Herbert Spencer: Typologies of Primitive Ideas
The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1, Part 1 [The Data of Sociology], Chapters 7-8..
The Source for today’s exhibit is:
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology, Volume 1 (1874–75; enlarged 1876, 1885), Part 1, The Data of Sociology, London [multiple publishers]
CHAPTER VII
THE PRIMITIVE MAN INTELLECTUAL
Conceptions of general facts being derived from experiences of particular facts and coming later, are deficient in the primitive man. Consciousness of a general truth implies more heterogeneous correspondence than does consciousness of any included particular truth; it implies higher representativeness, since it colligates more numerous and varied ideas; and it is more remote from reflex action — will not, indeed, of itself, excite action at all.
Having no records, man … cannot recognize long sequences. Hence prevision of distant results, such as is possible in a settled society having measures and written language, is impossible to him: correspondence in time comes within narrow limits. The representations include few successions of phenomena, and these not comprehensive ones.
And there is but a moderate departure from the reflex life in which stimulus and act stand in immediate connexion. Ignorant of localities outside his own, the associations of ideas the primitive man forms are little liable to be changed. As experiences (multiplying in number, gathered from a wider area, and added to by those which other men record) become more heterogeneous, the narrow notions first framed are shaken and made more plastic — there comes greater modifiability of belief.
In his relative rigidity of belief we see a smaller correspondence with an environment containing adverse facts; less of that representativeness which simultaneously grasps and averages much evidence; and a smaller divergence from those lowest actions in which impressions cause, irresistibly, the appropriate motions. Conditioned as he is, the [primitive man] lacks abstract ideas.
IDrawn from many concrete ideas, an abstract idea becomes detachable from them only as fast as their variety leads to mutual cancellings of differences, and leaves outstanding that which they have in common. This implies growth of the correspondence in range and heterogeneity; wider representation of the concretes whence the idea is abstracted; and greater remoteness from reflex action.
Such abstract ideas as those of property and cause, belong to a still higher stage. For only after many special properties and many special causes have been abstracted, can there arise the re-abstracted ideas of property in general and cause in general. The conception of uniformity in the order of phenomena, develops simultaneously. Only along with the use of measures does there grow up the means of ascertaining uniformity; and only after a great accumulation of measured results does the idea of law become possible.
Here, again, the indices of mental evolution serve. The conception of natural order presupposes an advanced correspondence; it involves re-representativeness in a high degree; and the implied divergence from reflex action is extreme.
Until the notion of uniformity has developed along with the use of measures, thought cannot have much definiteness. In primitive life, there is little to yield the idea of agreement; and so long as there are few experiences of exact equality between objects, or perfect conformity between statements and facts, or complete fulfilment of anticipations by results, the notion of truth cannot become clear.
Once more our general tests answer. The conception of truth, being the conception of correspondence between Thoughts and Things, implies advance of that correspondence; it involves representations which are higher, as being better adjusted to realities; and its growth causes a decrease of the primitive credulity allied to reflex action — allied, since it shows us single suggestions producing sudden beliefs which forthwith issue in conduct. Add that only as this conception of truth advances, and therefore the correlative conception of untruth, can scepticism and criticism grow common.
Lastly, such imagination as the primitive man has, small in range and heterogeneity, is reminiscent only, not constructive. An imagination which invents, shows extension of the correspondence from the region of the actual into that of the potential; implies a representativeness not limited to combinations which have been, or are, in the environment, but including non-existing combinations thereafter made to exist; and exhibits the greatest remoteness from reflex action, since the stimulus issuing in movement is unlike any that ever before acted.
And now, having enumerated these leading traits of intellectual evolution in its latter stages, as deduced from psychological principles, we are prepared to observe the significance of the facts as described by travellers. …
[The ‘travellers’ presumably refer to the people Jonathan H. Turner wrote about: “Spencer employed academics to assemble data on diverse types of societies at various stages of societal evolution in terms of a classification system he had developed. Thus, professional scholars were cataloguing data for Spencer during the last thirty years of his life, and they continued to do so for several decades after his death (from monies left to the project in his will) … Spencer’s legacy lives on in the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) and, currently, it is his most widely used contribution to social science, even if virtually all social sciences have no clue of their ultimate origins in Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology”. The data in the latter work took up sixteen volumes and is an empirical foundation for Spencer’s theoretical sociology.
… Testimonies to the acute senses and quick perceptions of the uncivilized, are given by nearly everyone who describes them. … the vision … is telescopic … very keen senses, and see and hear things that are inaudible and invisible to us … their active and minute observation … Excellent superficial observers … high organization of the perceptive faculties … marvellous powers of tracking … constant and minute observations of a limited number of objects … extraordinary "sense of locality” … great dexterity in all manual works … very dexterous in the use of their weapons … [tracking] power borders on the magical …
… survival of the fittest must ever have tended to establish these traits among men whose lives from hour to hour depended on their keen senses, quick observations, and efficient uses of their weapons … [but] we have here to note this trait as significant in its implications. For in virtue of a general antagonism between the activities of simple faculties and the activities of complex faculties, this dominance of the lower intellectual life hinders the higher intellectual life. In proportion as the mental energies go out in restless perception they cannot go out in deliberate thought. ….
