Chapter VI · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: MYTHS AND LEGENDS (continued 2)

The forces of the world, as the Andaman Islander conceives them, are not the blind mechanical forces of modern science: rather are they moral forces. Their action upon human beings is not only to be witnessed in external events, but is to be experienced in the man’s own consciousness or conscience. He feels within himself their compulsion when he would run counter to them, and their support when he leans upon them. The law of the world, then, is a moral law, its forces are moral forces, its values moral values; its order is a moral order.

This view of the world is the immediate and inevitable result of the experience of man in society. It is a philosophy not reached by painful intellectual effort, by the searching out of meanings and reasons and causes; it is impressed upon him in all the happenings of his life, is assumed in all his actions; it needs only to be formulated. And the argument of this chapter has been that it is as the expression or formulation of this view of the world as an order regulated by law that the legends have their meaning, fulfil their function.

The legends of the Andamanese then, as I understand them, set out to give an account of how the order of the world came into existence. But the Andaman Islander has no interest in any part of it except in so far as it affects his own life. He is interested in the procession of the seasons or the alternation of day and night, or the phases of the moon, only in so far as these things have effects upon the community. In other words he is interested in natural phenomena only in so far as such phenomena are really parts of the social order. This I have expressed earlier in the chapter by saying that the legends deal not with all aspects of natural phenomena but only with their social values.

A fundamental character of the natural order (as of the social order) is uniformity; the same processes are for ever repeated. This character of nature the legends take for granted; they assume that if a force is once set into action it will continue to act indefinitely. They assume also a period in which the present order did not exist. Anything that happened in that period has gone on happening ever since. One of the ancestors discovered how to cook yams, and men have been cooking yams in the same way down to the present day. A cicada was crushed and cried out and the night came, and since then the darkness has come every evening as soon as the cicada sings. In one of the legends the tree lizard was quarrelsome, and has remained so. Thus the legends represent the social order, including such natural phenomena as may be said to belong to it, as being due to the interaction of forces of a special character that came into existence in the beginning and have continued to act uniformly ever since. In this way they express two most important conceptions, that of uniformity (or law) and that of the dependence of the present on the past.

It is the need of expressing these two conceptions that gives the legends their function. They are not merely theoretical principles but are both intensely practical. The law of uniformity means that certain actions must be done and others not done if life is to run smoothly; any deviation from uniformity in conduct is dangerous as being contrary to the law that regulates the universe. What actions are to be done and what are to be left undone was determined once for all in the past when the present order came into existence. The knowledge of what to do and what to avoid doing is what constitutes the tradition of the society, to which every individual is required to conform.

The legends, then, set out to express and to justify these two fundamental conceptions. They do so by telling how the social order itself came into existence, and how, also, all those natural phenomena that have any bearing on the social well-being came to be as they are and came to have the relation to the society that they possess.

One group of facts that have an obvious relation to the society consists of the geographical features of the islands. The more notable features of the part of the country in which a man lives, and which he regards as his own, are intimately connected with his moral sentiments. His attachment to his group necessarily involves an attachment to the country of the group. The same sort of thing exists amongst ourselves. This attachment of the members of a group to their own country explains, I think, the part played by what may be called “local motives” in the legends of the Andamanese. Such motives are of considerable importance, of much more importance than would appear from the stories that I have transcribed. The recent changes in their mode of life have had far more influence on the local organisation of the tribes than on any other part of their social organisation, and this has not been without its effect on the legends. We may say, briefly, that the local motives of the legends serve to express the social values of localities. In general each locality has its own versions of the legends, in which the events related are supposed to have taken place at some spot or other in the neighbourhood. Thus all the more prominent features of a locality are associated with the events of the legends. In some cases tales are told that explain these features as having come into existence when the ancestors were alive; a reef of rocks was formerly a canoe, for instance. A few such legends were recorded in an earlier chapter, but it is probable that there were a vast number of similar tales that I did not hear. In some cases a locality has a special social value and therefore a special place in the legends. Thus Wota-Emi was the great meeting-place for the natives who lived on Baratang and on parts of the South Andaman and the Middle Andaman, and was also sometimes visited by the natives of the Archipelago. Consequently Wota-Emi is represented in the legends of the A-Pučikwar tribe as being the great meeting-place or dwelling-place of the ancestors. The effect of these associations between the places with which he is familiar and the events of the legendary epoch in the mind of the Andaman Islander probably is similar to the effect on ourselves of the historical associations of our own country; they serve to make him aware of his attachment to his country or to express his sense of that attachment.

