It was impossible for life
to reason abstractly until speech was developed. Equipped with
swords, with tools of thought, in short, the slow development of the
power to reason in the abstract went on. The lowest human types do
little or no reasoning in the abstract. With every word, with every
increase in the complexity of thought, with every ascertained fact so
gained, went on action and reaction in the grey matter of the speech
discoverer, and slowly, step by step, through hundreds of thousands
of years, developed the power of reason.
Place a honey-bee in a glass bottle. Turn the bottom of the bottle
toward a lighted lamp so that the open mouth is away from the lamp.
Vainly, ceaselessly, a thousand times, undeterred by the bafflement
and the pain, the bee will hurl himself against the bottom of the
bottle as he strives to win to the light. That is instinct. Place
your dog in a back yard and go away. He is your dog. He loves you.
He yearns toward you as the bee yearns toward the light.
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