Note 9.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

In such a case the custom may be denied in perfect good faith. Sometimes, it is true, another cause may lead to the denial. This is well illustrated in a recent work on the Holy Land. The author, speaking of local variations of custom, says: “The small area in which peculiar customs occur, and the comparative isolation of these areas which still prevails, make it often extremely difficult to ascertain local customs and usages. Many of these can only be discovered accidentally or by long residence in the particular locality. The people of neighbouring villages may be quite unaware of the existence of a certain custom, while only a few miles away it may be very familiar. I have known intelligent, educated natives to be entirely ignorant of certain customs, and even to deny their existence, because they were not in vogue in their own particular district, whereas further enquiry or fuller acquaintance with other parts revealed the fact that they were perfectly familiar to others.”9.1 Here the expression “intelligent, educated natives” must be interpreted of course by reference to the standard of intelligence and education in the rural parts of a country so backward as Palestine. In such a case the ignorance by natives described as intelligent and educated of customs quite different from, and perhaps opposed to, their own may be due to the concentration of their faculties in the struggle for daily needs, or the absorption of their interests in the concerns of their own little community. Millions of men and women in our country, who may be fairly described, by reference to their class and occupation, as “intelligent, educated natives,” are quite ignorant—and supremely indifferent—about everything not pertaining to their material well-being, their habitual amusements, the affairs of their little town, their family or their church, or the latest scandal whispered in their tiny coterie. These fill up their life; they have neither leisure nor inclination to worry about anything beyond. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that where the facilities for communication are smaller and the general indigence greater, similar mental indolence may exist. Economic causes, the product themselves of the environment, are often responsible for internal conditions, and cannot be disentangled from them. Intelligent curiosity about things not immediately or apparently affecting ourselves is a rare virtue, and of late development. We ourselves often deem that we pay it abundant homage by witnessing the exhibition of a few lantern slides, or slumbering tranquilly through a lecture on Dante. But to it, if rightly and strenuously pursued, we owe how much of modern discovery and the amenities of civilization! Let us, however, return to our savages.