There still remains a most important feature of the legends which has not yet been explained, namely the position of the animals as ancestors. Many of the actors in the legends bear the names of animals but at the same time are spoken of as though they were human beings. Many of the legends explain how some species of animal arose from some one of the ancestors who became an animal and the progenitor of the species. Thus, in the North Andaman, Kolo was one of the ancestors; he made wings for himself out of palm-leaves, and so was able to fly; he lived a solitary life in his home at the top of a tree, and was in the habit of stealing men’s wives; in the end he became the sea-eagle, and this species still bears the name kolo. It is necessary to define as exactly as possible what meaning these stories have to the natives. It is not simply that the legendary person is a man with the name and some of the characteristics of an animal; nor is it simply that the legendary person is the ancestor of the species of which he bears the name. We can only adequately express the thought of the Andamanese by saying that he regards the whole species as if it were a human being. When, in the legends, he speaks of “Sea-eagle” he is thereby personifying the species in the sense in which the word personification has been used throughout this chapter; he is regarding the characteristics of the species as if they were characteristics or actions or results of actions of a person. Admittedly this is a vague description, but the vagueness is in the mental phenomenon described; the Andamanese do not, in this matter, think clearly and analyse their own thoughts. However, we can help ourselves to understand their thoughts by recalling the tales that amused us as children, in which the fox or the rabbit of the tale was an embodiment of the whole species.

There is thus a parallelism between the personification of natural phenomena and the personification of animal species. I have shown that the characteristics of such beings as Biliku and Tarai are all to be explained by a consideration of the actual characteristics of the phenomena of which they are the personification (the winds) and of the phenomena immediately connected therewith. The same thing has now been shown to be true with regard to the personified animals. The process of personification is carried out in exactly the same way in the two different classes of cases. I gave as the reason for personifying natural phenomena the fact that in this way, and in this way only, the Andaman Islander is able to express the sentiments that are aroused in him by them. We must see if we can justify the personification of animals by a similar argument.

The habits of observation fostered in the mind of the Andaman Islander by his method of winning his sustenance lead him to take a lively interest in all the creatures of the jungle and the sea, about whose ways he therefore has a great store of knowledge. Every tree and plant of the forest, every bird and insect, every creature that lives in the sea or on the reef has its name. His interest, however, in the case of many of the animals has little or no relation to practical life, for he does not make use of them for food or in any other way. There is here therefore something that contradicts the fundamental assumption of the philosophy that is expressed in the legends, there is a lack of mental unity. These interests in the birds and insects are not correlated with the central mass of interests that control the Andamanese mind and give it its unity. Although his philosophy assumes that everything in which he takes an interest has some meaning in reference to his own life, yet here are things that at first sight have no such meaning. The correlation that is lacking in his experience is brought about by means of the legends; a meaning is provided for the apparently meaningless. The fundamental interest of the Andaman Islander, as of all men in primitive societies, is his interest in persons and personal relations. By regarding the animals as persons and relating stories about them he is able to correlate his interest in them with the fundamental basis of his mental life.