… Just as by appearance, texture, and odour, the superior animal is guided in choosing food, and swallows only things which contain much organizable matter; so the superior mind, aided by what we may figuratively call intellectual scent, passes by multitudes of unorganizable facts, but quickly detects facts full of significance, and takes them in as materials out of which cardinal truths may be elaborated. The less-developed intelligences, unable to decompose these more complex facts and assimilate their components, and having therefore no appetite for them, devour with avidity facts which are mostly valueless; and out of the vast mass absorb very little that helps to form general conceptions. Concentrated diet furnished by the experiments of the physicist, the investigations of the political economist, the analyses of the psychologist, is intolerable to them, indigestible by them …
… Suppose this contrast exaggerated — suppose the descent from the higher to the lower intellects among ourselves, to be continued by a second descent of like kind, and we get to the intellect of the primitive man. A still greater attention to meaningless details, and a still smaller ability to select facts from which conclusions may be drawn, characterize the [primitive man]. Multitudes of simple observations are incessantly made by him; but such few as have significance, lost in the mass of insignificant ones, pass through his mind without leaving behind any data for thoughts, worthy to be so called. Already in a foregoing section, the extreme perceptive activity of the lowest races has been illustrated; and here may be added a few illustrations showing the reflective inactivity going along with it. Of the Brazilian Indian Mr. Bates remarks — “I believe he thinks of nothing except the matters that immediately concern his daily material wants”. … Mr. Burton, describing the East African's mind [he] “will not, and apparently cannot, escape from the circle of sense, nor will it occupy itself with aught but the present”. …
… This mental state is, in another direction, exemplified by the statement of Mr. Hodgson concerning the Hill-tribes of India. “Light," he says, "is a high abstraction which none of my informants can grasp, though they readily give equivalents for sunshine and candle or fire-flame”. And Spix and Martins further exemplify it when they say that it would be vain to seek in the language of the Brazilian Indians “words for the abstract ideas of plant, animal, and the still more abstract notions, colour, tone, sex, species, etc.; such a generalization of ideas is found among them only in the frequently used infinitive of the verbs to walk, to eat, to drink, to dance, to sing, to hear, etc.” …
Not until there is formed a general idea, by colligating many special ideas which have a common trait amid their differences — not until there follows the possibility of connecting in thought this common trait with some other trait also possessed in common, can there arise the idea of a causal relation; and not until many different causal relations have been observed, can there result the conception of causal relation in the abstract. By the primitive man, therefore, such distinction as we make between natural and unnatural cannot be made. …
If the young Indian takes as his totem, and thereafter regards as sacred, the first animal he dreams about during a fast … if the Veddah, failing in a shot with his arrow, ascribes the failure not to a bad aim but to insufficient propitiation of his deity; we must regard the implied convictions as normal accompaniments of a mental state in which the organization of experiences has not gone far enough to evolve the idea of natural causation.
… Absence of the idea of natural causation, implies absence of rational surprise. Until there has been reached the belief that certain connexions in things are constant, there can be no astonishment on meeting with cases seemingly at variance with this belief …
… In the Principles of Psychology [a book by Herbert Spencer] it was shown in various ways that only as societies grow, become organized, and gain stability, do there arise those experiences by assimilating which the powers of thought develop. It needs but to ask what would happen to ourselves were the whole mass of existing knowledge obliterated, and were children with nothing beyond their nursery-language left to grow up without guidance or instruction from adults, to perceive that even now the higher intellectual faculties would be almost inoperative, from lack of the materials and aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing this, we cannot fail to see that development of the higher intellectual faculties has gone on pari passu with social advance, alike as cause and consequence; that the primitive man could not evolve these higher intellectual faculties in the absence of a fit environment; and that in this, as in other respects, his progress was retarded by the absence of capacities which only progress could bring.
CHAPTER VIII
PRIMITIVE IDEAS
… Beyond those visible specialities of organization which the body displays, and beyond those hidden specialities of organization implied by the mental type, there are those specialities, still less traceable, implied by the acquired beliefs. As accumulated ancestral experiences, moulding the nervous structures, produce the mental powers; so personal experiences, daily elaborated into thoughts, cause small modifications of these structures and powers. A complete account of the original social unit must include these modifications — or rather, must include the correlative ideas implying them. For, manifestly, the ideas he forms of himself of other beings and of the surrounding world, greatly affect his conduct. A description of these final modifications, or of the corresponding ideas, is difficult to give. Obstacles stand in the way alike of inductive interpretation and deductive interpretation. We must first glance at these.
To determine what conceptions are truly primitive would be easy if we had accounts of truly primitive men. But there are reasons for suspecting that men of the lowest types now known, forming social groups of the simplest kinds, do not exemplify men as they originally were.
Probably most of them had ancestors in higher states; and among their beliefs remain some which were evolved during those higher states.
While the current degradation theory is untenable, the theory of progression, in its ordinary form, seems to me untenable also. If, on the one hand, the notion that savagery is caused by lapse from civilization, is irreconcilable with the evidence; there is, on the other hand, inadequate warrant for the notion that the lowest savagery has never been any higher than it is now.
