206 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE

phantasmata of the imagination as supports to (as before

said) even our most abstract thoughts. It does not follow

from this that thought once was mere sensation, but, on the

contrary, it manifests the wonderful spontaneity of the

human intellect, whence, by the help of the "beggarly

elements " supplied by the senses, the loftiest concepts spon-

taneously spring forth like Athene, armed with the sharp

spear of intellectual perception, and swathed in the ample

mantle of signs, woven of the warp of matter and the woof

of thought.

It is just this power of metaphor-making which most

plainly displays to us the intellect in its creative energy,

giving rise to new external expressions for freshly-arising

internal perceptions. This power belongs to man alone,

and no one even pretends that any brute can evolve a

metaphor.

It is ethical propositions especially which demonstrate to

us that a higher meaning must be latent in terms which

to some persons seem merely sensuous. For everyone

must admit either (i) that he does not really know what

an ethical proposition means, that he does not know the

difference between right and wrong, or (2) that he recognizes

it as a distinction toto ccelo divergent from every other, and

one which, as before pointed out,* could have had none but

an ethical origin, and therefore could never have been evolved

from the sensuous life and perceptions of mere animals.

As folly or prejudice makes tales of animal intelligence

so often quite untrustworthy, so also the statements as to

the mental defects of savages are hardly less so. Love of

the marvellous, credulity, exaggeration, and, above all, hasty

and inconclusive inferences, abound in both. Mr. Tylor,

who has devoted his life to the study of such things, has

again and again protested to this effect.

* See ante, p. 169.

phantasmata of the imagination as supports to (as before

said) even our most abstract thoughts. It does not follow

from this that thought once was mere sensation, but, on the

contrary, it manifests the wonderful spontaneity of the

human intellect, whence, by the help of the "beggarly

elements " supplied by the senses, the loftiest concepts spon-

taneously spring forth like Athene, armed with the sharp

spear of intellectual perception, and swathed in the ample

mantle of signs, woven of the warp of matter and the woof

of thought.

It is just this power of metaphor-making which most

plainly displays to us the intellect in its creative energy,

giving rise to new external expressions for freshly-arising

internal perceptions. This power belongs to man alone,

and no one even pretends that any brute can evolve a

metaphor.

It is ethical propositions especially which demonstrate to

us that a higher meaning must be latent in terms which

to some persons seem merely sensuous. For everyone

must admit either (i) that he does not really know what

an ethical proposition means, that he does not know the

difference between right and wrong, or (2) that he recognizes

it as a distinction toto ccelo divergent from every other, and

one which, as before pointed out,* could have had none but

an ethical origin, and therefore could never have been evolved

from the sensuous life and perceptions of mere animals.

As folly or prejudice makes tales of animal intelligence

so often quite untrustworthy, so also the statements as to

the mental defects of savages are hardly less so. Love of

the marvellous, credulity, exaggeration, and, above all, hasty

and inconclusive inferences, abound in both. Mr. Tylor,

who has devoted his life to the study of such things, has

again and again protested to this effect.

* See ante, p. 169.