This explanation does not perhaps sound very satisfactory. We do not at present understand the forces that compel the normal mind to strive after unity in its experience. Let us examine the matter a little more closely. All the thoughts and feelings of the Andaman Islander (or at any rate all those that are expressed in the legends) centre in the society; for him the world is merely a stage on which the social drama is perpetually enacted. He coordinates all his thoughts, emotions, and interests around the society, and in the legends he builds up a picture showing the connection between the society and those phenomena of nature that affect it. The majority of the animals (the birds, the insects, and innumerable kinds of fish), not being used for food, or in any other way, bear no apparent relation to the social life. Yet by reason of the woodcraft developed by the necessities of his life he is compelled to take notice of these creatures and to become interested in their ways. Here, therefore, are two conflicting elements in his consciousness, (1) his belief that the whole of nature derives its meaning and interest from its relation to the society, and (2) his consciousness of an alien world (of the birds, etc.) which seems to have no direct relation to the society, and which nevertheless he cannot help being constantly aware of. The Andaman Islander, as I have stated more than once, does not possess any scientific or abstract interest in nature. He never asks himself “What is the meaning of this?” in the same way that a scientist of our own civilisation might do. He asks “What is the meaning of this thing in relation to me and my interests and feelings, and to the social life of which my life is a fragment?” It is because he does feel the need of answers to questions of this kind that the conflict we have noticed arises. This conflict has to be resolved, and there are apparently three alternatives: (1) to admit that there is a meaning in nature apart from its relation to the society, (2) to refuse to take any interest in birds and insects, (3) to explain away the apparent lack of relation. It is this third alternative that is chosen by the Andaman Islander, and there are obvious reasons why it should be so. The explanation is accomplished in a direct and simple manner. In the beginning men and animals were one; then came an event or series of events (the discovery of fire, the great flood, or a great quarrel amongst the ancestors) whereby the men and the animals became cut off from one another, to live henceforward in the same world, but separated by an unseen barrier.

The argument may be put in another way that may perhaps be more convincing. The actual sentiment that is aroused in the mind of the native by the animals is that here is an important and interesting part of the universe that is alien to him, from which he is cut off in some strange way. It is this real sentiment, itself the inevitable result of his life and his surroundings, that is expressed in the belief in the animals as ancestors.

We may briefly consider what may be regarded as a kind of negative instance by which to test the argument. The world of the stars constitutes a part of the universe just as alien, just as devoid of apparent meaning as that of the birds. We may ask therefore how it is that the Andaman Islanders have no star myths of the kind that are common in other primitive societies. The answer is, I think, that the Andamanese do not have their attention called to the stars. As their camps are in the dense forest there are very few occasions on which they see the sky at night. When fishing at night on the reefs or in canoes they are too busy to pay much attention to the stars. They have not learnt to relate the procession of the stars and the change of the seasons, nor have they learnt to tell the time at night from their declination. Their navigation is only along the coast and they have therefore no use for the stars as guides of direction. On the contrary, wherever we find a developed star-mythology we find that the stars are studied either as guides to navigation or journeying overland, or as giving indications of the changes of the seasons.

We have considered all the more important aspects of the subject matter of the legends; it remains for us to turn to the form and enquire how it comes about that the representations which analysis reveals are expressed in just the way they are, in a word, why the expression takes the form of a story. It is obvious that in this place no attempt can be made to deal with the general problems of the psychology of story-telling. All that I wish to do is to point out one or two reasons why the legend is an appropriate form (perhaps we might say, the only possible form) for the expression of the view of the world that is revealed in the Andaman mythology.

The Andamanese, like other savages, have not acquired the power of thinking abstractly. All their thought necessarily deals with concrete things. Now the story form provides a means of expressing concretely what could otherwise only be put in an abstract statement. (A large part of the interpretation of the legends, as here undertaken, consists in restating the content of the legends in abstract terms.) Moreover, even if the Andaman Islanders were capable of thinking abstractly, yet, since what they need to express are not thoughts so much as feelings (not intellectual so much as affective processes), they would still need a concrete form of expression. For it is a familiar fact that the concrete has a much greater power of awakening or appealing to our feelings than has the abstract. In particular the story has ever been a popular medium by which to appeal to sentiments of all kinds.

The chief ground for the interest in stories shown by children and by savages is, I believe, that they afford the means of exercising the imagination in certain specific directions and thereby play an important part in enabling the individual to organise his experience. The course of the development of the human mind (from childhood to adolescence, and from the earliest human ancestor to ourselves) depends upon or involves the existence at certain stages of growth (and to a certain extent throughout the whole process) of a conscious egoistic interest. Mankind, to develop what we call character and conscience, must learn to take a conscious interest in himself, in his own actions, and their motives. The development of this self-consciousness in children is a process of great interest to the psychologist and has already been studied in an imperfect fashion. You have only to watch a child playing a game in which he or she enacts some imaginary part to see how such games afford a means by which the child develops and widens his interest in himself. Children, and many grown-up people (particularly during conditions of lessened mental activity), indulge in what are called daydreams, which take the form of an imaginary succession of adventures of which the dreamer is always the hero. The character of daydreams is that they are always frankly egoistic and boastful. Now this sort of interest in stories is found in the Andamanese, though not in the legends. At the end of a day a group of Andamanese may often be seen seated round a fire listening while one of them recounts adventures. The narration may be merely an exaggerated account of real happenings, but is more often purely fictitious. The narrator will tell, with few words, but with many expressive gestures, how he harpooned a turtle or shot a pig. He may, if his hearers are content to remain and listen, as they sometimes are, go on killing pig after pig for an hour or two together. The point to be noted is that these tales are always frankly egoistic and boastful, and it is for this reason that they may well be compared with the daydreams of the more civilised.

