§ 7 General Ideas at the Savage Level
The language of savages is often wanting in names of classes of things for which names are with us a matter of course, and it has been supposed that those who use the language must be without the corresponding general ideas. Thus it is reported that a tribe had a name for each kind of tree but none for tree in general; another had a name for coco-nuts at various stages of growth (when they serve different uses) but none for coco-nut at all times: therefore, it is inferred, they had no general idea of tree or of coco-nut. A Siberian example is still more remarkable. The Tunguses depend entirely upon reindeer for food, clothes, tents and locomotion, and keep herds of them; yet they have no name for the animal. But they have a name for wild and another for tame reindeer; a name for domestic reindeer that have been broken in, and another for the unbroken; a name for the female fawn, for the doe with young, for a doe with one fawn, a doe in the third year with two fawns; a name for each age-class of buck, and so on.95 Are we to infer that the Tunguses have no general idea of reindeer?
It was, no doubt, natural to assume that we first perceive individuals, which now stand clearly before us, and then, having compared them, arrive at general ideas. But if knowledge grows by the assimilation and differentiation of experiences, the class on the one hand and the individual on the other, must be joint products of this process: classes becoming clearer as more and more individuals are discriminated. Classes, or class-ideas never stand before us as individuals do; but the greater part of the meaning of every perception of an individual is the kind of thing it is. And as to priority, to perceive the kind of thing is (biologically) far more important than its individuality. If the individual did not mean the class, to perceive it would be useless as a guide to action. The general idea derived from the assimilation of experiences is the apperceptive mass that converts sense-stimulation into cognition: when unconscious Romanes called it a “recept.”
The primitiveness of general ideas is shown by gesture-language, which probably precedes speech, and which (except in direct indication of what is thought of) depends wholly upon general ideas suggested by imitative or significant actions. Primitive language must have described things by general characters, so far as it consisted in onomatopœia; to growl like a lion could only suggest the kind of animal. Primitive drawing (whether by children or savages) is nearly always generic: dog, horse, frigate-bird, hammer-headed shark, but not any individual.
There can be no doubt that savages are capable of general and abstract ideas; and no one now supposes that language is an adequate measure of thought. A language contains names only for things, groups, and aspects or actions of things which the people who use it need to discuss: if they do not need to speak of abstractions, there are no words for them. But we cannot assume of the contents of the mind, any more than of the outside world, that things do not exist unless we have noticed and named them. Professor Franz Boas has shown96 that languages of the northern Amerinds, that do not idiomatically express abstract ideas, may be made to do so without violence, and that the abstract expression is intelligible to men native to the languages. “Every one who knows people of low culture,” says Dr. Rivers, “must recognise the difficulty which besets the study of any abstract question, not so much because the savage does not possess abstract ideas as that he has no words of his own to express them.”97
Amongst the ideas attained by savages, and having an important part in their lives, though often taken for granted and unexpressed, are some of the highest generality: for example “force.” The notion of force is derived from the experience of effort in our own muscular exertions; but with the development of our perception of physical objects by the integration of sense-data—sight, touch, movement and resisted movement (kinæsthesis), smell, hearing—this sense of effort, being transferred to objects as equivalent to our own exertions about them, becomes the all-important core of every object (or meaning of every perception of an object), without which the thing would be a mere show, neither useful nor injurious—sheep and tigers, rocks and pumpkins alike indifferent. Probably the perceptions of all the higher animals (down to reptiles) have this meaning. Force is reality, and by primitive man is thought of as the essence of whatever he conceives of as real, such as spells, talismans and ghosts. Having a subjective ground, from which it never becomes free, the notion of it is indefinite, varies for each of us with our constitution, age, health, and not only lends itself to the wildest whims of superstition, but has misled scientific investigations.
Relations are a class of general ideas familiar to savage thought, often appreciated with great subtlety and especially prominent in some magical operations. Relations are not only thought of by savages but compared, and likenesses discovered between them that may often surprise us. A gardener of New Guinea, having planted taro, ensured the growth of the crop by saying: “A muræna, left on the shore by the tide, was exhausted and on the point of expiring, when the tide returned, and it revived and swam away.” And he struck the ground with a branch three times.98 He saw that renewal of life in the muræna and in the taro were the same thing; so that to describe one must strengthen the other—such is the “force” of a spell!
The most important relation involved in knowledge and in its practical applications is causation. Savages who have no word for causation and have never thought of it in the abstract, must always act as if they assume it. This is apt to be misunderstood. It is written: “The natives [of Australia] have no idea of cause and effect. They notice that two things occur one after the other, and at once jump to the conclusion that one is cause and the other effect.” They have, then, some idea of the relation, though ill-discriminated. Thus, having noticed that the plover often cries before rain, they imitate the cry when performing rites to bring on rain. We rather suppose that an atmospheric change, preceding the approaching rain, excites the plovers. But that does not occur to the natives: that “one after the other” is the same as effect after cause, or (as Logicians say) post hoc, ergo propter hoc, lies at the bottom of innumerable superstitions. The subconscious control exercised by this latent form of thought is very imperfect. The maxims of indirect Magic, that a likeness may be substituted for the thing itself, or a part of it for the whole, are merely formulæ of causation assumed under an erroneous belief as to what can be a cause. There are cases in which the like may be a substitute (one man for another) and a part may nearly serve for the whole (part of a broken knife). Hence these principles were stated and avowed by physicians and alchemists of the Middle Ages, and observed in their practice.
The quantitative axiom of mediate relation—“Magnitudes equal to the same magnitude are equal”—is, of course, never expressed by savages; but it is practically understood and applied by them whenever they use a common measure—the fingers for counting, the pace, or hand or arm-stretch to measure distance. These devices are gesture language; and the truth which the gestures assume has been forced upon the observation of primitive men whenever they saw three or more nearly equal things together—men in a row, birds in a flock, eggs in a nest. We need not suppose that conscious analysis is necessary to determine the relations between such things; the brain has its own method of analysis; and some day we learn the results. It was late in the day that the results became known; not, apparently, till the Greeks gave scientific form to the rudiments of mathematics. For then, for the first time, articulate axioms were wanted—to satisfy the form of science. The innumerable exact calculations of Egypt and Assyria could go on very well without them. Their discovery required the specific purpose of a scientist in search of them, the state of profound meditation and abstraction, excluding all irrelevant ideas, when in the emptiness and darkness of the mind their light became visible, like a faint sound in a silent room. Thus an idea, whose functioning has for ages controlled thought without being recognised, suddenly takes its place in the organisation of knowledge.