Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/270

 262 inkosi in Zulu means a king, and zulu the sky; but when the words are conjoined—inkosi pezulu—^do they mean the king in the sky, or the Lord in Heaven? Lexical considerations fail us entirely. To sum up the times that inkosi by itself means king and zulu by itself sky, in order to infer by numerical majority the probable meaning of the words in conjunction, begs the question, which is precisely whether by being conjoined they may not have developed a new meaning. To take a parallel instance from a modern language: herr im himmel cannot be rendered the gentleman in the sky, although the ordinary meaning of herr is certainly gentleman, and of himmel sky. The question, in short, is not one of vocabularies and roots, but of our notion of what is reasonable or unreasonable in savage thought, of the extent to which savages are likely to use metaphorical language, the capacity they have attained for abstract thought: in one word, of our theory of the psychology of early man.

The difficulties in the way of constructing such a theory, which would be simply a science of comparative psychology, are obvious. Competent inquirers are few and far between, their opportunities are comparatively restricted, and the gulf between them and their catechumens must always be a great one. And, when these difficulties have been more or less surmounted, the results have to be interpreted by stay-at-home students who are debarred from the remotest acquaintance with the environment of savage life, and whose difficulties are consequently increased ten-fold.

It is just at this point that aid is forthcoming in the form of investigations into the psychology of modern children. Not only have we