518 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
the corresponding instincts (as these are called) noticeable in the case of some of 
the higher animals? I am particularly anxious not to be misunderstood; the 
suggestion is not that even the most primitive human folk were mentally merely 
on a par even with the higher animals, but that many, perhaps most, of the 
ways of thought that guided the primitive man in his bearing towards the world 
outside himself may be more easily understood if it is once realised, and after- 
wards remembered, that the two mental habits, however different in origin and 
in degree of development, were remarkably analogous in kind. 
A similar analogy, in respect not of thoughts but of arts, may well illustrate 
this correspondence between the elementary ideas of men and animals. The 
higher apes occasionally arm themselves by tearing a young tree up by the 
roots and using the ‘club’ thus provided as a weapon of offence and defence 
against their enemies. Some of the primitive South Sea islanders did—nay, do— 
exactly the same, or at any rate did so till very lately. The club—the so-called 
malumu—which the Fijian, then and up to the much later time when he ceased to 
use a club at all, greatly preferred to use for all serious fighting purposes was pro- 
vided in exactly the same way, 7.e., by dragging a young tree from the ground, and 
smoothing off the more rugged roots to form what the American might call the 
business end of the club. But though the Fijian, throughout the period during 
which he retained his own ways, used and even preferred this earliest form of 
club, he meanwhile employed his leisure (which was abundant), his fancy, and his 
ingenuity, in ornamenting this weapon, and also in gradually adapting it to more 
and more special purposes, some of the later of which were not even warlike but 
were ceremonial purposes, till in course of time each isolated island or group of 
islands evolved clubs special to it in form, purpose, and ornament, and the very 
numerous and puzzlingly varied series of elaborate and beautiful clubs and club- 
shaped implements resulted. It seems to be in power of improvement and 
elaboration that lies the difference between men-folk and animal-folk. 
Something similar may be assumed to have broughtgabout the evolution of 
the ideas of these islanders. Starting with a stock of thoughts similar in kind 
to the instincts of the more advanced animals, the human-folk—by virtue of 
some mysterious potentiality—gradually adapted these to meet the special 
circumstances of their own surroundings, and in so doing ornamenting these 
primitive thoughts further in accordance with fancy. 
In the Fiji Islands this process of cultural development was probably slow 
during the long period while the Melanesians, with perhaps the occasional 
stimulus afforded by the drifting in of a little human flotsam and jetsam from 
other still more primitive folk, were in sole occupation; yet it must have been 
during this period and by these folk that the distinctively Fijian form of culture 
was evolved. But the process must have been greatly accelerated, and at the 
same time more or less changed in direction, by the incoming of the distinct and 
higher Polynesian culture, at a time certainly before, but perhaps not very long 
before, the encroachment of Europeans. 
In order to realise as vividly as possible what were the earlier, most elemen- 
tary, thoughts on which the whole detail of his subsequent ‘ savage’ mentality 
was gradually imposed, it is essential for the time being to discard practically 
all the ideas which, since the road to civilisation parted from that on which 
savagery was left to linger, have built up the mentality of civilised folk; it is 
essential to try to see as the most primitive Fijian saw and to conceive what these 
islanders thought as to themselves and as to the world in which they found 
themselves. 
It seems safe to assume that the primitive man, absolutely self-centred, had 
hardly begun to puzzle out any explanation even of his own nature, still less of 
the real nature of all the other beings of which he must have been vaguely 
conscious in the world outside himself. To put it bluntly, he took things very 
much as they came, and had hardly begun to ask questions. 
He was—he could not but be, as the lower animals are—in some vague way 
conscious of himself, and from that one entirely self-centred position he could 
not but perceive from time to time that other beings, more or less like himself, 
were about him, and came more or less in contact with him. 
The place in which he was conscious of being appeared to him limitless. 
He did not realise that he could move about only in the islet which was his 
