ESKIMO MUSIC 



By DR. ROBERT STEIN 



NE of the items of knowledge which our 

 teachers, some thirty years ago, were care- 

 ful to impress on our plastic youthful 

 minds was, that mankind was divided into 

 three classes — civilized, barbarous and sav- 

 age. The division seemed entirely satis- 

 factory, and we never doubted our ability to assign any 

 human being to one of these three classes the moment 

 we laid eyes on him. The savage was supposed to care 

 for nothing but eating and sleeping, the civilized man 

 cared for something besides eating and sleeping, and the 

 barbarian was midway between these. Too bad that so 

 simple an arrangement should ever need revision! Since 

 then, however, facts have become known in regard to 

 savages, barbarians, and civilized men, too, which tend 

 to obliterate the lines of division that seemed so clear 

 cut. 



To-day these terms continue to be used from mere force 

 of habit, just as naturalists continue to talk about species 

 and genera, when they know very well that there is not and 

 cannot be any sharp dividing line between any two species. 

 We now know that there is hardly a feature in civilized life 

 that is not present, at least in a rudimentary form, among 

 the so-called savages, while, on the other hand, we have 

 come to the conclusion that there are hosts of human 

 beings able to read and write and to count to a million, 

 having the ballot, using the telephone and holding their 

 possessions between thumb and forefinger in a bankbook, 

 who nevertheless are not civilized at all, but merely domes- 

 ticated, and who, if an epidemic were to carry off all the 

 real active brains of civilization, would instantly relapse into 

 the Stone Age, if they did not die of starvation. 



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