Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/200

186 When, following out this idea, we picture to ourselves the conditions under which primitive man lived, it will be evident at once how relatively infrequent must have been his observations of what we usually term natural death. His world was a world of strife; he lived by the chase; he saw animals kill one another; he witnessed the death of his own fellows at the hands of enemies. Naturally enough, then, when a member of his family was "struck down" by invisible agents, he ascribed this death also to violence, even though the offensive agent was concealed.

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 rid themselves of this conception, as the perpetual quest of the spring of eternal youth amply testifies.

If, then, we are justified in supposing that the conception of eternal life for the human body is a more primitive idea than the conception of natural death, we may equally assume that the idea of the immortality of the spirit would be the most natural of conceptions. The immortal spirit, indeed, would be but a co-relative of the immortal body, and the idea which found prevalence 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 is usually thought of as being the most "natural" and "innate"—was in all probability a relatively late scientific induction of our primitive ancestors.

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 toward civilization, had learned to count his fingers and toes and to number objects about him by fives and tens in consequence, before he 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 several persons implies always the ascendancy of some and the subordination of others. Leadership and