It is possible, and, I believe, probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression. Evolution is commonly conceived to imply in everything an intrinsic tendency to become something higher. This is an erroneous conception of it.
In all cases it is determined by the co-operation of inner and outer factors. This co-operation works changes until there is reached an equilibrium between the environing actions and the actions which the aggregate opposes to them — a complete equilibrium if the aggregate is without life, and a moving equilibrium if the aggregate is living.
Thereupon evolution, continuing to show itself only in the progressing integration that ends in rigidity, practically ceases. If, in the case of the living aggregates forming a species, the environing actions remain constant, the species remains constant. If the environing actions change, the species changes until it re-equilibriates itself with them.
But it by no means follows that this change constitutes a step in evolution. Usually neither advance nor recession results; and often, certain previously-acquired structures being rendered superfluous, there results a simpler form.
Only now and then does the environing change initiate in the organism a new complication, and so produce a somewhat higher structure. Hence the truth that while for immeasurable periods some types have not sensibly altered, and while in other types there has been further evolution, there are many types in which retrogression has happened. …
… For the more evolved type, conquering by the aid of its acquired superiority, habitually drives competing types into inferior habitats and less profitable modes of life: usually implying disuse and decay of their higher powers.
… Though, taking the entire assemblage of societies, evolution may be held inevitable as an ultimate effect of the co-operating factors, intrinsic and extrinsic, acting on them all through indefinite periods; yet it cannot be held inevitable in each particular society, or even probable. A social organism, like an individual organism, undergoes modifications until it comes into equilibrium with environing conditions; and thereupon continues without further change of structure. When the conditions are changed meteorologically, or geologically, or by alterations in the Flora and Fauna, or by migration consequent on pressure of population, or by flight before usurping races, some change of social structure results.
But this change does not necessarily imply advance. Often it is towards neither a higher nor a lower structure. When the habitat entails modes of life that are inferior, degradation follows. Only occasionally does the new combination of factors produce a change constituting a step in social evolution, and initiating a social type which spreads and supplants inferior social types. And with these … aggregates, progression in some causes retrogression in others. The more-evolved societies drive the less evolved societies into unfavourable habitats; and so entail on them decrease of size, or decay of structure, or both.
Direct evidence forces this conclusion upon us. Lapse from higher civilization to lower civilization, made familiar during school-days, is further exemplified as our knowledge widens. Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans — it needs but to name these to be reminded that many large and highly-evolved societies have either disappeared, or have dwindled … or have been long passing through slow decay.
Ruins show us that in Java there existed in the past a more-developed society than exists now; and the like is shown by ruins in Cambodia. Peru and Mexico were once the seats of societies large and elaborately organized, which have been disorganized by conquest; and where the cities of Central America once contained great populations carrying on various industries and arts, there are now but scattered tribes …
Unquestionably, causes like those which produced these retrogressions, have been at work during the whole period of human existence. Always there have been cosmical and terrestrial changes going on, which, bettering some habitats, have made others worse; always there have been over-populations, spreadings of tribes, conflicts with other tribes, and escape of the defeated into localities unfit for such advanced social life as they had reached; always, where evolution has been uninterfered with externally, there have been those decays and dissolutions which complete the cycles of social changes. And the implication is that remnants of inferior races, taking refuge in inclement, barren, or otherwise unfit regions, have retrograded.
Probably, then, most of the tribes known as lowest, exhibit some social phenomena which are due, not to causes now operating, but to causes that operated during past social states higher than the present. This a priori conclusion harmonizes with the facts; and, indeed, is suggested by facts otherwise inexplicable.
Take, for example, some furnished by the Australians. Divided into tribes wandering over a wide area … [they] have, notwithstanding their antagonisms, a complex system of relationships, and consequent interdicts on marriage, which could not possibly have been framed by any agreement among them as they now exist; but which are comprehensible as having survived from a state in which there was closer union, and subordination to some common rule.
Such, also, is the implication of the circumcision, and the knocking-out of teeth, which we find among them. For when we come hereafter to deal with bodily mutilations, we shall see that they all imply a subordination, political, or ecclesiastical, or both, such as these [people] do not now exhibit.
Hence, then, a difficulty in ascertaining inductively what are primitive ideas. Of the ideas current among men now forming the rudest societies, there are most likely some which have descended by tradition from higher states. These have to be discriminated from truly primitive ideas; so that simple induction does not suffice.
To the deductive method there are obstacles of another kind but equally great.
Comprehension of the thoughts generated in the primitive man by converse with the surrounding world, can be had only by looking at the surrounding world from his stand-point … we must divest ourselves of conceptions which, partly by inheritance and partly by individual culture, have been firmly established …
When we see the juvenile mind plied with generalities before it has any of the concrete facts to which they refer — when we see mathematics introduced under the purely rational form, instead of under that empirical form with which it should be commenced by the child, as it was commenced by the race — when we see a subject so abstract as grammar put among the first instead of among the last, and see it taught analytically instead of synthetically; we have ample evidence of the prevailing inability to conceive the ideas of undeveloped minds.
