Primitives and the Supernatural

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Researches such as these inevitably evoke in the mind vast problems, raised long ago and still vehemently discussed, such as: Have primitives a religion? If so, what? Do they enter tain the idea of a Supreme God? And so forth. These re searches seem indeed to border upon such questions, but they never enter into the discussion. Rightly speaking, they cannot do so, for they are upon another plane altogether. It may possibly be urged that in refusing to pose such prob lems and, as a consequence, to discuss their solution, I am thereby implicitly rejecting certain among them rather than others, and that I thus eliminate them by omission. Not at all. How can I take sides in a debate that I know nothing about? It is not this or that answer to the question that I am avoiding; it is the question itself that I have no right to treat. I could not treat it without abandoning the conception of primitive men tality which I believe to be in conformity with the facts, the method I have followed from the very beginning of these stud ies, and finally, the results which this method has enabled me to Obtain.

Researches such as these inevitably evoke in the mind vast problems, raised long ago and still vehemently discussed, such as: Have primitives a religion? If so, what? Do they enter tain the idea of a Supreme God? And so forth. These re searches seem indeed to border upon such questions, but they never enter into the discussion. Rightly speaking, they cannot do so, for they are upon another plane altogether. It may possibly be urged that in refusing to pose such prob lems and, as a consequence, to discuss their solution, I am thereby implicitly rejecting certain among them rather than others, and that I thus eliminate them by omission. Not at all. How can I take sides in a debate that I know nothing about? It is not this or that answer to the question that I am avoiding; it is the question itself that I have no right to treat. I could not treat it without abandoning the conception of primitive men tality which I believe to be in conformity with the facts, the method I have followed from the very beginning of these stud ies, and finally, the results which this method has enabled me to Obtain.