Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/309

 Rh relation of what is in the mind to what is outside it; when he has nothing in his slender vocabulary corresponding to the terms "objective" and "subjective." Mr. Spencer aptly describes this low mental stage in his Principles of Sociology:—"He does not think about thought: neither his faculties nor his language suffice for this. During early stages he merely thinks without observing that he thinks; and therefore never asks how he thinks and what it is which thinks. His senses make him conversant only with things externally existing and with his own body; and he transcends his senses only far enough to draw concrete inferences respecting the actions of these things. An invisible, intangible entity, such as mind is inferred to be, is a high abstraction unthinkable by him, and inexpressible by his vocabulary." (P. 147.)

These tales thus embody that early system of thought, if system it can be called, which confuses ideas and objects, illusions and realities, substances and shadows; and which, often under the precarious life of the savage, induced by bodily ailment, indigestion born of gorging, or delirium born of starving, gives local habitation and a name to airy nothings, spectres of diseased or morbid imagination. Modern works on anthropology abound with illustrations of that confusion between things and their symbols which causes men at low levels of culture to regard the name as an integral part of oneself, so that it must not be told, lest it be stolen, or lest the adversary work evil charms through it. Still more noticeable is this confusion in the reluctance of barbarous folk to have their portraits taken, in the feeling that thereby part of a man's self has gone; the better the likeness the more has virtue gone out of him. Catlin relates that he caused great commotion among the Sioux by drawing one of their chiefs in profile. "Why was half his face left out?" they asked; "Mahtocheega was never ashamed to look a white man in the face." The chief himself did not take offence, but Shouka the Dog taunted him, saying,—"The Englishman knows that you are but half a man: he has painted but one-half of your face, and knows that the rest is good for nothing." This led to a quarrel, and in the end Mahtocheega was shot, the fatal bullet tearing away just that part of the face which Catlin had not drawn! He had to make his escape, and the matter was not settled