Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/735

 666 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s„ i, 1899

factors in nature as they know it — factors expressed by Danger : Safety : : Self, or by Death and Life to Self, or in general terms, the Evil of the largely unknown and the Good of the fully known coordinated in the vaguely-defined Subject of the Badness and the Goodness ; and the chief social activities of animal mates and parents are exercised in gathering their kind into the bright- ness of the known, and educating their native dread of all outer darkness. So, too, the more timid tribesmen of different conti- nents betray, in conduct and speech, a dominant intuition of a terrible Unknown opposed through Self to a small but kindly Known. This intuition is not born of intertribal strife, since it is strongest in those innately amicable family groups who (despite the implication of their designation) typify lower savagery, and since it is slowly modified with the rise of self-confidence among vigorous and aggressive tribes in whose minds the Good grows large with the wax of conscious power ; it is merely the subjec- tive reflection of implacable environment — yet it is vaguely per- sonified as a grisly and horrent bestial power, flaunting specters of death by tooth and claw, by serpent venom and swallowed poison, by pitiless famine and insidious disease, by wracking storm and whelming flood, by hydra-headed chance against half- felt helplessness; and over against this appalling Evil there is a less completely personified Good reflecting the small nucleus of confident knowledge with its far-reaching penumbra of faith. Accordingly, the lowest men and the higher animals seem much alike in their interpretation of nature — both rest their deepest convictions on a two-side cosmos connected in and through a largely-passive Self.

A vague yet persistent placement of the two ever-present Sides with respect to Self is clearly displayed in the conduct of animals and men — the Evil side is outward, the Good side at the place or domicile of the individual and especially of the group, as shown by the homing instinct of the wounded carnivore, by the haste of the fire-crazed horse to meet the flames in his

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