Primitive

“ 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. ”

“ For myself, I am perfectly satisfied that, being part of the history of primitive people, it would be foolish to ignore them from an evolutionary point of view, which constitutes their chief importance ”

“ 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. ”

“ DON'T you think the primitive is just simply too fascinating for anything? We've all got it in us, you know, and it seems like nowadays the more cultured and advanced one is the more likely the primitive is to break out on one. ”

“ The writers seem to forget that primitive man began life, like ourselves, as babies. Moreover, primitive man in many respects resembled children. In fact, just as intra-uterine life is an epitome of our race’s evolution from the primitive monad to the first savage, our early years on earth may be supposed to resemble that of primitive man himself. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are fond of calling these people primitive. In the world's standard of measurement they are primitive, very primitive indeed. But ordinarily by that term, we mean also undeveloped, embryonic. In that sense we are wrong. ”

“ We found them quite common in primitive life, and noticed the 250great variety of ideas and activities that were thus brought into contact so as to produce a number of peculiar concepts and activities. Other peculiar associations are not due to strong emotional causes, but to all of them is common the tendency of taking on rationalistic explanations of varied character. The change from primitive to civilized society includes a lessening of the number of the emotional associations, and an improvement of the traditional material that enters into our habitual mental operations. ”

“ The difference in the mode of thought of primitive man and that of civilized man seems to consist largely in the difference of character of the traditional material with which the new perception associates itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why, that is just like Primitive Man, and how unlike Us! It has taken a long time to transform Primitive Man into Us, but if we start soon enough we may eradicate the primitive things before they have done much harm. ”

“ The development of social life is quite otherwise. It would be foreign to our purpose to retrace its successive phases; let us confine ourselves to the question of origin. What was primitive man? On this point much has been written by way of argument and conjecture. ”

“ And anything more different in spirit from the genuine primitive than the irreverent anarchy and flouting of all refinement in the work of some of these new primitives, it would be difficult to imagine. ”

“ The starting-points for primitive life have been various; sometimes the work has found its beginning in chance conversation, as when a child asked, "Are men animals?" and the class took to the suggestion that man meant thinking animal, and began to consider what he had thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor do the comparisons of the child with primitive man imply that he must pass through all the activities of savage races, but that the development of his faculties, the tendencies of his desires, the state of his ignorance, all illustrate the history of the development of the race. Primitive man may be understood by a study of the child, and, conversely, the child may be illustrated by primitive man. ”

“ If we may take the now established omnipotence of thought among primitive races as a proof of their narcism, we may venture to compare the various evolutionary stages of man’s conception of the universe with the stages of the libidinous evolution of the individual. ”

“ When a tendency splits up in the course of its development, each of the special tendencies which thus arise tries to preserve and develop everything in the primitive tendency that is not incompatible with the work for which it is specialized. ”

“ Before the earliest developments of science, primitive man found himself, as a result of his imagination, in a state of domesticity in the world, analogous to that to which he had himself reduced certain animals ”

“ As in size and structure the inferior races differ from one another enough to produce some indefiniteness in our conception of the primitive man—physical; so in their passions and sentiments the inferior races present contrasts sufficiently marked to obscure the essential traits of the primitive man—emotional. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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.” ”

“ If they mean by primitive that which came absolutely first, then they ask for something which they will never get, not even if they discovered the private correspondence of Adam and Eve, or of the first Homo and Femina sapiens. ”

“ Therefore, if the process of mental evolution was interrupted between the anthropoid apes and primitive man during the pre-historic period of which we have no record, it must again have been resumed with primitive man, after which it must have continued as uninterruptedly in the human species as it previously did in the animal species. ”

“ But there may be found lurking in its depths many truths as yet undiscovered by science. Perhaps the dreams of primitive man may suggest to the present-day scientist new possibilities.—What primitive man has done in fancy present-day man can do in reality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, it should be particularly noticed that, in starting our discussion with primitive man, as we naturally must, the term 'primitive' is to be taken relatively, as representing the lowest grade of culture, particularly of mental culture. There is no specific ethnological characteristic that distinguishes this primitive stage from those that are more advanced; it is only by reference to a number of psychological traits, such as are indicative of the typically original, that we may determine that which is primitive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, you look on all forms of organised beings as the results of the gradual modification of a primitive type, the facts receive a meaning, and you see that these older conditions are the necessary predecessors of the present. ”

“ Such is the contrast that presents itself to the observer. What wonder if civilized man considers himself a being of higher order as compared to primitive man, if he claims that the white race represents a type higher than all others! ”

“ But this is true, you will concede, of both primitive and civilized man. And some primitive men, you will also concede, I hope, are more attractive to us than the most developed specimen of civilization. ”

“ The toys with which he plays, or the objects of every sort which affect his senses, he regards as living beings like himself. Now the primitive thinks like a child. Consequently, he also is inclined to endow all things, even inanimate ones, with a nature analogous to his own. ”

“ Did we not thoughtlessly accept as innate the conceptions slowly elaborated during civilization and acquired insensibly during our early days, we should at once see that these ideas which the primitive man forms are inevitably formed. The laws of mental association necessitate these primitive notions of transmutation, of metamorphosis, of duality ”

“ For this purpose ordinary and typical specimens, rather than rare objects, have been selected and arranged in sequence, so as to trace, as far as practicable, the succession of ideas by which the minds of men in a primitive condition of culture have progressed from the simple to the complex, and from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. ”

“ If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts. ”

“ One of the great changes that has taken place may perhaps best be expressed by saying that in primitive culture the impressions of the outer world are associated intimately with subjective impressions, which they call forth regularly, but which are determined largely by the social surroundings of the individual. ”