Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/299

 Reviews. 277

that they act from motives, and reach conclusions by means of mental processes, so utterly different from our own motives and processes that we cannot hope to interpret or understand their behaviour unless we can first by some impossible or at least by some hitherto undiscovered method, learn the nature of these ■mysterious motives and processes. These attempts have recently been renewed in influential quarters. If these views were applied to the savage peoples of the interior of Borneo, we should charac- terise them as fanciful delusions natural to the anthropologist who has spent all the days of his life in a stiff collar and a black coat upon the well-paved ways of civilised society."

"We have no hesitation in saying that the more intimately one becomes acquainted with these pagan tribes, the more fully one realises the close similarity of their mental processes to one's own. Their primary impulses and emotions seem to be in all respects like our own. It is true that they are very unlike the typical civi- lised man of some of the older philosophers, whose every action proceeded from a nice and logical calculation of the algebraic sum of jileasure and pains to be derived from alternative lines of conduct ; but we ourselves are equally unlike that purely mythical personage. The Kayan or the Iban often acts impulsively in ways which by no means conduce to further his best interests or deeper purposes ; but so do we also. He often reaches conclu- sions by processes which cannot be logically justified; but so do we also. He often holds, and upon successive occasions acts upon, beliefs that are logically inconsistent with one another ; but so do we also."

The authors would seem to have made contradictory statements about the Kayan. In vol. ii., p. 217, we read, — "the Kayans have a keen sense of humour and fun " ; and on page 239, " the Karens are said to be distinguished by a lack of humour, a trait which is ■well marked also in the Kayans."

\\'. J. Perry.