he chapter on language we saw how man began by
talking in holophrases, and only gradually attained to analytic, that
is, separable, elements of speech, so in this chapter we have to note
the strictly parallel development from confusion to distinction on
the side of thought.

Savage morality, then, is not rational in the sense of analysed, but
is, so to speak, impressionistic. We might, perhaps, describe it as
the expression of a collective impression. It is best understood in
the light of that branch of social psychology which usually goes by
the name of "mob-psychology." Perhaps mob and mobbish are rather
unfortunate terms. They are apt to make us think of the wilder
explosions of collective feeling--panics, blood-mania,
dancing-epidemics, and so on. But, though a savage society is by no
means a mob in the sense of a weltering mass of humanity that has for
the time being lost its head, the psychological considerations
applying to the latter apply also to the former, when due allowance
has been made for the fact that savage society is organized on a
permanent basis. The difference between the two comes, in short, to
this, that the mob as represented in the savage society is a mob
consisting of many successive generations of men. Its tradition
constitutes, as it were, a prolonged and abiding impression, which
its conduct thereupon expresses.

Savage thought, then, is not able, because it does not try, to break
up custom into separate pieces. Rather it plays round the edges of
custom; religion especially, with its suggestion of the general
sacredness of custom, helping it to do so. There is found in primitive
society plenty of vague speculation that seeks to justify the existing.
But to take the machine to bits in order to put it together differently
is out of the reach of a type of intelligence which, though competent
to grapple with details, takes its principles for granted. When
progress comes, it comes by stealth, through imitating the letter,
but refusing to imitate the spirit; until by means of legal fictions,
ritual substitutions, and so on, the new takes the place of the old
without any one noticing the fact.

Freedom, in the sense of intellectual freedom, may perhaps be said
to have been born in one place and at one time--namely, in Greece in
the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.[7] Of course, minglings and
clashings of peoples had prepared the way. Ideas begin to count as
soon as they break away from their loc