Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/73

 Rh embodied in Christianity—nay, often the very words of the Bible—to express ideas far less definite, far more rudimentary, and not to be properly understood save in connection with the rest of the tribal and racial culture. When, for instance, we read of "Our Father" or the "Father in Heaven," we do not think of a one-legged being, or of a star, or of a giant sitting on an earthly mountain, rooted to the rock. When we are referred to "Leviticus, passim," in connection with a requirement to obey the food restrictions, we are apt to imagine that these restrictions have to do with chewing the cud, and parting the hoof, with the permanent distinction between clean and unclean animals, whereas they are merely temporary taboos for ritual reasons peculiar to the myths and ceremonies of the Australian natives, and having little or no analogy to the Hebrew prohibitions. If we want really to understand the religious ideas of savages, we ought to be specially careful to translate them into words uncoloured by our own theological connotations. When we have once got a clear conception of the savage's ideas (not an easy thing to do), we can then fairly estimate their analogies with and differences from our own. But it darkens knowledge to begin by using words which mean one thing to us and another thing to the savage, even if he attach any definite meaning to them at all.

This brings me to another source of misconception—the use of definite words for indefinite ideas. I need not labour the point as against Mr. Lang, since he admits its justice and amends his verbiage. But the expressions of his authorities continue to perplex him. Accordingly, I want to suggest to him that it is always wise to discount exact statements, by travellers and other observers, of ideas only vaguely apprehended by the savage mind. These exact statements arise partly from carelessness or misunderstanding, but partly also from the infirmities of language, partly too from the difficulty experienced by the civilised