TYLOR'S PRIMITIVE CULTURE.*

Winn NOTIOE.] THIS book is in two parts, the second containing a valuable collection of materials for a history of the development of religion.

We will reserve it for our second notice. The first part contains certain essays on subjects belonging to the natural history of man generally. Mr. Tyler proposes to prove by blicin that we have tokens surviv- ing among us in the way of customs, superstitions, popular sayings, children's games, structure of language, and et cceteras in all direc- tions, which witness to a savage original, so that, in answer to Dr. Whately's saying that no instance can be adduced of a savage nation having civilized itself, we may be able to answer, " We ourselves, the civilized nations of Europe, are instances of it. We have grown out of savagery.". Now, to prove this might seem hardly worth the trouble taken with these essays. "The world with all her streams is rushing forward." Things that stopped the way yesterday, to-day are vanished, and Whately's saying amongst them. Everybody, we should have thought, considered it a matter of course that our modern organization, our arts, our language, every- thing in fact except Christianity, were no ready-made gifts, but were painfully and laboriously wrought out for us by our ancestors.

The most orthodox theologian would hardly wish to deny Mr. Tylor's assertion that we may trace in our usages and languages tokens of aboriginal savagery, and that they are developments from a savage original. The only point he would think worthy of a contest would be, is Christianity itself a development ? Is it a natural shoot from the original stock of human nature, or is it a graft ? Is it the cause or the result of our culture ? And with these questions Mr. Tylor does not grapple.

So that an offhand critic might say, the thing proved is not want- ed, and the thing wanted is not proved. But this would be very ungrateful criticism. The book is full of information, references, and original suggestions of a very valuable character. When Mr.

Tyler shows traces among us betokening not only that we were once in a low state of culture, but also that we had among us the very same sort of beliefs, fancies and ways, that still exist among the wild races of Africa, America, Asia, and Polynesia, he proves more than the possibility of progress from savagery to civilization ;

he brings to light a strong likeness between man and man ; touches (*nature that make the whole world kin, whether Aryan, Negro,

Semitic, or Turanian. And thus his work proves a valuable correc- tive to the tendency found in writers of less research to exaggerate the importance of race. In the infancy of religion particularly, on which he dwells so much, we may trace indications of the same sort of superstitious fears, everywhere putting forth similar images of things unseen, throwing the same shadows on the wall, gener- ating propitiatory rites that, in spite of later variations, point to the same sort of originating instinct. We do not wish to exag- gerate the merits of the book. The work undertaken is a great one, and like most great undertakings is very imperfect and very incomplete, but with all its defects, very useful.

"Surveyed in a broad view, the character and habit of mankind at once display that similarity and consistency of phenomena which led the Italian proverb makerto declare that 'all the world is one country,' tutto il monde 13 paose.' To general likeness in human nature on the one hand, and to general likeness in the circumstances of life on the other, this similarity and consistency may no doubt be traced, and they may be studied with especial fitness in comparing races near the same grade of civilization. Little respect need be had in suelf comparisons for date in history or for place on the map ; the ancient Swiss lake- dweller may be set beside the Modirevid Aztec, and the Ojibwa of North America beside the Zulu of South Africa. As Dr. Johnson contemp- tuously said when he had read about Patagonians and South Sea

* Primitive Oullure: Re.rearelir into the Development of Mythology, Pliiloeopliy, Religion, Art, end Custom. .13y Edward B. Tyler. 2 vols. London; Murray. 187t.

Islanders in Hawkosworth's Voyages, one sot of savages is like another.' How true a generalization this really is any ethnological museum may show. Examine, for instance, the edged and pointed in- strument in such a collection; the inventory includes hatchet, adze, chisel, knife, saw, scraper, awl, noodle, spear, and arrow-bead, and of these most or all belong with only differences of detail to races the most various. So it is with savage occupations ; the wood-chopping, fishing with not and lino, shooting and spearing game, fire-making, cooking, twisting cord and plaiting baskets, repeat themselves with wonderful uniformity in the museum shelves which illustrate the life of tho lower races from Kamtschatka to Tierra del Fuego, and from Dahomey to Hawaii. Even when it comes to comparing barbarous hordes with civilized nations, the consideration thrusts itself upon our minds, how far item after item of the life of the lower races passes into analogous proceedings of the higher, in forms not too far changed to be recognized, and sornothnos hardly changed at all. Look at the modern European peasant using his hatchet and his hoe, see his food boiling or roasting over the log-fire, observe the exact place which boor holds in his calculation of happiness, hoar his tale of the ghost in the nearest haunted house, and of the farmer's niece who was bewitched with knots in her inside till she fell into fits and died. If we choose out in this way things which have altered little in a long course of centuries, we may draw a picture where there shall be scarce a hand's breadth dif- ference between an English ploughman and a negro of Central Africa. These pages will be so crowded with evidence of such correspondence among mankind, that there is no need to dwell upon its details here, but it may be used at once to override a problem which would compli- cate the argument, namely, the question of race. For the present pur- pose, it appears both possible and desirable to eliminate considerations of hereditary varieties or races of man, and to treat mankind as homo- geneous in nature, though placed in different grades of civilization. The details of the inquiry will, I think, prove that stages of oulture may be compared without taking into account how far tribes who use the same implement, follow the same custom, or believe the same myth, may differ in their bodily configuration and the colour of their skin and hair."

