Men probably began thinking seriously when they began to communicate effectively. No-one knows, of course, because it is too far back in the past; and there are no records, because of necessity writing, or the keeping of records, came long after speech and serious thought began. So it is all a bit speculative; but since even today those around you, or using more analytical language your relationships with other people around you, influence not only what you actually think, but also your patterns of thought, it seems a sensible speculation that communication preceded serious thought. Cavemen hunters, huddling round a camp fire, must have had certain metaphysical assumptions in common, if their little community was to have a common life. They must have had a system of thought, to give their little community coherence. It would not have been as perfect and self-consistent a system of thought as Euclid’s geometry, but a pale imitation of it. And it would have been based on certain simple assumptions, which were unspoken, and of which they were only partly aware.
My view is that the basis of any coherent attitude of mind is the complex of unspoken and usually unconscious assumptions, and the nervous tension that goes with them, that provides the bedrock of that attitude of mind. It was the same for primitive man, as it is for us; except that for primitive man the attitude, and its underlying assumptions, were dictated by the ethos of the clan or tribe. Whereas for us, it is much more an act of free-will whether we subscribe completely to the prevailing attitude of mind, or not. Primitive man probably had no choice; whereas we have choice. And knowing how difficult it is to persuade anyone to change their attitude of mind now-a-days, in our comparatively free society, it must have been an extraordinarily slow process changing from the mentality of a hunting or pastoral way of life, to that required of a settled agricultural community.
Yet even with an agricultural community, it is difficult to envisage much abstract thought. Surely without the very beginnings of civilization, structures of abstract or self-conscious thought are simply not possible? Abraham was the friend of God, and faith was for him as righteousness. In other words, his idea of God, how to pray to him, and how to serve him, were essentially primitive and without form; and I would say none the worse for that. Jesus too may have raised primitive prayer to unparalleled heights, but his was still primitive prayer. But you cannot build a civilized community on primitive ideas; and to be fair to Jesus he did not try. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and was going to exist in the comparatively short time between his death and resurrection and his Second Coming, which would be probably in the life-time of some of those present. This of course was fantasy, but Jesus was imbued with the idea prevalent at that time, that the end of the world was round the corner. He had to be! If he was to talk to Galilean peasants, he had to talk to them from where they were, and in language that they understood.
Even if Jesus had had a detailed knowledge of science and evolution, which I don’t believe for one moment he had, he would have been wasting his time talking to Galilean peasants about evolution, because they would not have had the faintest idea what he was talking to them about. You have to talk to people from where they are themselves; I know because I addressed juries for 40 years. So whatever message Jesus wanted to get across to us, of later centuries, he had to talk to the people facing him within the limits that popular folk-lore imposed on him at the time. Fantasy it may have been; but he had no option. And everything he both said and did must be viewed in this context. It is not an attractive thought to Christians, that Jesus sometimes indulged in fantasy, but then we all do; nor that he talked nonsense sometimes; but then we all do. He was a man. He was not a god walking around in human clothes. He had our limitations. Professor Whitehead suggests that Caperaum was a Greek town in its culture; but Jesus turned his back on this, and preached in Aramaic.