Primitive philosophy

“ They are doctrines answering in the most forcible way to the plain evidence of men’s senses, as interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy. So well, indeed, does primitive animism account for the facts of nature, that it has held its place into the higher levels of education. Though classic and mediæval philosophy modified it much, and modern philosophy has handled it yet more unsparingly, it has so far retained the traces of its original character, that heirlooms of primitive ages may be claimed in the existing psychology of the civilized world. ”

“ So that if we contemplate primitive human life as a whole, we see that multiformity of sequence, rather than uniformity, is the notion which it tends to generate.... Only as fast as the practice of the arts develops the idea of measure can the consciousness of uniformity become clear.... Those conditions furnished by advancing civilization which make possible the notion of uniformity simultaneously make possible the notion of exactness.... Hence the primitive man has little experience which cultivates the consciousness of what we call truth. ”

“ The belief that they persist is, in all men except a few philosophers, logically primitive, but it is not psychologically primitive; psychologically, it arises only through our having seen those tables and chairs, trees and mountains. ”

“ It has only been during comparatively recent times that the importance of primitive beliefs and practices, from the standpoint of mental evolution, has been appreciated. Formerly, primitive man was regarded merely as a curiosity, and not as an individual from whom anything of any value whatever was to be learned. ”

“ We may express this general observation also by saying that primitive man views each action not only as adapted to its main object, each thought related to its main end, as we should perceive them, but that he associates them with other ideas, often of a religious or at least of a symbolic nature. Thus he gives them a higher significance than they seem to us to deserve. ”

“ I think it can be shown that the reason for this fact is not founded on any fundamental peculiarity of the mind of primitive man, but lies, rather, in the character of the traditional ideas by means of which each new perception is interpreted ”

“ After we have thus seen that a large number of traditional elements enter into the reasoning of primitive man and of civilized man as well, we are better prepared to understand some of the more special typical differences in the thought of primitive man and of civilized man.
A trait of primitive life that early attracted the attention of investigators is the occurrence of close associations between mental activities that appear to us as entirely disparate. In primitive life, religion and science ”

“ The instruction given to the child of primitive man is not based on centuries of experimentation, but consists of the crude experience of generations. When a new experience enters the mind of primitive man, the same process which we observe among civilized man brings about an entirely different series of associations, and therefore results in a different type of explanation. ”

“ And again, if we decide the question on the basis of any assumption against the non-primitive, we must, in all consistency, exclude, as has already been said, all higher ethical emotion and the love of art and science; none of these can be pronounced primitive. Possibly we might define hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, and the desire for a comfortable degree of warmth, as the most primitive human needs; and these, indeed, are soon satisfied; but the man who has no needs beyond these can not represent the social ideal. ”

“ It is superfluous to add that the primitive classes and the most general notions must necessarily have escaped their notice also. How, for instance, could they have understood or thought of the words matter, spirit, substance, mode, figure, motion, when even our philosophers, who have so long been making use of them, have themselves the greatest difficulty in understanding them; and when, the ideas attached to them being purely metaphysical, there are no models of them to be found in nature? ”

“ I suppose the primitive man is one who owes more to nature than to the forces of civilization. What we seek in him are the primal and original traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, and unimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. He would retain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of the ordinary, commonplace man. I should expect to find him, by reason of an unrelinquished kinship, enjoying a special communion with nature, —admitted to its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able to predict its vagaries. ”

“ Until we can figure to ourselves with approximate truth the primitive system of thought, we cannot fully understand primitive conduct; and, rightly to conceive the primitive system of thought, we must compare the systems found in many societies, helping ourselves, by observing its developed forms, to verify our conclusions respecting its undeveloped form. ”

“ In this essay I have made no attempt to illustrate all the many various and divergent views which primitive man has taken of his own origin. I have confined myself to collecting examples of two radically different views, which may be distinguished as the theory of creation and the theory of evolution. According to the one, man was fashioned in his existing shape by a god or other powerful being ”

“ As a recent writer has forcibly remarked, "The primitive mind does not occupy itself with things of no practical importance, and it is only in the later stages of society that we meet with traditional beliefs nominally accepted by every one but practically regarded by none ”

“ Everything appeared to him in an anthropomorphic form of thought; and thus the first primitive concepts regarding the world came into being, in which the stone, the mountain, the heavenly orbs, were viewed as animate anthropomorphic beings endowed with will-power, and willing to help man or threatening to endanger him. The observation of the activities of man’s own body and of his mind led to the formulation of the idea of a soul independent of the body; and with increasing knowledge and with increasing philosophic thought, religion and science grew out of these simple beginnings. ”

“ The primitive does indeed put something of historical record and something of his best interpretation of mysterious natural phenomena into his legendary lore, but there is something else, we are led to believe, that takes precedence over all other considerations in the mind of the primitive (as well as in the minds of all of the rest of us) and that is getting on in the world, a pragmatic outlook. ”

“ A. To be inherent to the existence of things, and, consequently, primitive and anterior to every other law: so that all those which man has received, are only imitations of it, and their perfection is ascertained by the resemblance they bear to this primordial model. ”