And if, though lately children themselves, men find it hard to re-think the thoughts of the child; still harder must they find it to rethink the thoughts of [primitive man]. To keep out automorphic interpretations is beyond our power. To look at things with the eyes of absolute ignorance, and observe how their attributes and actions originally grouped themselves in the mind, implies a self-suppression that is impracticable.
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 approach to it by an indirect process. The doctrine of evolution will help us to delineate primitive ideas in some of their leading traits.
Having inferred, a priori, the characters of those ideas, we shall be as far as possible prepared to realize them in imagination, and then to discern them as actually existing.
Our postulate must be that primitive ideas are natural, and, under the conditions in which they occur, rational.
In early life we have been taught that human nature is everywhere the same. Led thus to contemplate the beliefs of [primitive humans] as beliefs entertained by minds like our own, we marvel at their strangeness, and ascribe perversity to those who hold them.
This error we must replace by the truth that the laws of thought are everywhere the same; and that, given the data as known to him, the primitive man's inference is the reasonable inference.
From its lowest to its highest grades intelligence proceeds by the classing of objects and the classing of relations; which are, in fact, different aspects of the same process. On the one hand, perception of an object implies that its attributes are severally classed with like before-known attributes, and the relations in which they stand to one another with like before-known relations; while the object itself, in being known, is classed with its like as such or such.
On the other hand, every step in reasoning implies that the object of which anything is predicated, is classed with objects previously known of like kind; implies that the attribute, power, or act, predicated, is classed as like other previously-known attributes, powers, or acts; and implies that the relation between the object and this predicated attribute, power, or act, is classed with previously-known like relations.
This assimilation of states of consciousness of all orders with their likes in past experience, which is the universal intellectual process, animal and human, leads to results that are correct in proportion to the power of appreciating likenesses and unlikenesses. Where simple terms stand in relations that are simple, direct, and close, the classing can be rightly carried on by simple minds; but in proportion as the terms are complex and the relations between them involved, indirect, remote, the classing can be rightly carried on only by minds developed to a corresponding complexity.
In the absence of this corresponding complexity, the terms of relations are grouped with those which they conspicuously resemble, and the relations themselves are grouped in like manner. But this leads to error; since the most obvious traits are not always those by which things are really allied to one another, and the most obvious characters of relations are not always their essential characters.
Let us observe a few of the common mistakes thus caused. In old works on natural history, whales are called fishes: living in the water, and fish-like in shape, what else should they be? Nine out of ten cabin-passengers, and ninety-nine out of a hundred of those in the steerage, would be amazed were you to tell them that the porpoises playing about the steamer's bow, are nearer akin to dogs than to cod. Take, again, the name shell-fish, as popularly used. In the first place, there is supposed to be some alliance between shell-fish and fish-proper, because both are aquatic. In the second place, the fishmonger includes under shell-fish both oysters and crabs: these, though far more remote in type than an eel is from a man, having in common the character that their softer parts are inclosed in hard cases.
After reminding ourselves of these mistakes to which classing by obvious characters leads our own people, we shall see how natural are the mistakes into which uncivilized men are similarly led. … Having so small an acquaintance with things, these were the most rational groupings they could make — quite as rational as those above instanced.
If his erroneous classing led the Esquimaux to the erroneous inference that glass would melt in his mouth, this was not more erroneous than that of the ship-passenger who, instead of what he looked for, would find in the porpoise hot blood, and lungs to breathe air with.
So, too, remembering that they had no experiences of metals, we shall see nothing irrational in the question put to Jackson by the Fijians — “how we could get axes hard enough in a natural country, to cut down the trees which the barrels of muskets were made of.” For were not tubular canes the only objects to which musket barrels bore any resemblance?
When, again, certain Hill-people with whom Dr. Hooker came in contact, saw thrown on the ground a spring-box measuring-tape, that had just been extended for use, and when, seeing the coils of tape disappearing into the box they ran away shrieking, it is manifest that the tape was considered in virtue of its spontaneous movement as something alive, and in virtue of its shape and behaviour as some kind of snake. Without knowledge of mechanical contrivances, and seeing nothing of the internal spring, this belief was perfectly natural — any other would have been irrational.
Turn, now, from the classing of objects to the classing of relations. We may again aid ourselves by analyzing some errors current in our own society. It is a common recommendation of some remedy for a burn, that it "draws the fire out” — the implication being that between the thing applied and the heat supposed to be lodged in the tissues, there is a connection like that between some object and another which it pulls. Again, after a long frost, when air highly charged with water comes in contact with a cold smooth surface, such as that of a painted wall, the water condensed on it collects in drops and trickles down; whereupon may be heard the remark that “the wall sweats”. Because the water, not visibly brought from elsewhere, makes its appearance on the wall as perspiration does on the skin, it is assumed to come out of the wall as perspiration does out of the skin. Here, as before, we see a relation classed with another which it superficially resembles, but from which it is entirely alien.