Besides this egoistic interest in stories there is another that is closely connected with it in origin and function. The necessities of social life, particularly in childhood and in primitive societies where a small number of people are constantly reacting upon one another, involve an intense degree of interest in persons and personal qualities. This interest is aroused and fostered by the constant play of personal forces in the social life. Its strength accounts, I believe, for the power of appeal to sentiments that is possessed by stories.

It is a commonplace that in many forms of play the child or the adult (and it is also true of animals) exercises faculties that are important parts of the system of habits or dispositions by which the individual adapts himself to his surroundings. We may regard the interest in stories as similar to play-interests in general. Life in society requires the individual to develop a faculty of what may be called character-estimation, whereby he may judge the motives that are likely to influence the conduct of another person. I have myself noticed that savages such as the Andaman Islanders and the Australian aborigines are as a rule good judges of character. They can quickly estimate how to adapt their conduct and conversation to the character of a person they meet for the first time. They are often excellent mimics, being able to imitate exactly the tone of voice or manner of walking or any other idiosyncrasy of a person whom they have only seen for a short time. I believe, then, that the legends of the Andamanese may be regarded as a means whereby they give exercise to their interest in human character, just as in other kinds of play they exercise other interests and faculties that are integral parts of their adaptation to their environment. By means of the personification of natural phenomena and of species of animals, and through the assumption of the existence of the ancestors and their times, they are able to develop a special kind of unwritten literature, which has for them just the same sort of appeal that much of our own literature has for us. Doubtless it is not a very polished form of art; the characterisation that it exhibits is simple and even crude; the story is not told very skilfully, and indeed the story-teller relies much on his use of expressive gesture to convey his meaning; nevertheless it does fulfil amongst the Andamanese the same sort of function that more developed literary art does in civilised society.

There remains one other matter to be dealt with briefly. I have pointed out on several occasions that the legends contain inconsistencies. Some of these only appear when the real meaning of the legend is discovered, but others are on the surface. It is clear that the Andamanese do not always apply to their legends the laws of logical consistency. It must not, however, be supposed that they are equally illogical in other matters, for this is not so. In matters of everyday practical life the Andamanese show just as much sound commonsense as the inhabitants of a civilised country. They are excellent observers of natural phenomena and are capable of putting their observations to practical use. In any attempt to explain their mythology, therefore, it is necessary to show why in this sphere they do not apply their powers of reasoning. We can understand this when we recall the purpose of the legends as here described, which is, not to give rational explanations, but to express sentiments. When there are two alternative rational explanations of a phenomenon between which we cannot definitely choose we say that either one or other is probably true. In those mental processes in which the purpose is to find a symbolic expression for sentiments or desires, the either-or relation is inadmissible owing to the very nature of the thought-process itself. If two expressions of the same sentiment are present, both equally adequate, we must either reject one of them or by making use of both on different occasions admit the possibility of inconsistency. Where the inconsistency becomes more or less obvious we expect the reason to step in and insist that a choice shall be made. But a mind intent on expressing certain feelings, faced with two alternative and equally satisfactory but inconsistent symbols, will hesitate to choose between them even at the command of the desire for logical consistency. It will cling as long as possible to both of them. This is just what the Andaman Islander seems to do in his mythology. The view of lightning as a person who shakes his leg seems to express in some way certain notions of the natives about the lightning. The alternative explanation of lightning as a fire-brand thrown by Biliku also satisfies in some way his need of expressing the impressions that the phenomena make upon him. In spite of the inconsistency he clings to both symbols as best he can.