Moreover, the correspondences and survivals which Mr. Tyler notices, have, to our mind, a special interest, in that they bring home to us the conviction that we are all "By one Deity stirred," that our highest and latest moral reforms or theological concep- tions are the spontaneous outgrowth of that same deep- seated craving and dissatisfaction, the same wounded affections, the same inward sense of violated harmony that drove the first savages we know of to their dreary, burdensome necrolatry. The chapters on development and survival in culture especially bring out this. Mr. Tyler shows in them how tokens crop out everywhere which, when followed out, lead down to a substratum of savage beliefs, still found ruling among the wild races of America, Africa, and Polynesia, showing everywhere the same phenomena of witchcraft, necrolatry, necromancy, shamanism ; things by no means dead among us, but springing up ever afresh in some new shape or other.

But not only mou's dreams and fancies, but also their practical methods illustrate the likeness of man to man, irrespective of clime or race. This is illustrated not only in the case of the industrial arts, but also in the formation of language. "The languages of the Greenlander and the Greek, of the Tasmanian and the Chinese, differ variously in structure ; but this is a eecondarY difference, underlaid by a primary similarity of method." Take a child, Jew or Gentile, Turanian or Negro, striving after utterance. How like they all are in their ways,— by cries, gestures, imitations of sounds, trying to point out the thing they want noticed; clinging to any sound, however arbitrary, that has once served to name a thing, and holding it fast as a point made. Look, again, how, when a now thing has to be named, it is called not by a new name, but by the name of some old thing to which a likeness is seen or imagined, without heeding how far-fetched or fanciful the likeness may be. The whole process of finding names and seeing likenesses is so wild, that languages which at first have points of resemblance, through the similarity everywhere of emotional or imitative sounds, soon lose all likeness to each other. But the formative process! how alike everywhere ! The educated man at this day substantially uses the method of the savage, which is the method of the child.

" Language, so far as its constitution is understood, seems to have boon developed like writing or music, like hunting or fire-making, by the exercise of purely human faculties in purely human ways. This state of things by no means belongs exclusively to rudimentary philo- logical operations, such as the choosing expressive sounds to name cor- responding ideas by. In the higher departments of speech, where words already existing ate turned to account to express now meanings and shade off now distinctions, we find those ends attained by oontriv- aucos ranging from extreme dexterity down to utter clumsiness. For a single instance, one groat moans of giving new meaning to old sound is metaphor, whicli transfers ideas from hearing to Boeing, from touching to thinking, from the concrete of one kind to the abstract of another, and can thus make almost anything in the world help to describe or suggest anything else. What the Oerman philosopher described as the relation of a cow to a comet, that both have tails, is enough and more than enough for the language-maker. It struck the Australians, when they saw a European book, that it opened and shut like a mussel-shell, and they began accordingly to call books 'mussels' (niiiyiun). The sight of a steam engine may suggest a whole group of HER TITLE OF HONOUR.*

such transitions in our own language; the steam passes along ' fifes or

'trumpets,' that is, pipes or tubes, and enters by folding-doors' or kr is unnecessary to recommend tales of Hohne Lee's, for they are. valves, to push a 'pestle' or piston up and down in a 'roller ' or cylinder, well known, and all more or less liked. But this book far exceeds' while the light poura from the furnace in 'staves ' or 'poles,' that is, in even our favourites,—Sylvan Holes Daughter, Kathie Braude, and rays or beams. Tho dictionaries are full of cases compared with which such as these are plain and straightforward. Indeed, the processes by Th.orney Hall,—not, perhaps, as a story, for this is of the simplest whioh words have really ORMO into existence may often enough remind kind, but because with the interest of a pathetic story is united us of the game of 'What is my thought like ?' When one knows the the value of a definite and high purpose ; and because, also, it is a answer, it is easy enough to Bee what junketting and cathedral canons careful and beautiful piece Of writing, and is full of studies of have to do with reeds; Latin juncus 'a reed,' Low Latin juneata, 'cheese made in a reed-basket,' Italian giuncata, ' cream cheese in a rush frail,' refined and charming character. It is wonderful, in this age of FroDeli joneade and English junket, which are preparations of cream, education, how few books we meet with written in classical and lastly junketting parties, where such delicacies are eaten ; Greek English, even by the most practised authors,—so that unless ;Lion, reed, cane,' xotvt70, ' measure, rule,' thence canonicus, a clerk

