176 president's address — section f. 



127). ■ Hence it comes that in many cases the meaning is not, and, 

 perhaps, never has been, clearly undei stood ; natives tell you that 

 they do these things because their grandfathers did them, and 

 leave it at that It may be that in some cases they know more 

 than they admit, and that the reason that they disclaim all know- 

 ledge is that they do not like, any more than we do, to discuss 

 the mysteries of their religion with unsympathetic strangers, of 

 atrocious manners, who^ will jDTobably laugh at them; but as a rule 

 I think tTiat they really do not know. And it is, perhaps, not 

 merely that the tradition has been forgotten ; it is quite probable 

 that in some cases the ancestors by whom the cult or custom was 

 originated could not explain it either, for I suppose it could rarely, 

 if ever, have originated in anything like the clear-cut expression 

 of a definite idea. As Mr. James points out in his Fviviii'ive 

 li'itiud and Belief (pp. 5, 224), the primitve mind is incapable 

 of grasping the abstract thought to any appreciable extent ; the 

 savage is a ceremonialist, not a dogmatic theologian. Religion to 

 him is a matter of practice, not of theory — a thing, in other words 

 to live out rather than to think out ; and it may be that in many 

 cases the ritual came first and that the interpretation, where there 

 is one, came afterwards. 



Arfip'riedit// of Savue/e Life — T)r. Bivers in " Seience and the 



X at ion." 



Now, it may be argued that, by this admission, I am giving 

 away the whole of my case ; if the native does not know why a 

 man must be killed when a house is built or a canoe is launched, 

 if he does not know why the old man must not come down from 

 the hill, or why the drum must not be beaten, it may be contended 

 that these practices or prohibitions must remain only as isolated 

 facts in his life, which can be removed without influencing in any 

 way the remainder of his scheme of existence. But, in fact, one 

 does not find that this is so in the case of a savage, though 

 it may be true enough of civilized man. Savage life is 

 intensely artificial, it is pervaded throughout by conven- 

 tions of every kind ; and thoiigh none of those who are 

 bound by these conventions know anything of their origin, 

 any mere than we know the origin of the conventions which 

 bind us, still, experience shows that they are so inextricably 

 bound together that the removal of one apparently isolated custom 

 may shake the v>'^hole foundation. For, to quote Dr. Rivers again 

 in Science and the Nation, " We know that the disintegrating 

 influence of European settlements becomes the greater the lower 

 we go in the scale of culture, and it is largely through the greater 

 interdependence of the different aspects of social life that this 

 effect is produced." Dr. Rivers then mentions the instance uf 

 head-hunting, and continues, "Similarly, one who abolishes secret 

 societies because he holds them to be ' hot-beds of superstition ' 



