Synthesis

Synthesis:

It was the animals all along.

An anthropologist named Pat Shipman believes she’s found the answer: Animals make us human. She means this not in a metaphorical way — that animals teach us about loyalty or nurturing or the fragility of life or anything like that — but that the unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man....

[T]his also placed early humans in an odd spot on the food chain: large predators who were nonetheless wary of the truly big predators. This gave them a strong incentive to study and master the behavioral patterns of everything above and below them on the food chain.

That added up to a lot of information, however, about a lot of different animals, all with their various distinctive behaviors and traits. To organize that growing store of knowledge, and to preserve it and pass it along to others, Shipman argues, those early humans created complex languages and intricate cave paintings.

Art in particular was animal-centered. It’s significant, Shipman points out, that the vast majority of the images on the walls of caves like Lascaux, Chauvet, and Hohle Fels are animals.

It's a majestic thesis, one that is worthy of a great scholar and that should be fascinating to see defended in coming years.

It also happens to conform, by the way, to something Hegel said... about magic.

Philosophers don't often write about magic, because mostly few of them believe in it. I do, of course; but it's unusual. This comes not from Hegel's writings, but from the Zusatz -- the student notes of his lectures -- on paragraph 405 of his Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

For an understanding of this stage in the soul's development it will not be superfluous to explain in more detail the notion of magic. Absolute magic would be the magic of mind as such.... Among adults, a superior mind exercises a magical power over weaker minds; thus, for example, Lear over Kent, who felt himself irresistibly drawn to the unhappy monarch.... A similar answer, too, was given by a queen of France who, when accused of practicing sorcery on her husband, replied that she had used no other magical power than that which Nature bestows on the stronger mind to dominate the weaker....

[A]lso over animals man exercises a magical power which dispenses with any kind of mediation at all, for these cannot endure the gaze of man.

Of man! One might say that this is one of those occasions where "humanity" cannot be introduced as a substitute. A Man or a Lady can work this magic: but not just any human. Some of us walk among them with our heads held up; and others fear them, having forgotten what it ever was to be Man. Man, in this formulation, is of the kinship of Hector: Tamer of Horses.

Having just trimmed the feet of a thousand pound Tennessee Walker tonight, one who wasn't keen on the operation, I have to say that there is something to Hegel's concept. So much lies in the gaze you give the animal before the operation; and if someone can hold the horse's head, and keep the gaze, all is easy that might otherwise be impossible.

Horses are a miracle anyway: that they have a void in their teeth right where we might put a bit; that they, unlike dogs (or Tolkien's wargs) have a spinal structure that is fit to bear the weight of a rider. The magic isn't ours alone; but part of what we do with them is magic. Anyone who says otherwise has either never tried it, or never looked it in the eye.