(_d_) Increasing capacity of forming ideas of remote ends and of co-ordinating many activities in their pursuit, implies the inhibition of many aggressive or distracting impulses, and constitutes an automatic control. And although it is now fashionable to depreciate the power of intelligence in human life, surely, its development has had great influence. As men come to foresee the many consequences of action they learn to modify and regulate it, as each foreseen consequence excites some impulse, either reinforcing or inhibiting action. Reflection upon our lot has done much to ameliorate it. The “conditions of gregariousness” (to use W. K. Clifford’s definition of morality) have been expounded by the more penetrating and comprehensive minds—prophets, poets, philosophers; and some disciples have understood them and have persuaded many to believe. Nor have such luminaries arisen only in the later phases of culture when their writings have been delivered or their sayings recorded. Probably it was some one man who first pointed out to a tribe that had ignored the fact, that whether a wrong had been done by accident or on purpose affected the agent’s guilt and ought to affect the penalty exacted. Some one man, probably, first saw what injustice is often disguised by the specious equality of the _lex talionis_; another first tried to assuage the bitterness of a vendetta by appointing compensation; another, perhaps first proposed to substitute animal for human sacrifice, or a puppet for a slave. And when we read the lists of sagacious proverbs that have been collected from many savage tribes, we must consider that it was by eminent individuals that those sayings were first uttered one by one: individuals with the gifts of insight and expression to summarise the experience of a whole tribe in memorable words, rude forerunners of our prophets and philosophers. § 8. INFLUENCE OF THE IMAGINARY ENVIRONMENT