Revival: Primitive Mentality (1923)

Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Lilian A. Clare

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138506169
• eBook ISBN: 9781351346979
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The primitive mind does not differentiate the supernatural from reality, but rather uses "mystical participation" to manipulate the world. According to Bruhl, moreover, the primitive mind doesn't address contradictions. The modern mind, by contrast, uses reflection and logic. Bruhl believed in a historical and evolutionary teleology leading from the primitive mind to the modern mind.

PRIMITIVE MENTALITY

CHAPTER 1

THE PRIMITIVE’S INDIFFERENCE TO SECONDARY CAUSES

I

WHEN confronted by something that interests, disturbs, or frightens it, the primitive’s mind does not follow the same course as ours would do. It at once embarks upon a different channel.

The uninterrupted feeling of intellectual security is so thoroughly established in our minds that we do not see how it can be disturbed, for even supposing we were suddenly brought face to face with an altogether mysterious phenomenon, the causes of which might entirely escape us at first, we should be convinced that our ignorance was merely temporary; we should know that such causes did exist, and that sooner or later they would declare themselves. Thus the world in which we live is, as it were, intellectualized beforehand. It, like the mind which devises and sets it in motion, is order and reason. Our daily activities, even in their minutest details, imply calm and complete confidence in the immutability of natural laws.

The attitude of the primitive’s mind is very different. The natural world he lives in presents itself in quite another aspect to him. All its objects and all its entities are involved in a system of mystic participations and exclusions; it is these which constitute its cohesion and its order. They therefore will attract his attention first of all, and they alone will retain it. If a phenomenon interests him, and he does not confine himself to a merely passive perception of it without reaction of any kind, he will immediately conjure up, as by a kind of mental reflex, an occult and invisible power of which this phenomenon is a manifestation.

“The view-point of the native African mind,” says Nassau, “in all unusual occurrences, is that of witchcraft. Without looking for an explanation in what civilization would call natural causes, his thought turns at once to the supernatural. Indeed, the supernatural is so constant a factor in his life, that to him it furnishes explanation of events as prompt and reasonable as our reference to the recognized forces of Nature.”¹ John Philip, the missionary, speaking of “Bechuana superstitions,” says: “Everything in a state of ignorance” (i.e. before the instruction given by the missionaries) “which is not known, and which is involved in mystery” (that which cannot be accounted for merely by perception), “is the object of superstitious veneration, where second causes are unknown, and invisible agency is substituted in their places.”²

The mentality of the natives of the Solomon Isles suggests the same reflection to Thurnwald. “In considering any matter, they never go beyond simply registering the facts. The profound causal connection is, in theory, entirely lacking. The non-comprehension of the connection between phenomena is the source of their fears and of their superstitions.”³

Here, as so frequently happens, we must distinguish between the fact reported and the interpretation given to it. The fact is that the primitive, whether he be an African or any other, never troubles to inquire into causal connections which are not self-evident, but straightway refers them to a mystic power. At the same time observers, whether missionaries or others, give their explanation of this fact, and in their opinion, if the primitive immediately has recourse to mystic powers, it is because he does not trouble to inquire into causes. But why does he not trouble to do this? It really is the other way about. If primitives do not think of seeking causal connections, if, when they do perceive them or have them pointed out, they consider them as of slight importance, it is the natural consequence of the well-established fact that their collective representations immediately evoke the instrumentality of mystic powers. It follows that the causal connections which, to us, are the very framework of Nature, the basis of its reality and stability, are of very little interest in their eyes. “One day,” said Bentley, “Whitehead saw one of his men sitting in the cold wind on a rainy day. He advised his going home and changing his wet cloth for a dry one, but he said: ‘It does not matter. People do not die of a cold wind; people only get ill and die by means of witchcraft.’”¹

From New Zealand, too, a missionary writes in an almost identical strain. “A native came to me, apparently in a deep decline. He also had caught cold and had not taken care of himself. The natives are not in the least aware of the causes of their diseases. They ascribe to Atua everything that gives them pain. The deluded man said Atua was within him, eating his vitals.”²

To a mind thus orientated, and wholly absorbed in preconceptions of a mystic nature, what we call a cause, that which we consider accountable for what occurs, could not at most be more than an opportunity or, rather, an instrument which serves the occult powers. The opportunity might have been afforded by something else, and the instrument have been a different one, but the event would have taken place just the same, for all that was necessary was for the occult power to come into play without being prevented by a superior force of the same nature.

II

From among the many examples that occur to us, let us take one of the most familiar ones. In all uncivilized races everywhere, death requires to be explained by other than natural causes. It has frequently been remarked that when they see a man die, it would seem as if it might be the very first time such a thing had happened, and that they could never before have been witnesses of such an occurrence. “Is it possible,” says the European to himself, “that these people do not know that everybody must die sooner or later?” But the primitive has never considered things in this light. In his eyes, the causes which inevitably bring about the death of a man in a certain (fairly definite) number of years—causes such as failure of the bodily organs, senile decay, diminution of functioning power—are not necessarily connected with death. Does he not see decrepit old men still alive? If, therefore, at a given moment death supervenes, it must be because a mystic force has come into play. Moreover, senile weakness itself, like any other malady, is not due to what we call natural causes; it, too, must be explained by the agency of a mystic force. In short, if the primitive pays no attention to the causes of death, it is because he knows already how death is brought about, and since he knows why it happens, how it occurs matters very little. Here we have a kind of a priori reasoning upon which experience has no hold.

