Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/27

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human, pain becomes greater with culture. The pains of lesions and bruises grow with developing culture; the pains of parturition increase as society becomes more refined, more highly developed in culture. From these and a multitude of considerations which the contemplating mind will recall, it is made plain that physical pains, like all our pains, are derivative; that we have no consciousness of pain when that term is strictly used, but we have cognition of pain.

We have seen how cognition becomes intuitive by hereditary transmission. From the earliest tribal life to the highest state of culture the way is long and the years are counted by millions. Every animate individual in all this time has experienced the effects of lesions and bruises until the concept has been woven into the constitution of mankind by experience, and the intuition is perfected through verified judgments. It is unnecessary for the man to pass through a complex ratiocination for the purpose of discovering this variety. A trivial accident may befall a soldier in line of battle which he interprets as a wound; he hears the coming of the shell from a piece of field artillery, it strikes the ground and scatters its fragments broadcast together with chips and gravel. A bit of wood strikes the soldier; he interprets it as a fragment of shell, has the illusion of being wounded, and feels the pain and expresses all the agony which a real wound may actually produce. Animate body is not endowed with an essential of physical pain, but it develops pain by cognition of effects.

In the evolution of sports we discover a development from individual and unorganized multiple activities in many individuals to organized activities, in which special activities are assumed for special purposes, all so differentiated and integrated as to accomplish a desired end. A hundred savages, men, women, and children, will join in a dance to revolve in a circle by uniform and rhythmic steps, and every one moves like every other one. But a game of baseball is organized so that every player has a particu-