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Among the savage Loeboes of Sumatra a child fell ill. When it failed to improve, the muttering family repaired to a stone beneath the house which seemed to mark a grave, poured hot water on the stone. A European observer who witnessed this ceremony inquired its significance. The natives told him that the stone marked the place where the child's afterbirth had been buried in a rice pot a few months before, that the baby's continued illness was obviously due to the fact that ants were stinging the afterbirth, that the hot water would drive the ants away.

Missionaries who set out to evangelize the primitive world during the last cen-tury and encountered such customs and beliefs as this were inclined to think that they had fallen not only among heathens but also lunatics, and wrote lengthy, sorrowing reports of what they saw and heard. Students of cultural anthropology, however, began to realize that these backward people were not irresponsible children but that their entire mental orientation was as different from civilized man's as though they inhabited another planet. With trained scientists in the field correcting and supplementing the first reports, it became further apparent that the primitive worldview, whatever its logic, was surprisingly consistent.

There arose a distinguished group of portraitists of the primitive mind--Frazer, Sumner & Keller, Malinowski, Boas. One of these was Lucien Levy-Bruhl, longtime professor of the University of Paris, who published his first noteworthy treatise in 1884, followed by Primitive Mentality, How Natives Think, The "Soul" of the Primitive. Last week from the pen of Professor Levy-Bruhl, 78, appeared Primitives and the Supernatural,* a meaty summary of how the sons of the wilderness regard the unseen powers, benign and malevolent, that preoccupy virtually every hour of every day of their lives.

Witchcraft. The author starts on the premise that all savages are metaphysicians. At the root of their outlook is the fact that they have almost no knowledge of natural laws and almost no conception of cause & effect. They do not know why people get sick and die, why crops fail, why there are droughts or rains, why arrows miss their mark or why hunters are mangled by beasts. Therefore they ascribe every mishap to the action of sorcerers, or of enemies practicing everyday magic, or of invisible influences about whose nature they speculate little but which they feel around them everywhere and which they try to circumvent by any means available. Thus the "supernatural" is simply that which they cannot see or fathom, and it interferes with and confuses the natural order of things constantly.

Given such premises to start with, their elaborate systems of defense are not in the least illogical but are designed for the highly practical purposes of saving their skins, their livelihoods and their property.

The savage does not try to understand the mechanics of magical transmissions, but it seems obvious to him that objects once in contact retain a mystic affinity. Thus he believes that if his spear has wounded an enemy who escaped, he can make the wound fester by thrusting the spearpoint into a fire. He must take extreme care in disposing of his hair cuttings, his nail parings, his spittle and his excrement lest these things which remain a vital part of him fall into hostile hands. More abstruse forms of wizardry he claims to know nothing about, pointing out reasonably that if he knew how they were performed he would be a wizard himself.

In general there are two kinds of magical practitioners: I) born wizards who kill from pure malignity or from appetite for human flesh; 2) occasional sorcerers who hurt only people they dislike and may even exert their force quite unconsciously. The first are exterminated instantly when caught. The second may escape punishment if they repair the damage. Thus when a woman in childbirth is having a difficult labor, her friends remember some quarrel with another woman who must now be causing the trouble, and this woman is requested to come and apply her saliva to the mother's body, thereby canceling the enchantment.

"Dispositions." This sort of unwitting evocation of magical influences is due to the savage's almost universal belief that mere mental attitudes may disrupt the peaceful course of affairs. He thus pays great attention to what Professor Levy-Bruhl calls dispositions. Quarrels are widely believed to set up baneful influences which may harm the whole tribe. Hence politeness and affability are at a premium. Among some American Indians it is not customary to refuse any gift asked for by a guest, lest his displeasure work some ill. When the Fiji Islanders set out a new turtle net, the head of the family implores his kin to have no quarrels, which might put a curse on the net and drive the turtles away. The ba-Ila of Africa are certain that if a person is discontented with his portion of eland meat but does not speak out, his kin will suffer from goitre and wens on the head.

"Primitives," says Dr. Levy-Bruhl, "do not classify the entities in nature as clearly marked out from each other." Hence the "dispositions" of animals, plants and inanimate things are as noteworthy as the attitudes of men. The Bahima of the Nile will not boil milk lest the cow be displeased and give no more. Eskimos, who consider animals much wiser than men, believe that seals are perpetually thirsty because they inhabit salt water. Accordingly when they kill a seal the first thing to do is douse a dipperful of fresh water into the seal's mouth. If this amenity is scrupulously observed, other seals will come and be killed in order to receive the refreshing draught.

Abnormalities. The primitive has little conception of, and no confidence in. the orderly processes of Nature, and hence he is not much given to astonishment. He sees marvels every day, and though they may fail to surprise him they may nonetheless scare him almost out of his wits. He is dismayed when a child is born with teeth, or cuts its upper teeth first, and usually does away with it. The birth of twins is an omen of disaster. If a banana tree sprouts fruit not at the end of the stalk but near the middle, the plant is promptly cut down and the owner is considered in peril of death. If a dog is remarkably lucky at hunting, it is thought to be catching game to be served at its owner's funeral. Aberrations in the behavior of animals, sexual and otherwise, are to be dreaded. If dogs mate indoors, or with pigs, they are set down as wizards and disposed of at once.

Over and above petty infractions of community rules which may be settled by fines or minor purifications, there are certain great crimes which are so rarely committed as to be considered abnormalities and hence generators of baleful influences which may affect a whole village. Among various tribes such horrendous offenses may be looking one's mother-in-law in the face, pronouncing a husband's name, milking of cows by a woman. Almost everywhere one of the greatest crimes is incest. Dr. Levy-Bruhl believes that philosophers looking for some obscure moral or esthetic urge to explain the primitive horror of incest are on the wrong track. Incest frightens the savage because it is abnormal, and the perpetrators are put to death not so much to punish them as to rid the community of vulnerable points through which evil forces may break in.

Indeed in one case incest is deliberately practiced because it is thought to confer singular powers on the man who commits it. On the Nkomati River men, before departing to hunt hippopotamus, bed with their daughters, after which they are deemed to be murderers and wizards, and the hippopotamus will be no match for them.

*Dutton ($5). Translated by Lilian A. Claire.

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