PREHISTORIC MEN 35
only be the religious feeling; and these things could not be the beginnings of a religious feeling that existed al- ready. I think anybody’s common sense will tell him that it is far more likely that this sort of mystical sen- timent did exist already; and that in the light of it dreams and kings and corn-fields could appear mystical then, as they can appear mystical now.
For the plain truth is that all this is a trick of making things seem distant and dehumanised, merely by pre- tending not to understand things that we do understand. It is like saying that prehistoric men had an ugly and uncouth habit of opening their mouths wide at intervals and stuffing strange substances into them, as if we had never heard of eating. It is like saying that the terrible Troglodytes of the Stone Age lifted alternate legs in ro- tation, as if we had never heard of walking. If it were meant to touch the mystical nerve and awaken us to the wonder of walking and eating, it might be a legitimate fancy. As it is here intended to kill the mystical nerve and deaden us to the wonder of religion, it is irrational rubbish. It pretends to find something incomprehensi- ble in the feelings that we all comprehend. Who does not find dreams mysterious, and feel that they lie on the dark borderland of being? Who does not feel the death and resurrection of the growing things of the earth as something near to the secret of the universe? Who does not understand that there must always be the savour of something sacred about authority and the solidarity that is the soul of the tribe? If there be any anthropologist who really finds these things remote and impossible to realise, we can say nothing of that scientific gentleman except that he has not got so large and enlightened a
