To pause for a moment before a quaint and singular fact; to be amused at it, and see its outward strangeness; to look at it as a curio and collect it into the museum of one’s memory or into one’s store of anecdotes—this attitude of mind has always been foreign and repugnant to me. Some people are unable to grasp the inner meaning and the psychological reality of all that is outwardly strange, at first sight incomprehensible, in a different culture. These people are not born to be ethnologists. It is in the love of the final synthesis, achieved by the assimilation and comprehension of all the items of a culture and still more in the love of the variety and independence of the various cultures that lies the test of the real worker in the true Science of Man.
There is, however, one point of view deeper yet and more important than the love of tasting of the variety of human modes of life, and that is the desire to turn such knowledge into wisdom. Though it may be given to us for a moment to enter into the soul of a savage and through his eyes to look at the outer world and feel ourselves what it must feel to him to be himself—yet our final goal is to enrich and deepen our own world’s vision, to understand our own nature and to make it finer, intellectually and artistically. In grasping the essential outlook of others, with the reverence and real understanding, due even to savages, we cannot but help widening our own. We cannot possibly reach the final Socratic wisdom of knowing ourselves if we never leave the narrow confinement of the customs, beliefs and prejudices into which every man is born. Nothing can teach us a better lesson in this matter of ultimate importance than the habit of mind which allows us to treat the beliefs and values of another man from his point of view. Nor has civilised humanity ever needed such tolerance more than now, when prejudice, ill will and vindictiveness are dividing each European nation from another, when all the ideals, cherished and proclaimed as the highest achievements of civilisation, science and religion, have been thrown to the winds. The Science of Man, in its most refined and deepest version should lead us to such knowledge and to tolerance and generosity, based on the understanding of other men’s point of view.
The study of Ethnology—so often mistaken by its very votaries for an idle hunting after curios, for a ramble among the savage and fantastic shapes of “barbarous customs and crude superstitions”—might become one of the most deeply philosophic, enlightening and elevating disciplines of scientific research. Alas! the time is short for Ethnology, and will this truth of its real meaning and importance dawn before it is too late?
[1] Also in the before quoted article in the Economic Journal, March, 1921. [↑]
Index
Accounts, native, verbatim: Shipwreck and Salvage, [256], [258]; Kaloma making, [373]
Adultery, case of, [484]
Amphlett Is, scenery of, [45], [46], [267]; inhabitants of, [46]–[48] villages in, [46]–[47]; author’s experiences in the, [379]–[385]; chieftainship among, [469]. (See Trade; Pottery; Departure of Kula parties from A.)
Armshells, exchange of A. in the Kula, [87]; manufacture of, [502], [503]; entry into the Kula of, [503]; naming of, [504]
Armstrong, W. E., researches among the S. Massim, [493]n
Arrival, of Kula parties, in the Amphletts, [268], [270]; in Dobu, [350]; of Dobuan fleet in the Amphletts, [384]; A. and reception of Dobuan fleet in Sinaketa, [387]–[389]; A. home in Sinaketa, [375]; in Kitava, [486]
Atu’a’ine, Aturamo’a, Sinatemubadie’i, mythological persons, [331], [332]. (See Pokala)
Bagi. (See Soulava)
Baloma (spirits) and magic, [422], [423]
Barter, ceremonial, [187]–[189]. (See Trade)
Barton, F., on hiri trading expeditions, [1]n
Basi, intermediary, gift in the Kula, [98]; [355]–[357]
Beauty magic, [335], [336]
Behaviour of natives, study of, [17]–[22]
Beku, stone blades exchanged in the Kula, [358]. (See Kukumali)
Betel-Nut, in magic, [199]; [361]
Bisila, pandanus streamers, [216], [217]; magic of, ibid
Bomala (taboo) [424]. (See Taboo)
Bosu, lime spatula of whale-bone, exchanged in the Kula, [358]
Bulubwalata, evil magic, [143]; [395]
Bwaga’u, see Sorcery
Cannibalism, mythical references to, [321], [322]; [331]
Canoes, Ch. IV; principles of stability, of, [108]–[113]; three classes of, [112], [113]; social organisation of labour at construction of, [113]–[116]; ownership of, [116]–[120]; ceremonial building of, Ch. V; magic of, [125]. (See Launching; Sailing; Tasasoria; Kabigidoya; Magic; Nagega; Masawa; Yawarapu; Compartments of a C.)
Ceremonial objects, [89], [90]; [151]
Charts, as instruments of method, [12]–[15]. (See Method)
Chiefs, of Sinaketa, [196]
Chieftainship. (See Trobriand I. natives; Amphlett Is.)
Circulation of vaygu’a on the Kula ring, [92], [93]
Commercial honour, in Kula transactions, [95], [96], (See Quarrelling)
Communal Labour, [159]–[163]
Compartments, of a canoe, [204]. (See Gebobo)
Conch shell, magic of, [340]–[342]
Concrete evidence, method of, [12]–[17]. (See Method)
Conversations, about Kula, [24]. (See Partnership)
Cultural districts, of the Kula, [29]–[33], Ch. I, Divs. II–V; [78]–[80]; c. d. of the Trobriands, Ch. II, Divs. I–VII