worshipper has neither raised nor answered the ethical question as to
what is his greatest good. Indeed, he is much more concerned to meet the
pressing needs of life than he is to co-ordinate them or understand to
what they lead. He can not even be said to be actuated by the principle
of rational self-interest. Like the brute, whose lot is similar to his
own, he feels his wants severally, and is forced to meet them as they
arise or be trampled under foot in the struggle for existence. There is
little co-ordination of his interests beyond that which is provided for
in the organic and social structure with which nature has endowed him.
Over and above the instinct of self-preservation he recognizes in custom
the principle of tribal or racial solidarity. But this is proof, not so
much of a recognition of community of interest, as of the vagueness of
his ideas concerning the boundaries of his own self-hood. The very fact
that his interests are scattering and loosely knit prevents him from
clearly {234} distinguishing his own. He readily identifies himself not
only with his body, but with his clothing, his habitation, and various
trinkets which have been accidentally associated with his life. It is
only natural that he should similarly identify himself with those other
beings like himself with whom he is connected by the bonds of blood and
of intimate contact. Morally, then, primitive man is an indefinite and
incoherent aggregate of interests which have not yet assumed the form
even of individual and community purpose.

To turn to the second, or cosmological, component, we find that primitive
man's conception of ultimate powers is like his conception of his own
interests in being both indefinite and incoherent. In consequence of the
daily vicissitudes of his fortune, he is well aware that he is affected
for better or for worse by agencies which fall outside the more familiar
routine operations of society and nature. So great is the disproportion
between the calculable and the incalculable elements of his life that he
is like a man crouching in the dark, expecting a blow from any quarter.
The agencies whose working can be discounted in advance form his secular
world; but this world is narrow and meagre, and is overshadowed by a
beyond which is both mysterious and terrible. Of the world beyond he has
no single comprehensive idea, but he acknowledges it in his {235}
expectation of the injuries and benefits which he may