Thus, to borrow examples from inferior races in parts where the influence of the white man had not yet been felt, in Australia (in Victoria) “death is at all times by them attributed to human agency. When any black, whether old or young, dies, an enemy is supposed, during the night, to have made an incision in his side and removed his kidney fat. Even the most intelligent natives cannot be convinced that any death proceeds from natural causes.”¹

Neither the body of the sick man, nor his corpse after death, bears the slightest trace of the incision, but the Australian aborigine does not consider that any reason for doubting that it took place. What other proof of it than death itself is necessary? Would death have occurred if someone had not taken away the fat from the kidneys? Moreover, this belief does not involve any idea of a physiological rôle attributed to the fat; it is simply a question of a mystic act brought into operation by the mere presence of the organ which is its agent.

According to the notes furnished by Thomas Petrie; Dr. W. E. Roth says: “During the first years of European colonization, in the Brisbane district … nearly all aches, pains and diseases were ascribed to the quartz crystal in the possession of some medicine-man (turrwan). This crystal gave its owner supernatural powers. The spirit of the turrwan used to put the crystal into the victim, who could only be cured by getting a medicine-man to suck it out again; thus a medicine-man could make an individual sick even when he was miles away, and ‘doom’ him, so to speak.”¹ “At Princess Charlotte Bay, all complaints of a serious nature, from malaria to syphilis, are ascribed to the action of a particular charm … formed of a pointed piece of human fibula stuck with wax on to a reed spear. It is believed that when the spear is thrown in the direction of the intended victim, the shaft remains in the hands of the thrower, while the bone splinter travels across the intervening space, becomes lodged in the victim’s body—the wound immediately closing without leaving a scar—and so causes sickness or disease.”²

Generally speaking, when a man dies, it is because he has been “doomed” by a sorcerer. “The predestined victim may depart as usual on some hunting expedition … when he suddenly feels something at his leg or foot, and sees a snake just in the act of biting him. Strange to say, this particular kind of snake will now immediately disappear…. By this very process of invisibility the person bitten recognizes that some enemy has been pointing the mangani at him, and that through this form of it he is sure to die; nothing can possibly save him. He makes no effort to apply a remedy, loses heart, gives way, and lies down to die.”³

Spencer and Gillen say, too: “All ailments of every kind, from the simplest to the most serious, are without exception attributed to the malign influence of an enemy in either human or spirit shape.”⁴ “Death by accident,” says Howitt, “they can imagine, although the results of what we should call accident they mostly attribute to the effects of some evil magic. They are well acquainted with death by violence, but even in this they believe, as among the tribes about Maryborough (Queensland) that a warrior who happens to be speared in one of the ceremonial fights has lost his skill in warding off or evading a spear, through the evil magic of someone belonging to his own tribe. But I doubt if anywhere in Australia, the aborigines, in their pristine condition, conceived the possibility of death merely from disease. Such was certainly not the case with the Kurnai.”¹ “If a man is killed in battle, or dies in consequence of a wound, he is supposed to have been ‘charmed.’”² “Although the Narrinyeri are so often exposed to the bite of poisonous snakes, they have no remedy for an accident of this kind. Their superstition induces them to believe that it is the result of being bewitched.”³

This attitude of mind is not peculiar to Australian tribes only. It is to be found occurring almost uniformly among uncivilized peoples who are widely removed from each other. That which does vary in their collective representations is the occult power to which they ascribe the disease or death which has supervened. Sometimes a wizard is the guilty person, sometimes it is the spirit of a dead man, sometimes powers which are more or less definite or individualized, ranging from the vaguest representation to the definite deification of a disease like smallpox. That which is similar, we might almost say identical, in these representations, is the preconnection between the illness and death on the one hand, and the invisible power on the other, which results in the comparative disregard of what we call natural causes, even when these are self-evident.

I shall give a few significant examples of this unanimity of idea. “Natives,” says Dr. Cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Translator’s Note
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I The Primitive’s Indifference to Secondary Causes
• Chapter II Mystic and Invisible Forces
• Chapter III Dreams
• Chapter IV Omens
• Chapter V Omens (continued)
• Chapter VI The Practices of Divination
• Chapter VII The Practices of Divination (continued)
• Chapter VIII Ordeals
• Chapter IX The Mystic Meaning of Accidents and Misfortunes
• Chapter X The Mystic Meaning of the Causes of Success
• Chapter XI The Mystic Meaning of the White Man’s Appearance and of the Things He Brings with Him
• Chapter XII The Primitive’s Dislike of the Unknown
• Chapter XIII The Primitive’s Attitude to European Remedies
• Chapter XIV Conclusion
• Index