Primitive Man As Philosopher

W j 64302 QSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Call Na Author Title 1 Arression No. 28/R1 2P liarlir, 2??7? Paul Primitive man as philosophy This book shoulJ be returned on or bctou: the date last inarK, 4 Man Primitive as Philosopher Dr. Radin here essays to describe the of role peoples thought the among attitude among them towards of primitive thinkers the life and society, the theories held of the soul, the human personality, the nature of the external world, let etc. how Dr, Radin knows to the aboriginal speak for himself, but illuminated always by the proximity of the highly sophisticated mind, so that the primitive appears always warmer, nearer to our time, and to our understanding. more accessible The material offered holds great fascination and derived largely from the author's is own first-hand investigations of the life of the Winnebago Indians. Primitive Man as Philosopher by Paul Radin, Ph.D. Research Fellow of Yale University and sometime Lecturer in Ethnology in Cambridge University; editor of "Crashing Thunder, the Autobiography of an American Indian" with a foreword by John Dewcy Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University New York and London D, Appleton and Company 1927 COPYRIGHT, D. 1927, APPLETON AND COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MY WIFE PREFACE When a modern of historian desires to study the civilization any people, he regards he divest himself, so He as a necessary preliminary that it far as possible, of all prejudice between cultures realizes that differences does not feel that differs in people it is exist, bias. but he necessarily a sign of inferiority that customs from his own. ever, to be a limit to and what an historian a There seems, howtreats as legitimate a limit not always easy to determine. On the may be said that he very naturally passes the same difference, whole it judgments that the majority of his fellow countrymen do. Hence, if some of the differences between admittedly civilized peoples often call forth unfavorable judgments or even provoke outbursts of horror, how much more must we expect this to be the case where the differences are of so funda- mental a nature as those separating us from people we have been accustomed to call uncivilized. The term whom a very vague one, and it is spread over a vast medley of peoples, some of whom have "uncivilized" is comparatively simple customs and others extremely complex ones. Indeed, there can be said to be but two characteristics possessed in common by all these peoples, the absence of a written language and the fact of original posses- when the various civilized European and Asiatic nations came into contact with them. But among all aboriginal races appeared a number of customs which sion of the soil undoubtedly seemed exceedingly strange to their European and Asiatic conquerors. Some of these customs they had never heard of; others they recognized as similar to observvli PREFACE viii ances and beliefs exi