The cover of this book was created by the transcriberand is placed in the public domain. A more extensive transcriber’snote can be found at the end of this book.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN AND OF
HIS SUPERSTITIONS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, Manager
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
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TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO.
OF CANADA, Ltd.
TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE ORIGIN OF MAN
AND OF HIS SUPERSTITIONS
BY
CARVETH READ, M.A.
LECTURER ON COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY (FORMERLY GROTE PROFESSOR
OF PHILOSOPHY) IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
PREFACE
The volume now published explains in its first part anhypothesis that the human race has descended from someape-like stock by a series of changes which began and, untilrecently, were maintained by the practice of hunting in packfor animal food, instead of being content with the fruits andother nutritious products of the tropical forest. The hypothesisoccurred to me many years ago, and was first published(in brief) in The Metaphysics of Nature (1805), Chap. XIII.,and again in Natural and Social Morals (1909); but all itimplied did not become clear until, in lecturing on ComparativePsychology, there was forced upon me the necessity of effectingan intelligible transition from the animal to the human mind,and of not being satisfied to say year after year that handsand brains were plainly so useful that they must have beendeveloped by Natural Selection. Then one day the requisiteideas came to light; and an outline of the hypothesis was readat the Meeting of the British Association (Section H) atBirmingham in 1913, and printed in Man, November 1914.The Council of the Anthropological Institute has kindly consentedto my using the substance of that article in the firstchapter here following.
The article in Man dealt chiefly with the physical changeswhich our race has undergone. The correlative mentalchanges were explained in the British Journal of Psychologyin an article which supplies the basis of the second chapterof this book.
The hunting-pack, then, was the first form of human society;and in lecturing on Ethnopsychology two questions especiallyinterested me: (1) Under what mental conditions did thechange take place from the organisation of the hunting-pack(when this weaken