If, now, we consider what must happen where ignorance is still greater, we shall no longer be astonished at primitive interpretations. The Orinoco Indians think that dew is “the spittle of the stars”. Observe the genesis of this belief. Dew is a clear liquid to which saliva has some resemblance. It is a liquid which, lying on leaves, etc., seems to have descended from above, as saliva descends from the mouth of one who spits. Having descended during a cloudless night, it must have come from the only things then visible above; namely, the stars. Thus the product itself, dew, and the relation between it and its supposed source, are respectively assimilated with those like them in obvious characters; and we need but recall our own common expression “it spits with rain”, to see how natural is the interpretation. …
Only as knowledge advances and observation becomes critical, does there grow up the idea that the power of any agent to produce its peculiar effect, may depend on some one property to the exclusion of the rest, or on some one part to the exclusion of the rest, or not on one or more of the properties or parts but on the arrangement of them.
What character it is in a complex whole which determines its efficiency, can be known only after analysis has advanced somewhat; and until then, the efficiency is necessarily conceived as belonging to the whole indiscriminately. Further, this unanalyzed whole is conceived as standing towards some unanalyzed effect, in some relation that is unanalyzed.
This trait of primitive thought is so pregnant of results, that we must consider it more closely. Let us symbolize the several attributes of an object, say a sea-shell, by A, B, C, D, E, and the relations among them by w, x, y, z. The ability of this object to concentrate sound on the ear, is due in part to the smoothness of its internal surface (which we will express by C), and in part to those relations among the portions of this surface constituting its shape (which we will symbolize by y). Now, that the ability of the shell to produce a hissing murmur when held to the ear, may be understood as thus resulting, it is needful that C and y should be separated in thought from the rest. Until this can be done, the sound-multiplying power of the shell cannot be known not to depend on its colour, or hardness, or roughness (supposing these to be separately thinkable as attributes).
Evidently, before attributes are distinguished, this power of the shell can be thought of only as belonging to it generally — residing in it as a whole. But, as we have seen, attributes or properties, as we understand them, are not recognizable by the [primitive man] — are abstractions which neither his faculties can grasp nor his language express. Thus, of necessity, he associates this strange murmuring with the shell bodily — regards it as related to the shell as weight is related to a stone. Hence certain beliefs, everywhere conspicuous among the [primitive humans].
A special potency which some object or part of an object displays, belongs to it in such wise that it may be acquired by consuming or possessing this object or part. The powers of a conquered antagonist are supposed to be gained by devouring him. The Dakotah eats the heart of a slain foe to increase his own courage; the New Zealander swallows his dead enemy's eyes that he may see the further; the Abipone consumes tiger's flesh, thinking so to gain the tiger's strength and ferocity: cases which recall the legend about Zeus devouring Metis that he might become possessed of her wisdom.
The like trait is seen in such beliefs as that of the Guaranis, whose “pregnant women abstained from eating the flesh of the Anta, lest the child should have a large nose; and from small birds, lest it should prove diminutive”; or again, in such beliefs as that which led the Caribs to sprinkle a male infant with his father's blood to give him his father's courage; or again, in such beliefs as that of the Bulloms, who hold that possessing part of a successful person's body, gives them “a portion of his good fortune”.
Clearly the implied mode of thought, shown even in the medical prescriptions of past ages, and continuing down to recent days in the notion that character is absorbed with mother's milk, is a mode of thought necessarily persisting until analysis has disclosed the complexities of causal relations.
While physical conceptions are few and vague, any antecedent serves to account for any consequent. Ask a quarryman what he thinks of the fossils his pick-axe is exposing, and he will tell you they are “sports of nature”: the tendency of his thought to pass from the existence of the fossils as an effect, to some agent as cause, is satisfied, and his curiosity ceases. The plumber, cross-examined about the working of the pump he is repairing, says that the water rises in it by suction. Having classed the process with one which he can perform by the muscular actions of his mouth applied to a tube, he thinks he understands it — never asks what force makes the water rise towards his mouth when he performs these muscular actions.
Similarly with an explanation of some unfamiliar fact which you may often hear in cultivated society — “it is caused by electricity”. The mental tension is sufficiently relieved when, to the observed result, there is joined in thought this something with a name; though there is no notion what the something really is, nor the remotest idea how the result can be wrought by it.
Having such illustrations furnished by those around us, we shall have no difficulty in seeing how the [primitive man], with fewer experiences more vaguely grouped, adopts, as quite adequate, the first explanation which familiar associations suggest. If Siberian tribes, finding mammoths imbedded in ice and the bones of mammoths in the ground, ascribe earthquakes to the burrowing of these huge beasts; or if [primitive people] living near volcanoes, think of them as fires lighted by some of their ancestors to cook by; they do but illustrate in a more marked way, the common readiness to fill up the missing term of a causal relation by the first agency which occurs to the mind.
Further, it is observable that proximate interpretations suffice — there is no tendency to ask for anything beyond them. The Africans who denied the alleged obligations to God, by saying that “the earth, and not God, gave them gold, which was dug out of its bowels; that the earth yielded them maize and rice; . . . that for fruits they were obliged to the Portuguese, who had planted the trees”; and so on; show us that a relation between the last consequent and its immediate antecedent having been established, nothing further happens. There is not enough mental excursiveness to raise a question respecting any remoter antecedent.
