A History of Science, vol 1 | Page 7

day,
for the altogether practical purpose of making a fire; just as he
employed his practical knowledge of the mutability of solids and

liquids in smelting ores, in alloying copper with tin to make bronze,
and in casting this alloy in molds to make various implements and
weapons. Here, then, were the germs of an elementary science of
physics. Meanwhile such observations as that of the solution of salt in
water may be considered as giving a first lesson in chemistry, but
beyond such altogether rudimentary conceptions chemical knowledge
could not have gone--unless, indeed, the practical observation of the
effects of fire be included; nor can this well be overlooked, since
scarcely another single line of practical observation had a more direct
influence in promoting the progress of man towards the heights of
civilization.
4. In the field of what we now speak of as biological knowledge,
primitive man had obviously the widest opportunity for practical
observation. We can hardly doubt that man attained, at an early day, to
that conception of identity and of difference which Plato places at the
head of his metaphysical system. We shall urge presently that it is
precisely such general ideas as these that were man's earliest inductions
from observation, and hence that came to seem the most universal and
"innate" ideas of his mentality. It is quite inconceivable, for example,
that even the most rudimentary intelligence that could be called human
could fail to discriminate between living things and, let us say, the
rocks of the earth. The most primitive intelligence, then, must have
made a tacit classification of the natural objects about it into the grand
divisions of animate and inanimate nature. Doubtless the nascent
scientist may have imagined life animating many bodies that we should
call inanimate--such as the sun, wandering planets, the winds, and
lightning; and, on the other hand, he may quite likely have relegated
such objects as trees to the ranks of the non-living; but that he
recognized a fundamental distinction between, let us say, a wolf and a
granite bowlder we cannot well doubt. A step beyond this--a step,
however, that may have required centuries or millenniums in the
taking--must have carried man to a plane of intelligence from which a
primitive Aristotle or Linnaeus was enabled to note differences and
resemblances connoting such groups of things as fishes, birds, and
furry beasts. This conception, to be sure, is an abstraction of a relatively
high order. We know that there are savage races to-day whose language

contains no word for such an abstraction as bird or tree. We are bound
to believe, then, that there were long ages of human progress during
which the highest man had attained no such stage of abstraction; but,
on the other hand, it is equally little in question that this degree of
mental development had been attained long before the opening of our
historical period. The primeval man, then, whose scientific knowledge
we are attempting to predicate, had become, through his conception of
fishes, birds, and hairy animals as separate classes, a scientific
zoologist of relatively high attainments.
In the practical field of medical knowledge, a certain stage of
development must have been reached at a very early day. Even animals
pick and choose among the vegetables about them, and at times seek
out certain herbs quite different from their ordinary food, practising a
sort of instinctive therapeutics. The cat's fondness for catnip is a case in
point. The most primitive man, then, must have inherited a racial or
instinctive knowledge of the medicinal effects of certain herbs; in
particular he must have had such elementary knowledge of toxicology
as would enable him to avoid eating certain poisonous berries. Perhaps,
indeed, we are placing the effect before the cause to some extent; for,
after all, the animal system possesses marvellous powers of adaption,
and there is perhaps hardly any poisonous vegetable which man might
not have learned to eat without deleterious effect, provided the
experiment were made gradually. To a certain extent, then, the
observed poisonous effects of numerous plants upon the human system
are to be explained by the fact that our ancestors have avoided this
particular vegetable. Certain fruits and berries might have come to have
been a part of man's diet, had they grown in the regions he inhabited at
an early day, which now are poisonous to his system. This thought,
however, carries us too far afield. For practical purposes, it suffices that
certain roots, leaves, and fruits possess principles that are poisonous to
the human system, and that unless man had learned in some way to
avoid these, our race must have come to disaster. In point of fact, he did
learn to avoid them; and such evidence implied, as has been said, an
elementary knowledge of toxicology.