Myth, Ritual, and Religion / The Mental Condition Of Savages--Confusion With Nature--Totemism

The Mental Condition Of Savages--Confusion With Nature--Totemism

The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element
in myth--Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all
things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence;
(2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy
credulity and mental indolence--The curiosity is satisfied, thanks
to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries--Evidence for
this--Mr. Tylor's opinion--Mr. Im Thurn--Jesuit missionaries'
Relations--Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and
other natural objects--Reports of travellers--Evidence from
institution of totemism--Definition of totemism--Totemism in
Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia--
Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof
of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line
is drawn between men and the other things in the world. This
confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.

We set out to discover a stage of human intellectual development
which would necessarily produce the essential elements of myth. We
think we have found that stage in the condition of savagery. We
now proceed to array the evidence for the mental processes of
savages. We intend to demonstrate the existence in practical
savage life of the ideas which most surprise us when we find them
in civilised sacred legends.

For the purposes of this inquiry, it is enough to select a few
special peculiarities of savage thought.

1. First we have that nebulous and confused frame of mind to which
all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or
inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion and reason. The
savage, at all events when myth-making, draws no hard and fast line
between himself and the things in the world. He regards himself as
literally akin to animals and plants and heavenly bodies; he
attributes sex and procreative powers even to stones and rocks, and
he assigns human speech and human feelings to sun and moon and
stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds and fishes.[1]

[1] "So fasst auch das Alterthum ihren Unterschied von den Menschen
ganz anders als die spatere Zeit."--Grimm, quoted by Liebrecht, Zur
Volkskunde, p. 17.

2. The second point to note in savage opinion is the belief in
magic and sorcery. The world and all the things in it being
vaguely conceived of as sensible and rational, obey the commands of
certain members of the tribe, chiefs, jugglers, conjurors, or what
you will. Rocks open at their order, rivers dry up, animals are
their servants and hold converse with them. These magicians cause
or heal diseases, and can command even the weather, bringing rain
or thunder or sunshine at their will.[1] There are few
supernatural attributes of "cloud-compelling Zeus" or of Apollo
that are not freely assigned to the tribal conjuror. By virtue,
doubtless, of the community of nature between man and the things in
the world, the conjuror (like Zeus or Indra) can assume at will the
shape of any animal, or can metamorphose his neighbours or enemies
into animal forms.

[1] See Roth in North-West Central Queensland Aborigines, chapter
xii., 1897.

3. Another peculiarity of savage belief naturally connects itself
with that which has just been described. The savage has very
strong ideas about the persistent existence of the souls of the
dead. They retain much of their old nature, but are often more
malignant after death than they had been during life. They are
frequently at the beck and call of the conjuror, whom they aid with
their advice and with their magical power. By virtue of the close
connection already spoken of between man and the animals, the souls
of the dead are not rarely supposed to migrate into the bodies of
beasts, or to revert to the condition of that species of creatures
with which each tribe supposes itself to be related by ties of
kinship or friendship. With the usual inconsistency of mythical
belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times, as if
they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers,
sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, but whence no
one can escape who has tasted of the food of the ghosts.

4. In connection with spirits a far-reaching savage philosophy
prevails. It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects,
animate or inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is
frequently regarded as something separable, capable of being
located in an external object, or something with a definite
locality in the body. A man's strength and spirit may reside in
his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his hair, or may even be
stored by him in some separate receptacle. Very frequently a man
is held capable of detaching his soul from his body, and letting it
roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a bird or
other animal.

5. Many minor savage beliefs might be named, such as the common
faith in friendly or protecting animals, and the notion that
"natural deaths" (as we call them) are always UNNATURAL, that death
is always caused by some hostile spirit or conjuror. From this
opinion comes the myth that man is naturally not subject to death:
that death was somehow introduced into the world by a mistake or
misdeed is a corollary. (See "Myths of the Origin of Death" in
Modern Mythology.)

6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be
considered in this brief summary. The savage, like the civilised
man, is curious. The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit
are at work in his brain; he is anxious to give himself an account
of the world in which he finds himself. But he is not more curious
than he is, on occasion, credulous. His intellect is eager to ask
questions, as is the habit of children, but his intellect is also
lazy, and he is content with the first answer that comes to hand.
"Ils s'arretent aux premieres notions qu'ils en ont," says Pere
Hierome Lalemant.[1] "Nothing," says Schoolcraft, "is too
capacious (sic) for Indian belief."[2] The replies to his
questions he receives from tradition or (when a new problem arises)
evolves an answer for himself in the shape of STORIES. Just as
Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in
the despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to
almost every question that he can ask himself. These stories are
in a sense scientific, because they attempt a solution of the
riddles of the world. They are in a sense religious, because there
is usually a supernatural power, a deus ex machina, of some sort to
cut the knot of the problem. Such stories, then, are the science,
and to a certain extent the religious tradition, of savages.[3]

[1] Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1648, p. 70.

[2] Algic Researches, i. 41.

[3] "The Indians (Algonkins) conveyed instruction--moral,
mechanical and religious--through traditionary fictions and
tales."--Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 12.

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