The Social Wisdom of the Primitives with Special Reference to Their Proverbs

Abstract

T HE indispensable prerequisites to any social thought are association and language. It is due to association that men, even the most primitive, become aware of the various aspects of human nature, and it is out of association that their attitudes and ideas grow, however vague and fantastic they may be, regarding social relationships generally, the requirements of group conduct, social and psycho-social processes, social institutions, and human life in general. Without language there can be no communication of any kind; nor are men capable of developing concepts of any kind. To pick up social thought at the precise moment when man developed the combination of simple association and rude speech is impossible at this stage of the study of social evolution. We may in time know quite a bit about man at this point in his development. On the basis of his skeletal remains we now know something about him as an anatomical specimen, and with the aid of his rude artifacts we can piece together some aspects of his culture, but we have almost no inkling of his thought. The most rudimentary social thought now available is that of recent and contemporary primitive peoples -peoples who, while relatively rude, and simple, have a fairly substantial culture, including established ideas, standardized relationships, a flexible language, and a full equipment of institutions. The thought of primitive peoples is largely pre-scientific and pre-literate. Their ideas are not reached by deliberate reasoning nor by careful and conscious investigation. They are direct and intuitive, the products of minds that are alogical, uncritical and credulous on the whole, and that depend on common experience, observation, and imagination for explanations.' Being pre-literate, their thought,