One other trait, consequent on the foregoing traits, should be added. There result conceptions that are inconsistent and confused. Certain fundamental ideas as found among the Iroquois, are described by Morgan as “vague and diversified”; as found among the Creeks, are characterized by Schoolcraft as “confused and irregular”; as found among the Karens, are said by Mason to be “confused, indefinite, and contradictory”.
Everywhere occur gross inconsistencies which arise from leaving propositions uncompared; as when, in almost the same breath, a Malagasy “will express his belief that when he dies he ceases altogether to exist, . . . and yet confess the fact that he is in the habit of praying to his ancestors” — a special inconsistency occurring among many peoples.
How illogicalities so extreme are possible, we shall the more easily see on recalling certain of our own illogicalities. Instance … that familiar absurdity fallen into by believers in ghosts, who, admitting that ghosts are seen clothed, admit, by implication, that coats have ghosts — an implication they had not perceived. Among men of low type, then, far more ignorant and with less capacity for thought, we must expect to find a chaos of notions, and a ready acceptance of doctrines which are ludicrously incongruous.
And now we have prepared ourselves, so far as may be, for understanding primitive ideas. We have seen that a true interpretation of these must be one which recognizes their naturalness under the conditions. The mind of the [primitive man], like the mind of the civilized, proceeds by classing objects and relations with their likes in past experience.
In the absence of adequate mental power, there result simple and vague classings of objects by conspicuous likenesses, and of actions by conspicuous likenesses; and hence come crude notions, too simple and too few in their kinds, to represent the facts. Further, these crude notions are inevitably inconsistent to an extreme degree. …
[Many more examples given but omitted here.]
… Once more, let us ask what must be the original conception of wind. Nothing in early experiences yields the idea of air, as we are now familiar with it; and, indeed, most can recall the difficulty they once had in thinking of the surrounding medium as a material substance. The primitive man cannot regard it as a something which acts as do the things he sees and handles. Into this seemingly-empty space on all sides, there from time to time comes an invisible agent which bends the trees, drives along the leaves, disturbs the water; and which he feels moving his hair, fanning his cheek, and now and then pushing his body with a force he has some difficulty in overcoming. What may be the nature of this agent there is nothing to tell him; but one thing is irresistibly thrust on his consciousness — that sounds are made, things about him are moved, and he himself is buffeted, by an existence he can neither grasp nor see.
What primitive ideas arise out of these experiences derived from the inorganic world? In the absence of hypothesis (which is foreign to thought in its earliest stages), what mental association do these occurrences, some at long intervals, some daily, some hourly, some from minute to minute, tend to establish? They present, under many forms, the relation between a perceptible and an imperceptible mode of existence. In what way does the [primitive] think of this relation? He cannot think of it in terms of dissipation into vapour and condensation from it, nor in terms of optical relations producing illusions, nor in any terms of physical science. How, then, does he formulate it?
A clue to the answer will be furnished by recalling certain remarks of young children. When an image from the magic lantern thrown on a screen, suddenly disappears on withdrawal of the slide, or when the reflection from a looking-glass, cast for a child's amusement on the wall or ceiling, is made to vanish by changing the attitude of the glass, the child asks — "Where is it gone to?" The notion arising in its mind is, not that this something no longer seen has become nonexistent, but that it has become non-apparent; and it is led to think this by daily observing persons disappear behind adjacent objects, by watching while things are put out of sight, and by now and again finding a toy that had been hidden or lost.
Similarly, the primitive idea is, that these various entities now manifest themselves and now conceal themselves. As the animal which he has wounded hides itself in the brushwood, and, if it cannot be found, is supposed by the [primitive] to have escaped in some incomprehensible way, but to be still existing; so, in the absence of accumulated and organized knowledge, the implication of all these experiences is, that many of the things above and around pass often from visibility to invisibility, and conversely.
Bearing in mind how the actions of wind prove that there is an invisible form of existence which possesses power, we shall see this belief to be plausible. It remains only to point out that along with this conception of a visible condition and an invisible condition, which each of these many things has, there comes the conception of duality. Each of them is in a sense double; since it has these two complementary modes of being.
Significant facts of another order may next be noted — facts impressing the primitive man with the belief that things are transmutable from one kind of substance into another. [discussion about what primitive man might have thought when finding fossils] …
… With all our knowledge it remains difficult to understand how silica can so replace the components of the wood as to preserve the appearance thus perfectly; and for the primitive man, knowing nothing of molecular action and unable to conceive a process of substitution, there is no possible thought but that the wood is changed into stone.
Thus, if we ignore those conceptions of physical causation which have arisen only as experiences have been slowly organized during civilization, we shall see that in their absence there would be nothing to prevent us from putting on these facts the interpretations which the primitive man puts on them.
Looking at the evidence through his eyes, we find his belief that things change from one kind of substance to another, to be the inevitable belief. And here let us not omit to note that along with the notion of transmutation is involved the notion of duality. These things have obviously two states of existence.
