e of an enemy. Our
observation of historical man in antiquity makes it somewhat doubtful
whether this conception had been attained before the close of the
prehistoric period. If it had, this conception of the mortality of man
was one of the most striking scientific inductions to which prehistoric
man attained. Incidentally, it may be noted that the conception of
eternal life for the human body being a more primitive idea than the
conception of natural death, the idea of the immortality of the spirit
would be the most natural of conceptions. The immortal spirit, indeed,
would be but a correlative of the immortal body, and the idea which we
shall see prevalent 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 now seems of all others the most natural and
"innate"--was in all probability a relatively late scientific induction
of our primitive ancestors.

5. 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 towards 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