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.
Anthropological Evidence
In connection with this topic (the nature of anthropological evidence), Mr. Max Müller (i. 205-207) repeats what he has often said before. Thus he cites Dr. Codrington’s remarks, most valuable remarks, on the difficulty of reporting correctly about the ideas and ways of savages. I had cited the same judicious writer to the same effect, [{95}] and had compiled a number of instances in which the errors of travellers were exposed, and their habitual fallacies were detected. Fifteen closely printed pages were devoted by me to a criterion of evidence, and a reply to Mr. Max Müller’s oft-repeated objections.
‘When [I said] we find Dr. Codrington taking the same precautions in Melanesia as Mr. Sproat took among the Ahts, and when his account of Melanesian myths reads like a close copy of Mr. Sproat’s account of Aht legends, and when both are corroborated [as to the existence of analogous savage myths] by the collections of Bleek, and Hahn, and Gill, and Castren, and Rink, in far different corners of the world; while the modern testimony of these scholarly men is in harmony with that of the old Jesuit missionaries, and of untaught adventurers who have lived for many years with savages, surely it will be admitted that the difficulty of ascertaining savage opinion has been, to a great extent, overcome.’
I also cited at length Dr. Tylor’s masterly argument to the same effect, an argument offered by him to ‘a great historian,’ apparently.
Mr. Max Müller’s Method of Controversy
Now no member of the reading public, perusing Mr. Max Müller on anthropological evidence (i. 24-26, 205-207), could guess that his cautions about evidence are not absolutely new to us. He could not guess that Dr. Tylor replied to them ‘before they were made’ by our present critic (I think), and that I did the same with great elaboration. Our defence of our evidence is not noticed by Mr. Max Müller. He merely repeats what he has often said before on the subject, exactly as if anthropologists were ignorant of it, and had not carefully studied, assimilated, profited by it, and answered it. Our critic and monitor might have said, ‘I have examined your test of recurrences, and what else you have to urge, and, for such and such reasons, I must reject it.’ Then we could reconsider our position in this new light. But Mr. Max Müller does not oblige us in this way.
Mr. Max Müller on our Evidence
In an earlier work, The Gifford Lectures for 1891, [{96}] our author had devoted more space to a criticism of our evidence. To this, then, we turn (pp. 169-180, 413-436). Passing Mr. Max Müller’s own difficulties in understanding a Mohawk (which the Mohawk no doubt also felt in understanding Mr. Max Müller), we reach (p. 172) the fables about godless savages. These, it is admitted, are exploded among scholars in anthropology. So we do, at least, examine evidence. Mr. Max Müller now fixes on a flagrant case, some fables about the godless Mincopies of the Andaman Islands. But he relies on the evidence of Mr. Man. So do I, as far as it seems beyond doubt. [{97a}] Mr. Man is ‘a careful observer, a student of language, and perfectly trustworthy.’ These are the reasons for which I trust him. But when Mr. Man says that the Mincopies have a god, Puluga, who inhabits ‘a stone house in the sky,’ I remark, ‘Here the idea of the stone house is necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at Port Blair.’ [{97b}] When Mr. Man talks of Puluga’s only-begotten son, ‘a sort of archangel,’ medium between Puluga and the angels, I ‘hesitate a doubt.’ Did not this idea reach the Mincopie mind from the same quarter as the stone house, especially as Puluga’s wife is ‘a green shrimp or an eel’? At all events, it is right to bear in mind that, as the stone house of the Mincopie heaven is almost undeniably of European origin, the only-begotten mediating son of Puluga and the green shrimp may bear traces of Christian teaching. Caution is indicated.