Abstract
THIS is the translation of a book which appeared first in 1927 under the title “Le non-civilisé et nous”. The author, during a long life devoted to the study of Protestant theology in the University of Paris, has been closely associated with missionary work, especially in Madagascar. His study of the psychology and sociology of primitive peoples, which has proceeded concurrently with his activity in the administration of missions, has therefore had a strong practical bias throughout, which appears, as the original title shows, in this exposition of his conception of primitive mentality. The main line of his argument is aimed at demonstrating the disastrous and paralysing effect of the belief in magic in all departments of primitive life and activity. One point he brings out of which perhaps too little has been made hitherto, and that is that magic involves not so much the association of ideas as the association of emotions. He ranges himself with Lévy Bruhl and other French psychologists as against the English school. To some at least of the latter school his conclusions will appear too abstract and ‘to smell of the lamp’. In other words, his view of the function of magic is external and ignores recent work which has studied it as an integral element functioning in a given social environment. The concluding chapters are practical in their bearing and deal with “A New Philosophy of Colonisation” and the role of Christian missions.
The Mind of the Savage.
Raoul
Allier
By. Translated by Fred Rothwell. Pp. xiv + 301. (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1929.) 15s. net.
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The Mind of the Savage . Nature 124, 910 (1929). https://doi.org/10.1038/124910b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/124910b0