Did we not thoughtlessly assume that truths made obvious by culture are naturally obvious, we should see that an unlimited belief in change of shape, as well as in change of substance, is one which the [primitive man] cannot avoid. From early childhood we hear remarks implying that certain transformations which living things undergo are matters of course, while other transformations are impossible. This distinction we suppose to have been manifest at the outset. But at the outset, the observed metamorphoses suggest that any metamorphosis may occur. Consider the immense contrast in form as in texture between the seed and the plant. Look at this nut with hard brown shell and white kernel, and ask what basis there is for the expectation that from it will presently come a soft shoot and green leaves. When young we are told that the one grows into the other; and the blank form of explanation being thus filled up, we cease to wonder and inquire. Yet it needs but to consider what thought would have arisen had there been no one to give this mere verbal solution, to see that the thought would have been — transformation.
Apart from hypothesis, the bare fact is that a thing having one size, shape, and colour, becomes a thing having an utterly different size, shape, and colour.
Similarly with the eggs of birds. A few days since this nest contained five rounded, smooth, speckled bodies; and now in place of them are as many chicks gaping for food. We are brought up to the idea that the eggs have been hatched; and with this semblance of interpretation we are content. This extreme change in visible and tangible characters being recognized as one constantly occurring in the order of nature, is therefore regarded as not remarkable. But to a mind occupied by no generalized experiences of its own or of others, there would seem nothing more strange in the production of chicks from nuts than in the production of chicks from eggs: a metamorphosis of the kind we think impossible, would stand on the same footing as one which familiarity has made us think natural.
Indeed, on remembering that there still survives, or till lately survived, the belief that barnacle-geese arise from barnacles — on learning that in the early Transactions of the Royal Society, there is a paper describing a barnacle as showing traces of the young bird it is about to produce; it will be seen that only by advanced science has there been discriminated the natural organic transformations, from transformations which to ignorance seem just as likely. The insect-world yields instances of metamorphoses even more misleading. To a branch above his wigwam, the [primitive man] saw a few days ago, a caterpillar hanging with its head downwards. Now in the same place hangs a differently formed and coloured thing — a chrysalis. A fortnight after there comes out a butterfly: leaving a thin empty case. These insect-metamorphoses, as we call them, which we now interpret as processes of evolution presenting certain definitely-marked stages, are in the eyes of the primitive man, metamorphoses in the original sense. He accepts them as actual changes of one thing into another thing utterly unlike it. How readily the [primitive man] confounds these metamorphoses which really occur, with metamorphoses which seem to occur but are impossible, we shall perceive on noting a few cases of mimicry by insects, and the conclusions they lead to. …
[More examples including the observations and collections of ‘Mr Wallace’.]
… Here, again, we have to note that while initiating and fostering the notion that things of all kinds may suddenly change their forms, the experiences of transformations confirm the notion of duality. Each object is not only what it seems, but is potentially something else.
What are shadows? Familiar as has become the interpretation of them in terms of physical causation, we do not ask how they look to the absolutely ignorant. …
… Thus, by minds beginning to generalize, shadows must be conceived as existences appended to, but capable of separation from, material things. And that they are so conceived is abundantly proved. The Benin … regard men's shadows as their souls; and the Wanika are afraid of their own shadows: possibly thinking, as some others … do, that their shadows watch all their actions, and bear witness against them. The Greenlanders say a man's shadow is one of his two souls— the one which goes away from his body at night. Among the Fijians, too, the shadow is called “the dark spirit” as distinguished from another which each man possesses. And the community of meaning, hereafter to be noted more fully, which various unallied languages betray between shade and spirit, shows us the same thing.
These illustrations suggest more than I here wish to show. The ideas of the uncivilized as we now find them, have developed from their first vague forms into forms having more coherence and definiteness. We must neglect the special characters of these ideas, and consider only that most general character with which they began. This proves to be the character inferred above. Shadows are realities which, always intangible and often invisible, nevertheless severally belong to their visible and tangible correlatives; and the facts they present, furnish further materials for developing both the notion of apparent and unapparent states of being, and the notion of a duality in things.
[Discussion of reflections in water, etc.]
… Early theories about the nature of this [reflection] duplicate are now beside the question. We are concerned only with the fact that it is thought of as real. Here is revealed another class of facts confirming the notion that existences have their visible and invisible states, and strengthening the implication of a duality in each existence.
Let any one ask himself what would be his thought if, in a state of child-like ignorance, he were to hear repeated a shout which he uttered.
[Discussion of the echo of a shout, etc.]
… That to the primitive mind they thus present themselves, is shown by facts. Of the Abipones, we read that “what became of the Lokal [spirit of the dead] they knew not, but they fear it, and believe that the echo was its voice”. The Indians of Cumana (Central America) “believed the soul to be immortal, that it did eat and drink in a plain where it resided, and that the echo was its answer to him that spoke or called”. …
Here, as before, I must ask the reader to ignore these special interpretations, acceptance of which forestalls the argument. Attention is now drawn to this evidence simply as confirming the inference that, in the absence of physical explanation, an echo is conceived as the voice of some one who avoids being seen. So that once more we have duality implied — an invisible state as well as a visible state.
