Читать книгу The Origin of Thought and Speech онлайн

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This strange fact I have also noticed. When studying history very attentively, and with an attitude of mind free from all prejudice, it is possible to fix the exact period at which errors, more or less generally acknowledged as such, have first crept into the world; but I have vainly sought in history for the corresponding moment when truths first made their appearance; truths, which have been accepted, if only by a few isolated individuals, or by certain groups of individuals, of whatever race, or of whatever period of the life of humanity they might be. But as it is acknowledged that amongst the errors which trouble us, we possess some truths, it is evident that they have manifested themselves; but when and how? At this I do not arrive.

This silence of history indicates, I think, that the truths of which we seek the commencement have been revealed to man in prehistoric days. I do not feel that I know positively concerning the first human beings who appeared on the earth; I picture them like soft wax ready to receive a definite form from the hand which created them. These first comers who knew nothing, never having had any training, and possessing only their five senses to aid them in arriving at knowledge, were infinitely better placed than I am to embrace truth, since I should have to disentangle myself from a vast mass of ideas which disfigure the natural simplicity of my soul; I should have to forget, even the truths which I believed myself to possess, and to transform myself into white plastic blank wax, with no impress whatsoever, and to wait until my Creator traced the image He wished; this is now not possible. I should not be now here if I could have been contemporaneous with my ancestors, and I had been permitted to follow in the steps of their pilgrimage, this would have pleased me well.