Imagining the Primitive Mind

AND now let us indulge in a very interesting speculation; how did it feel to be a man in those early days of the human adventure? How did men think and what did they think in those remote days of hunting and wandering four hundred centuries ago before seed time and harvest began. Those were days long before the written record of any human impressions, and we are left almost entirely to inference and guesswork in our answers to these questions.

[...]

Primitive man probably thought very much as a child thinks, that is to say in a series of imaginative pictures. He conjured up images or images presented themselves to his mind, and he acted in accordance with the emotions they aroused. So a child or an uneducated person does to-day. Systematic thinking is apparently a comparatively late development in human experience; it has not {61}played any great part in human life until within the last three thousand years. And even to-day those who really control and order their thoughts are but a small minority of mankind. Most of the world still lives by imagination and passion.

Notes:

As evolution tends to build in lairs, the primitive mind must have been much like that of a child.

Folksonomies: evolution cognition primitive man

Taxonomies:
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Entities:
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Concepts:
Psychology (0.968063): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Thought (0.933055): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Mind (0.925251): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Human (0.790332): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Cognition (0.673358): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Idea (0.587954): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
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Reasoning (0.446349): dbpedia | opencyc

 H. G. Wells: The Outline of History (2 Volumes)
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Wells , H.G (1949), H. G. Wells: The Outline of History (2 Volumes), Garden City Books, Retrieved on 2011-06-19
  • Source Material [www.ibiblio.org]
  • Folksonomies: politics history philosophy