Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/81

 Primitive Thought 6i said, " and so and so happens." You give a child a poisonous berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a vaUant enemy and you become strong. There we have two bits of cause and effect association, one true one false. We call the system of cause and effect in the mind of a savage. Fetish ; but Fetish is simply savage science. It differs from modern science in that it is totally unsystematic and uncritical and so more frequently wrong. In many cases it is not difficult to link cause and effect, in many others erroneous ideas were soon corrected by experience ; but there was a large series of issues of very great importance to primitive man, where he sought persistently for causes and found explanations that were wrong but not sufficiently wrong nor so obviously wrong as to be detected. It was a matter of great importance to him that game should be abundant or fish plentiful and easily caught, and no doubt he tried and believed in a thousand charms, incantations and omens WIDESPREAD SIMILARITY OF MEN OF THE STONE AGE On the left is a flint implement excavated in Gray's Inn Lane, London : on the right, one ol similar form chipped by primitive men of Somaliland