INHERITING PAPER: WORDS

The man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at Lok along his shoulder. A stick rose upright and there was a lump of bone in the middle. Lok peered at the stick and the lump of bone ... Suddenly Lok understood that the man was holding the stick out to him but neither he nor Lok could reach across the river. He would have laughed if it were not for the echo of the screaming in his head. The stick began to grow shorter at both ends. Then it shot out to its full length again. The dead tree by Lok's ear acquired a voice. 'Clop!' His ears twitched and he turned to the tree. By his face there had grown a twig: a twig that smelt of other, and of goose, and of the bitter berries that Lok's stomach told him he must not eat. This twig had a white bone at the end. There were hooks in the bone and sticky brown stuff hung in the crooks. His nose examined the stuff and did not like it. He smelled along the shaft of the twig. The leaves of the twig were red feathers and reminded him of goose. He was lost in a generalized astonishment and excitement.1 The persona from whose perspective this description is given, is Lok, a Neanderthal man. He is vegetarian, peaceful, and possessed of what Ricoeur would call an 'undifferentiated primal consciousness'—that is, he experi ences himself not as distinct from, and over against, his natural environment, but as part of it. Though he can use a few simple words, he and his group, whose lack of collective differentiation is shown in the way they simply refer to themselves 'the people', prefer to communicate telepathically by means of direct 'pictures' in the mind.