Page:Freud - Reflections on war and death.djvu/69

Rh death was satisfactory to him, for there was also something foreign in each one of these persons. The law of emotional ambivalence, which today still governs our emotional relations to those whom we love, certainly obtained far more widely in primitive times. The beloved dead had nevertheless roused some hostile feelings in primitive man just because they had been both friends and enemies.

Philosophers have maintained that the intellectual puzzle which the picture of death presented to primitive man forced him to reflect and became the starting point of every speculation. I believe the philosophers here think too philosophically, they give too little consideration to the primary effective motive. I should therefore like to correct and limit the above assertion; primitive man probably