the grammar and style are very bad indeed, we avoid com- under the ecclesiastical rule or canon.' But who could guess the his-

tory of these words who did not happen to know these intermediate ment, as each notice would only repeat the same remarks and links? Yet there is about this Process of derivation a thoroughly point out the same errors. Bat Holine Lee writes with the cultt- human artificial character. When we knew the whole facts of any ease, vation of a scholar as well as with the ease of an author. Not we can generally understand it at once, and see that we might have done Once in this book does slipshod or loose English annoy, or uglineases the same ourselves had it come in our way." In myth-formation, again, which, being the work of imagination, wound the eye or ear, or stupid anachronisms and carelessnesses aggravate the reader and disperse the illusion of reality. Only might be supposed to be wholly capricious, we see indications of similarity among the remotest and most isolated nations, showing twice, in a careful perusal, have we detected a mistake of that imagination, like other things, is under a natural discipline, any kind ; and exceptions so rare are certainly such as prove the rule. Even of these one is technical, namely, that a and must proceed in a certain direction. We scarcely think, how- fl

ever, that this is worked out in a very businesslike way. The chap- fleet about to sail for India at the beginning of this century would be " warped out " of Southampton Harbour " one by ters on mythology seem to us to lack a lucid order. Mr. Tylor says one ;" it would probably be riding at anchor in open water. The that " the teachings of a childlike primeval philosophy, ascribing other is a slip of the pen merely ; ha " loved her sweet courage personal life to nature at large, and the early tyranny of speech that never feared to do or say wrong." It would be scarcely over the human mind, have been the two great, and perhaps the possible to make the general realer believe how many mistakes, greatest agents in mythological development." We will say a few impossibilities and absurdities of all kindi, writers weave into words on these two agents. their stories, and how great a pleasure it is, at rare intervals, to We deny the assertion that the tendeu cy to personify belongs emi- meet with a work of fiction which bears the marks of what we neatly to a childlike, primeval state, by which Mr. Tylor means a may almost dignify by the name of careful scholarship. low state of culture. No people have so.little tendency to personify This is a narrative rather than a novel, or more properly, an as that well-known low race, the Hottentots. Notwithstanding imaginary biography, and is written with the quietness and sim- the prevalence of charms among lower African races more to the plicity which generally characterize a true story, but with the north, we think the personifying tendency is very weak. A man who wears a caul round his neck to preserve him from drowning, is not supposed to personify the caul. We doubt the fact of a personifying tendency in any very low race ; the New Zealanders,

at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, whom Mr. Tylor instances, are by no means one of the lowest and the central scene is that favourite cathedal city of Salisbury— races. We think that on this point Mr. Tylor rather blindly here called Croxton—chosen lately so often and by such different follows a man immensely inferior to himself in ethnology, Auguste authors for such different stories. The intention of the book is not Comte. It is true that to some very low races the moon's pale, to prove, but to make us ,feel that how blank soever be the page on bright face, seen in the hour when fear runs highest, suggests which our successes were to have been recorded, we have neverthe- a person, hence they go on to personify the sun, perhaps less lived to the very highest purpose if we have followed unflinch- the stars too. The thunder also, because it strikes terror,

suggests to the wild hunted man a living foe. Anything, for which God had destined us. And in this the book succeeds. again, that looks unnatural, strange, unknown, strikes terror,

and suggests the agency of a personal foe,—such as strange sick- that this world's prizes were missed, scarcely with a sigh for the ness, madness, epilepsy. But the personification of the lowest

races has only half a range. It is confined to the concrete, the preternatural, the terrible. As human thought and language de- velop, the range of personification becomes enlarged; the concrete, the individual, in some cases, becomes the representative of a species ; the preternatural is found to be only a strange phase of the natural ; the terrible is propitiated, or believed to be capable of propitiation, and so comes to be looked on as the best protector from that very baleful influence which it has the power of inflict- ing. Thus personification, by a natural process, extends with lect. of the hollowness of this world's greatest honours :—