asking, Why? and, childlike, he demanded an explicit answer. If
the forces of nature seemed to combat him, if wind and rain
opposed his progress and thunder and lightning seemed to menace
his existence, he was led irrevocably to think of those human
foes who warred with him, and to see, back of the warfare of the
elements, an inscrutable malevolent intelligence which took this
method to express its displeasure. But every other line of
scientific observation leads equally, following back a sequence
of events, to seemingly causeless beginnings. Modern science can
explain the lightning, as it can explain a great number of the
mysteries which the primeval intelligence could not penetrate.
But the primordial man could not wait for the revelations of
scientific investigation: he must vault at once to a final
solution of all scientific problems. He found his solution by
peopling the world with invisible forces, anthropomorphic in
their conception, like himself in their thought and action,
differing only in the limitations of their powers. His own dream
existence gave him seeming proof of the existence of an alter
ego, a spiritual portion of himself that could dissever itself
from his body and wander at will; his scientific inductions
seemed to tell him of a world of invisible beings, capable of
influencing him for good or ill. From the scientific exercise of
his faculties he evolved the all-encompassing generalizations of
invisible and all-powerful causes back of the phenomena of
nature. These generalizations, early developed and seemingly
supported by the observations of countless generations, came to
be among the most firmly established scientific inductions of our
primeval ancestor. They obtained a hold upon the mentality of our
race that led subsequent generations to think of them, sometimes
to speak of them, as "innate" ideas. The observations upon which
they were based are now, for the most part, susceptible of other
interpretations; but the old interpretations have precedent and
prejudice back of them, and they represent ideas that are more
difficult than almost any others to eradicate. Always, and
everywhere, superstitions based upon unwarranted early scientific
deductions have been the most implacable foes to the progress of
science. Men have built systems of philosophy around their
conception of anthropomorphic deities; they have linked to these
systems of philosophy the allied conception of the immutability
of man's spirit, and they have asked that scientific progress
should stop short at the brink of these systems of philosophy and
accept their dictates as final. Yet there is not to-day in
existence, and there never has been, one jot of scientific
evidence for the existence of these intangible anthropomorphic
powers back of nature that is not susceptible of scientific
challenge and of more logical interpretation. In despite of which
the superstitious beliefs are still as firmly fixed in the minds
of a large majority of our race as they were in the mind of our
prehistoric ancestor. The fact of this baleful heritage must not
be forgotten in estimating the debt of gratitude which historic
man owes to his barbaric predecessor.



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