New truths thus are resultants of new experiences and of old truths
combined and mutually modifying one another. And since this is the
case in the changes of opinion of to-day, there is no reason to
assume that it has not been so at all times. It follows that very
ancient modes of thought may have survived through all the later
changes in men's opinions. The most primitive ways of thinking may
not yet be wholly expunged. Like our five fingers, our ear-bones,
our rudimentary caudal appendage, or our other 'vestigial'
peculiarities, they may remain as indelible tokens of events in our
race-history. Our ancestors may at certain moments have struck into
ways of thinking which they might conceivably not have found. But
once they did so, and after the fact, the inheritance continues.
When you begin a piece of music in a certain key, you must keep the
key to the end. You may alter your house ad libitum, but the ground-
plan of the first architect persists--you can make great changes,
but you cannot change a Gothic church into a Doric temple. You may
rinse and rinse the bottle, but you can't get the taste of the
medicine or whiskey that first filled it wholly out.
My thesis now is this, that OUR FUNDAMENTAL WAYS OF THINKING ABOUT
THINGS ARE DISCOVERIES OF EXCEEDINGLY REMOTE ANCESTORS, WHICH HAVE
BEEN ABLE TO PRESERVE THEMSELVES THROUGHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF ALL
SUBSEQUENT TIME.
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