Psychology and folk-lore.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology and folk-lore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    after all, is but a function of the Higher Life, and the Higher Life itself is in jeopardy. Hence I have not sought to avoid the subject of war, but rather propose to make it my chief theme to-night. On the other hand, it behoves us to remember that science aims at a rigid impartiality of view. It may not, indeed, be humanly possible to divest ourselves wholly of prejudice. But those who foregather in the name of science must, at least, try to see things as they truly are. Thus in the hour of greatest stress we may have recourse to science as to some anodyne, because it teaches us to face facts and keep a cool head. Moreover, it lies beyond our province to discuss, at any rate in a direct way, the rights and wrongs of the present struggle in Europe. Our peculiar concern is not with “ civilization,” as we optimistically call it, but with the opposite condition which for want of a better word goes by the name of “ savagery.5' Now, as Sir Everard im Thurn points out in the Address which I had the pleasure of hearing him deliver a short while ago in Australia,1 it is unfortunate that there is no “term of less misleading suggestion 55 to provide a label for that form of human culture which in broad contrast to our own we class as rude or primitive. One is apt in speaking of “ savagery ” to allow the implica¬ tion of brutal ferocity to slip in unchallenged. But such a piece of question-begging is utterly unfair. No wonder that, by way of counterblast, Professor von Luschan was moved to emit his famous paradox : “ The only ‘ savages 5 in Africa are certain white men ! 55 2 1 Sir E. im Thurn, Presidential Address to Section H of Brit. Assoc., Sydney, 1914, 1. 2 F. von Luschan in Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, ed. G. Spiller 22.