44 Science Religion and Reality 



The above outlined psychology of the primitive attitude 

 towards food and its abundance and our principle of man's practical 

 and pragmatic outlook lead us directly to an answer. We have 

 seen that food is the prinaary link between the primitive and 

 providence. And the need of it and the desire for its abundance 

 have led man to economic pursuits, collecting, hunting, fishing, and 

 they endow these pursuits with varied and tense emotions. A 

 number of animal and vegetable species, those which form the 

 staple food of the tribe, dominate the interests of the tribesmen. 

 To primitive man nature is his living larder, to which — especially 

 at the lowest stages of culture — he has to repair directly in order 

 to gather, cook, and eat when hungry. The road from the 

 wilderness to the savage's belly and consequently to his mind is 

 very short, and for him the world is an indiscriminate background 

 against which there stand out the useful, primarily the edible, 

 species of animals or plants. Those who have lived in the jungle 

 with savages, taking part in collecting or hunting expeditions, 

 or who have sailed with them over the lagoons, or spent moonlit 

 nights on sandbanks waiting for the shoals of fish or for the appear- 

 ance of turtle, know how keen and selective is the savage's interest, 

 how it clings to the indications, trails, and to the habits and pecu- 

 liarities of his quarry, while it yet remains quite indifferent to any 

 other stimuli. Every such species which is habitually pursued 

 forms a nucleus round which all the interests, the impulses, the 

 emotions of a tribe tend to crystallise. A sentiment of social 

 nature is built round each species, a sentiment which naturally 

 finds its expression in folk-lore, belief, and ritual. 



It must also be remembered that the same type of impulse 

 which makes small children delight in birds, take a keen interest 

 in animals, and shrink from reptiles, places animals in the front 

 rank of nature for primitive man. By their general affinity 

 with man — they move, utter sounds, manifest emotions, have 

 bodies and faces like him — and by their superior powers — the 

 birds fly in the open, the fishes can swim under water, reptiles 

 renew their skins and their life and can disappear in the earth — by 

 all this the animal, the intermediate link between man and nature, 

 often his superior in strength, agility, and cunning, usually his 

 indispensable quarry, assumes an exceptional place in the savage's 

 view of the world. 



The primitive is deeply interested in the appearance and 