To a mind unfurnished with any ideas save those of its own gathering, surrounding nature thus presents multitudinous cases of seemingly-arbitrary change. In the sky and on the earth, things make their appearance and disappear; and there is nothing to show why they do so. Here on the surface and there imbedded in the ground, are things that have been transmuted in substance — changed from flesh to stone, from wood to flint. Living bodies on all sides exemplify metamorphosis in ways marvellous enough to the instructed, and to the primitive man quite incomprehensible.
And the conception of two or more inter-changeable states of existence, impressed on him by such phenomena, is again impressed on him by shadows, reflections, and echoes. Did we not thoughtlessly accept as self-evident the truths 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; and, until experiences have been systematized, no restraints are put on them.
With the eyes of developed knowledge we look at snow as a particular form of crystallized water, and at hail as drops of rain which congealed as they fell. When these become fluid we say they have thawed — thinking of the change as a physical effect of heat; and, similarly, when the hoar frost fringing the sprays turns into hanging drops, or when the surface of the pool solidifies and again liquefies. But looked at with the eyes of absolute ignorance, these changes are transmutations of substance — passings from one kind of existence into another kind of existence.
And in like ways are conceived all the changes above enumerated. Let us now ask what happens in the primitive mind when there has been accumulated this chaotic assemblage of crude ideas, having, amid their differences, certain resemblances. In conformity with the law of evolution, every aggregate tends to integrate, and to differentiate while it integrates. The aggregate of primitive ideas must do this. After what manner will it do it? These multitudinous vague notions form a loose mass without order. They slowly segregate, like cohering with like, and so forming indefinitely-marked groups. When these groups begin to form a consolidated whole, constituting a general conception of the way in which things at large go on, they must do it in the same way: such coherence of the groups as arises, must be due to some likeness among the members of all the groups.
We have seen that there is such a likeness — this common trait of duality joined with this aptitude for passing from one mode of existence to another. Integration must be set up by the recognition of some conspicuous typical case. When, into a heap of detached observations, is introduced an observation akin to them in which a causal relation is discernible, it forthwith commences assimilating to itself from this heap of observations, those which are congruous; and tends even to coerce into union those of which the congruity is not manifest. One may say that as the protoplasm forming an unfertilized germ, remains inert until the matter of a sperm-cell is joined with it, but begins to organize when this addition is made; so a loose mass of observations continues unsystematized in the absence of an hypothesis, but under the stimulus of an hypothesis undergoes changes bringing about a coherent systematic doctrine.
What particular example, then, of this prevalent duality, plays the part of an organizing principle to the aggregate of primitive ideas? We must not look for an hypothesis properly so called: an hypothesis is an implement of inquiry not to be framed by the primitive mind. We must look for some experience in which this duality is forcibly thrust on the attention. As a consciously-held hypothesis is based on some obtrusive instance of a relation, which other instances are suspected to be like; so the particular primitive notion which is to serve as an unconscious hypothesis, setting up organization in this aggregate of primitive notions, must be one conspicuously exemplifying their common trait.
First identifying this typical notion, we must afterwards enter on a survey of the conceptions which result. It will be needful to pursue various lines of inquiry and exposition not manifestly relevant to our subject; and it will also be needful to contemplate much evidence furnished by men who have advanced beyond the savage state. But this discursive treatment is unavoidable.
Until we can figure to ourselves with approximate truth the primitive system of thought, we cannot 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. …
[You have now reached the end of this Social Science Files exhibit.]
[Chapters that follow are pursued in same vein, focusing in detail on particular TYPES OF PRIMITIVE IDEAS, testing the veracity of Spencer’s hypotheses.]
CHAPTER IX THE IDEAS OF THE ANIMATE
CHAPTER X THE IDEAS OF SLEEP AND DREAMS
CHAPTER XI THE IDEAS OF SWOON, APOPLEXY, CATALEPSY, ECSTASY, AND OTHER FORKS OF INSENSIBILITY
CHAPTER XII THE IDEAS OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION
CHAPTER XIII THE IDEAS OF SOULS, GHOSTS, SPIRITS, DEMONS, ETC.
CHAPTER XIV THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER LIFE
CHAPTER XV THE IDEAS OF ANOTHER WORLD
CHAPTER XVI THE IDEAS OF SUPERNATURAL AGENTS
CHAPTER XVII SUPERNATURAL AGENTS AS CAUSING EPILEPSY AND CONVULSIVE ACTIONS; DELIRIUM AND INSANITY, DISEASE AND DEATH
CHAPTER XVIII INSPIRATION, DIVINATION, EXORCISM, AND SORCERY
CHAPTER XIX SACKED PLACES, TEMPLES, AND ALTARS; SACRIFICE, FASTING, AND PROPITIATION; PRAISE, PRAYERS, ETC.
CHAPTER XX ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN GENERAL
CHAPTER XXI IDOL-WORSHIP AND FETICH-WORSHIP
CHAPTER XXII ANIMAL-WORSHIP
CHAPTER XXIII PLANT-WORSHIP
CHAPTER XXV DEITIES
[To follow: a short final chapter XXVI applying the points made above. I may also find for fun a 2023 example of ‘Primitive Idea’ at the highest governmental level.]
Social Science Files collects and displays multidisciplinary writings on a great variety of topics relating to evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.
‘The Heller Files’, quality tools for Social Science.