But as the majority of the Negro myths, like those of the Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian myths were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief in the intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of Negroes on the reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it turns out that both Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do satisfy an unscientific curiosity, and it is even held that the Negroes lent the Amazonians these very stories. The Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give themselves a reason why for everything, according to their own lively fancy, and do not leave the smallest matter uncriticised". As far, then, as Mr.
Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may consider them overweighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a ***** savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of his race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is already an intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of the moments not engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep. Even in the Botocudo or the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ in actual experience." It will be shown later that the food of the savage intellectual appetite is offered and consumed in the shape of explanatory myths.
See Amazonian Tortoise-Myth., pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr.
Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.
Steller, p. 267. Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.
Primitive Culture, i. 369.
But we must now observe that the "actual experience," properly so called, of the savage is so limited and so coloured by misconception and superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much from the conceptions of civilised races. He seeks an explanation, a theory of things, based on his experience. But his knowledge of physical causes and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is driven to fall back upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many cases "supernatural" explanations. The narrower the range of man's knowledge of physical causes, the wider is the field which he has to fill up with hypothetical causes of a metaphysical or "supernatural"character. These "supernatural" causes themselves the savage believes to be matters of experience. It is to his mind a matter of experience that all nature is personal and animated; that men may change shapes with beasts; that incantations and supernatural beings can cause sunshine and storm.
A good example of this is given in Charlevoix's work on French Canada. Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the Hurons and other tribes of North America. He thus describes the philosophy of the Red Men: "The Hurons attribute the most ordinary effects to supernatural causes". In the same page the good father himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and the cure of certain savage patients to the prayers of Pere Brebeuf and to the exhibition of the sacraments. Charlevoix had considerably extended the field in which natural effects are known to be produced by natural causes. He was much more scientifically minded than his savage flock, and was quite aware that an ordinary clock with a pendulum cannot bring bad luck to a whole tribe, and that a weather-cock is not a magical machine for securing unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing less of natural causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as convinced that his clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his weather-cock spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of the truth of his own inferences. One or two other anecdotes in the good father's history and letters help to explain the difference between the philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf was once summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or "medicine-man" before a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone right since he appeared among them.
To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles". He admitted the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe since his arrival.
"But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the malignant Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet! This event naturally added to the confusion of the savages.
Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.
Vol. i. p. 191.
Vol. i. p. 192.
Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds.