translate them into languages that had neither the
words nor the thoughts, only a vague, inchoate, tangled substratum, out
of which these thoughts and words later differentiated themselves. Let
us examine this substratum.

Nowadays we popularly distinguish between objective and subjective;
and further, we regard the two worlds as in some sense opposed. To
the objective world we commonly attribute some reality independent of
consciousness, while we think of the subjective as dependent for its
existence on the mind. The objective world consists of perceptible
things, or of the ultimate constituents to which matter is reduced by
physical speculation. The subjective world is the world of beliefs,
hallucinations, dreams, abstract ideas, imaginations and the like.
Psychology of course knows that the objective and subjective worlds are
interdependent, inextricably intertwined, but for practical purposes the
distinction is convenient.

But primitive man has not yet drawn the distinction between objective
and subjective. Nay, more, it is foreign to almost the whole of ancient
philosophy. Plato's Ideas (I owe this psychological analysis of the
elements of the primitive supersensuous world mainly to Dr Beck,
"Erkenntnisstheorie des primitiven Denkens", see page 498, note 1.), his
Goodness, Truth, Beauty, his class-names, horse, table, are it is true
dematerialised as far as possible, but they have outside existence,
apart from the mind of the thinker, they have in some shadowy way
spatial extension. Yet ancient philosophies and primitive man alike
needed and possessed for practical purposes a distinction which served
as well as our subjective and objective. To the primitive savage all his
thoughts, every object of which he was conscious, whether by perception
or conception, had reality, that is, it had existence outside himself,
but it might have reality of various kinds or different degrees.

It is not hard to see how this would happen. A man's senses may mislead
him. He sees the reflection of a bird in a pond. To his eyes it is a
real bird. He touches it, HE PUTS IT TO THE TOUCH, and to his touch it
is not a bird at all. It is real then, but surely not quite so real as
a bird that you can touch. Again, he sees smoke. It is real to his eyes.
He tries to grasp it, it vanishes. The wind touches him, but he cannot
see it, which makes him feel uncanny. The most real thing is that which
affects most senses and especially what affec