Positions which I never held
Thus Mr. Max Müller never dreamed of ‘audaciously misrepresenting’ me when, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my materials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12): ‘When I speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang means when he calls his savages primitive.’ But I have stated again and again that I don’t call my savages ‘primitive.’ Thus ‘contemporary savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.’ [{93a}] ‘One thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know: it must have been a long past.’ [{93b}] ‘We do not wish to call savages primitive.’ [{93c}] All this was written in reply to the very proper caution of Dr. Fairbairn that ‘savages are not primitive.’ Of course they are not; that is of the essence of my theory. I regret the use of the word ‘primitive’ even in Primitive Culture. Savages, as a rule, are earlier, more backward than civilised races, as, of course, Mr. Max Müller admits, where language is concerned. [{94}] Now, after devoting several pages to showing in detail how very far from primitive even the Australian tribes are, might I (if I were ill-natured) not say that Mr. Max Müller ‘audaciously misrepresents’ me when he avers that I ‘call my savages primitive’? But he never dreamed of misrepresenting me; he only happened not to understand my position. However, as he complains in his own case, ‘it is not pleasant to have to defend positions which one never held’ (i. 26), and, indeed, I shall defend no such position.
My adversary next says that my ‘savages are of the nineteenth century.’ It is of the essence of my theory that my savages are of many different centuries. Those described by Herodotus, Strabo, Dio Cassius, Christoval de Moluna, Sahagun, Cieza de Leon, Brébeuf, Garoilasso de la Vega, Lafitau, Nicholas Damascenus, Leo Africanus, and a hundred others, are not of the nineteenth century. This fact is essential, because the evidence of old writers, from Herodotus to Egede, corroborates the evidence of travellers, Indian Civil Servants, and missionaries of today, by what Dr. Tylor, when defending our materials, calls ‘the test of recurrence.’ Professor Millar used the same argument in his Origin of Rank, in the last century. Thus Mr. Max Müller unconsciously misrepresents me (and my savages) when he says that my ‘savages are of the nineteenth century.’ The fact is the reverse. They are of many centuries. These two unconscious misrepresentations occur in four consecutive lines.