“ I claim for the subject which we have been considering an exceptional importance, because it will enable us, if on the one hand we accept the theory that the primitive should be permanent, to disentangle the primitive from the later elements, and to trace the assumptions on which these later elements are based; and if on the other hand we adopt the theory of development, it will enable us, by tracing the lines of development, to weld the new thoughts of our time with the old by that historical continuity which in human societies is the condition of permanence. ”

“ Now, we have seen that the extrinsic principles of primitive being are three. It is evident, therefore, that its intrinsic principles likewise must be three. The extrinsic principles, as before stated, are God's volition of bringing something into existence, the term of its eduction, and the creative power exerted in its production. ”

“ As a fantastic but still natural product of the primitive mind, there may thus appear the idea of an invisible connection, which binds together all things similar and draws them to each other. Vaguely and dimly even savages may have been able to anticipate in some measure those imposing thoughts which received an organised and consistent statement in the doctrine of universal ideas. But to primitive man these “ideas” must appear as concrete objects and beings, exercising their influence on phenomena in a quite material manner. ”

“ We have seen that the traditional material with which man operates determines the particular type of explanatory idea that associates itself with the emotional state of mind. Primitive man generally bases these explanations of his customs on concepts that are intimately related to his general views of the constitution of the world. Some mythological idea may be considered the basis of a custom or of the avoidance of certain actions, or the custom may be given a symbolic significance, or it may merely be connected with the fear of ill luck. ”

“ From our point of view, the striking features of primitive culture are the great number of associations of entirely heterogeneous groups of phenomena, such as natural phenomena and individual emotion, social groupings and religious concepts, decorative art and symbolic interpretation. These tend to disappear with the approach to our present civilization, although a careful analysis reveals the persistence of many, and the tendency of each automatic action to establish its own associations according to the mental relations in which it regularly occurs. ”

“ As a matter of simple fact, man’s conception of spiritual existences is not accounted for by the “scientists.” And the claim that such a conception was innate in primitive man, or that it was a natural growth in man’s unaided progress, is at the best but an unproved theory. ”

“ It follows, then, that every primitive being can be resolved into three simple principles, of which two constitute its real essence, whilst the third—viz., existence—completes the same essence into real being. ”

“ We may therefore briefly state that the root of the matter would seem to be that the name and the dread power named are so closely associated in the very concrete thought of the primitive culture that the one virtually is the other: just as one inevitably calls up the other for the modern thinker, [Pg 275] so it is that, in the world of objective fact, for the primitive philosopher the one is equivalent to the other. ”

“ When we recognize that neither among civilized men nor among primitive men the average individual carries to completion the attempt at causal explanation of phenomena, but carries it only so far as to amalgamate it with other previously known facts, we recognize that the result of the whole process depends entirely upon the character of the traditional material. ”

“ Upon the assumption of the existence of universal laws of nature, otherwise known as the Uniformity of Nature, I may bestow a somewhat fuller treatment, for reasons which can perhaps be conjectured by those of my readers who have been engaged in philosophic instruction.
To primitive man—we may suppose ourselves to have got down to semi-historical times—nature inevitably still appears very chaotic and uncomfortable. He desires an explanation of the circumstances that oppress him, and is prepared to clutch at any straw. ”

“ This is the reason why, in all stages of culture, customary actions are made the subject of secondary explanations that have nothing to do with their historical origin, but which are inferences based upon the general knowledge possessed by the people. 226I think the existence of such secondary interpretations of customary actions is one of the most important anthropological phenomena, and we have seen that it is hardly less common in our own society than in more primitive societies. It is a common observation that we desire or act first, and then try to justify our desires and our actions. ”

“ If all these were necessary, then there was no civilization prior to the 20th century. Prof. J. Arthur Thompson, of Aberdeen, an evolutionist, says: “Modern research is leading us away from the picture of primitive man as brutish, dull, lascivious and bellicose. There is more justification for regarding primitive man as clever, kindly, adventurous and inventive.” ”

“ First of all, when we speak here of life and of the influence exerted upon it by mental culture, we must be understood to mean primitive life in its flow from the source of all spiritual life, from God, the development of human relationships according to their archetype, and, therefore, the creation of a new life such as has never hitherto existed. ”

“ To explain in early periods is to fancy and to take a fancy for a perception. The world of the primitive man is constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but from his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional nature. ”

“ How did primitive man come by his ideas? When he saw the effects of a power, he could only make guesses at the cause; he could only speak of it by some such terms as he would use concerning a human agent. ”

“ Nevertheless, we must here do our best to conceive the surrounding world as it appeared to the primitive man, that we may be able the better to interpret deductively the evidence available for induction. And, though we are incapable of reaching the conception by a direct process, we may make some approach to it by an indirect process. Guided by the doctrine of evolution in general, and by the more special doctrine of mental evolution, we may help ourselves to delineate primitive ideas in some of their leading traits. ”

“ The primitive type disappears, and it disappears by a process of degradation, which it undergoes by reason of its failure to avail itself of the option which it originally had of living a good life that would entitle the immortal soul to return to its peculiar star without further conflict with the debasing tendencies to which it was exposed in the first body that it inhabited. ”