ABSTRACT
TH E FUNCTIONING OF PR ELOG ICAL M E N T ALITY
I
It would be idle to institute any comparison between the discursive processes of prelogical mentality and those of our thought, or to look for any correspondence between the two, for we should have no grounds on which to base a hypothesis. We have no a priori reason for admitting that the same pro cess is used by both. The discursive operations of our rational thought-the analysis of which has been made familiar to us through psychology and logic-require the existence and the employment of much that is intricate, in the form of cate gories, concepts, and abstract terms. They also assume an intellectual functioning, properly so called, that is already well-differentiated. In short, they imply an ensemble of con ditions which we do not find existing anywhere in social aggregates of a primitive type. On the other hand, as we have seen, prelogical mentality has its own laws, to which its discursive operations must necessarily submit.
