SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 37 



PRIMITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE "FAIRY FAITH," 



by 



J. L. MdNTYRE, M.A., D.SC., 



Lecturer on Experimental Psychology, University of Aberdeen. 



It is obvious that a very large amount of inference and guesswork must 

 go into the attempt to penetrate the life and customs, and still more the 

 mentality from which the customs sprang, of our "primitive" ancestors. As 

 McCulloch has said of Celtic paganism, in attempting to rebuild the structure 

 of their beliefs, and to guess at the inner spirit, we are working in the 

 twilight on a heap of fragments. Apart from the mere exercise of ingenuity, 

 or simple curiosity, the reasons for the attempt are the same as underlie all 

 the tendencies of our time to hark back to the beginnings of things. To 

 know mind thoroughly, its possibilities, its dangers and favouring conditions, 

 it is well to know first the stages through which it has actually passed in its 

 upward progress. Again, evolution may be looked upon as a form of salvation 

 to which not all are called ; there exist to-day many tribes of men who have 

 not, so far as we know, changed their customs and ways, for thousands of 

 years, until quite recently perhaps, under the influence of the civilised white. 

 They have still the primitive mind for which we seek. Even among the 

 privileged, the elect races, many individuals fail from one cause or another 

 to reach the general level, and remain at the stage of primitive man, so far 

 as that is possible under civilised conditions. The study of the primitive 

 mind may at least help us to understand these primitives among our con- 

 temporaries. There is a human type in mind as well as in body ; man has 

 possessed it from the time he began to exist as an animal with the specific 

 characters he now has, by which he is distinguished from the higher apes, 

 for example. It is on this type that all the embellishments of civilisation 

 have been laid. The gains of culture are not inherited by one individual 

 from another, they are handed on from older to younger, while the minds, 



