mcgee] the trend of human progress 431
hensively and usefully seriated in terms of culture-grade. Now, the principal stages in cultural development have already been defined as (1) prescript 'or ial and (2) scriptorial ; these stages cor- responding approximately with stages in social development commonly defined as (1) tribal and (2) national. More extended comparison indicates that both culture-stages may advantageously be subdivided ; and the entire series may be outlined as follows :
1. The earliest culture-stage defined by mode of thinking is necessarily obscure, since primeval man no longer exists, and since his characteristics survive only in vestigial form, chiefly in linguistic and esthetic symbols and in minor features of myth- ology. According to Hewitt and others, the linguistic vestiges indicate that primeval man used a distinctively pronominal speech, supplemented by pantomime ; according to Cushing, the esthetic vestiges suggest that primeval thinkers were dominated by ideas of personality, such as were recognized by Humboldt, Brinton, and others; moreover, there are many indications that early men were given to personifying and even deifying a vast range of impersonal entities, so that the most primitive mythology is burdened with a mass of reified and deified entities which it is the function of later culture to eliminate or concentrate. The sev- eral lines of evidence indicate that the primeval thinker was controlled and habitually appalled (like the shy and timorous beasts passing into intelligence through the hard way of cunning) by half-realized entities, that his world was one of abounding objects often idealized into intensified objectivity, and that he thought largely in terms of the abounding things designated by his pronouns and natural gestures. This stage in thought may provisionally be called pronominative,
2. The next developmental stage is well illustrated by various primitive peoples now living, e. g., the American natives. In this stage objectivity yields gradually to relativity, and the modes of thought and expression are essentially associative ; the language is holophrastic and connotive ; the esthetic motives are symbolic,
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