Prehistoric man was guided and controlled by feelings usually expressing the dictates of a long experience out of which instincts had crystallized. His feelings were his instinctive responses to new emergencies. He could not analyze them, reason or argue about them; he was spared the "malady of thought." He had little or no logic or science; his philosophy, as we have seen, was a _way_ smoothed by the feet of his ancestors. He was a man of taste in the literal sense of the word. He knew what he liked and what he disliked; probably he could not have explained the reason for either feeling. He was wise in following these instinctive feelings and tastes; they represented the accumulated and assimilated experience of millennia. Of course the experience had been that of individuals. Neolithic man's school and laboratory of education was mostly the family and the neighborhood. Here he had to learn to get on with other individuals, to live and let live, to practise co-operation and mutual aid. Here he learned the first and grandest lessons in morals; that he would be done by as he did, and hence that it was best to do as he would be done by. He has never lost or forgotten the lessons learned in this excellent "dame's school." Most of his higher education--and hence of his feeling, conscience, religion, and life--was tribal. Laws, or rather customs, were propounded by the elders of the tribe or priests, an exceedingly conservative court. The chief aim was not rapidity of progress, but confirming and practising that which long experience had proved to be good. Slowly but surely the fund of wisdom increased. "It is the three-per-cent man who gets all the money in the end." Responsibility was tribal. The man who tried experiments or "fooled" with the forbidden thing was a common nuisance summarily and thoroughly abated by the tribe. Land was common property, though the individual had probably gained some rights of use. It is doubtful whether he could use the whole or any part of it entirely as he would. Even at a much later date his use was largely limited and controlled by ancient custom. The ritual which still made up most of his religion was also tribal.[181] Dance and song were practised by the whole community. His creed, so far as he had one, was a belief in spiritual beings, dæmons, of great power and marvellous efficiency. Some or many were beneficent; more were probably maleficent; but those might be appeased, mollified, bribed, won over, or controlled, if rightly approached through magical rites or ceremonies.