Problems of Men Mind And Morals

a welter of crude analogies, moulded in the forms in which his mind operated, and accumulating from untold generations. This was the era of mythology, folk-lore, of primitive thought and imagination. It had as its counterpart in the material sphere the world of a common tribal and clan life, to which the individual human being was subordinated, and apart from which he had no significance. As this material side of primitive society yielded to civilisation, by which the old social bonds became loosened and the independence of the individual began to emerge, the intellectual outlook also became gradually modified. The greatfactor in this modification was the awakening of conscious reflection upon himself, his beliefs and surroundings, on the part of the individual. The awakening self-consciousness of the individual took various forms, moral and intellectual, and it passed through many phases, consisting largely in a modification and systematisation of myth and traditional modes of thought, before the conscious attempt to explain the universe on rational principles, as we now term them?in other words, before the dawn of philosophy properly so-called. But it was not given to every race of ancient times to inaugurate philosophic inquiry in its true sense. We can trace detached fragments of philosophic thought at an early stage in more than one of the Oriental civilisations of antiquity, while in ancient India something like a definite line of philosophic develop...