The very existence of inconsistencies of this kind proves without any doubt that the mental processes underlying the legends of the Andamanese are not similar to those that we ourselves follow when we attempt to understand intelligently the facts of nature and of life, but rather are to be compared to those that are to be found in dreams and in art,—processes of what might conveniently be called symbolic thought. It would perhaps hardly be necessary to point this out were it not that many ethnologists still try to interpret the beliefs of savages as being the result of attempts to understand natural facts, such as dreams, death, birth, etc. Such writers assume that the savage is impelled by the same motive that so strongly dominates themselves, the desire to understand,—scientific curiosity—and that such beliefs as animism or totemism are of the nature of scientific hypotheses invented to explain the facts of dreaming and of death on the one hand and of conception and birth on the other. If this view of the nature of primitive thought were correct it would be impossible to conceive how such inconsistencies as those that we meet with among the Andamanese could be permitted. On the view that the myths of primitive societies are merely the result of an endeavour to express certain ways of thinking and feeling about the facts of life which are brought into existence by the manner in which life is regulated in society, the presence of such inconsistencies need not in the least surprise us, for the myths satisfactorily fulfil their function not by any appeal to the reasoning powers of the intellect but by appealing, through the imagination, to the mind’s affective dispositions.

The thesis of this chapter has been that the legends are the expression of social values of objects of different kinds. By the social value of an object is meant the way in which it affects the life of the society, and therefore, since every one is interested in the welfare of the society to which he belongs, the way in which it affects the social sentiments of the individual. The system of social values of a society obviously depends upon the manner in which the society is constituted, and therefore the legends can only be understood by constant reference to the mode of life of the Andamanese.

The legends give us in the first place a simple and crude valuation of human actions. Anger, quarrelsomeness, carelessness in observing ritual requirements are exhibited as resulting in harm. This is the moral element of the stories strictly so called, and is to be observed in many of them. The young men who failed to observe the rules laid down for those who have recently been through one of the initiation ceremonies were turned to stone. The quarrelsomeness of the lizard led to the ancestors being turned into animals. The bad temper of one of the ancestors resulted in darkness covering the earth, or in a great cyclone in which many were destroyed.

Secondly, the legends as a whole give expression to the social value of the past, of all that is derived from tradition, whether it be the knowledge by which men win their sustenance, or the customs that they observe. In the wonderful times of the ancestors all things were ordered, all necessary knowledge was acquired, and the rules that must guide conduct were discovered. It remains for the individual of the present only to observe the customs with which his elders are familiar.

The legends of a man’s own tribe serve also to give a social value to the places with which he is familiar. The creeks and hills that he knows, the camping sites at which he lives, the reefs and rocks that act as landmarks by reason of any striking feature they may present, are all for him possessed of a historic interest that makes them dear to him. The very names, in many cases, recall events of the far-off legendary epoch.

Again, many of the legends express the social value of natural phenomena. By reference to Biliku and Tarai, for instance, the native can express what he feels with respect to the weather and the seasonal changes that so profoundly affect the common life. Finally, in the legends he is able to express what he feels about the bright plumaged birds and the other creatures with which he is constantly meeting in the jungles, which are a source of perennial interest, and are yet so clearly a part of the world cut off from himself and his life, having no immediately discernible influence upon his welfare.

This system of social values, or rather this system of sentiments, that we find expressed in the legends is an essential part of the life of the Andamanese; without it they could not have organised their social life in the way they have. Moreover the sentiments in question need to be regularly expressed in some way or another if they are to be kept alive and passed on from one generation to another. The legends, which are related by the elders to the young folk, are one of the means (the various ceremonial customs analysed in the last chapter being another) by which they are so expressed, and by which their existence is maintained.

Although the term “social value” has been used as a convenient expression, yet the meaning of the legends might be expressed in other ways. We may say, for instance, that they give a representation of the world as regulated by law. The conception of law which they reveal is not, however, that to which we are accustomed when we think of natural law. We may perhaps adequately state the Andaman notion by saying that moral law and natural law are not distinguished from one another. The welfare of the society depends upon right actions; wrong actions inevitably lead to evil results. Giving way to anger is a wrong action, as being a cause of social disturbance. In the legends the catastrophes that overwhelmed the ancestors are in many instances represented as being caused by some one giving way to anger. There is a right way and a wrong way to set about making such a thing as a bow. We should explain this by saying that the right way will give a good serviceable weapon, whereas the wrong way will give an inferior or useless one. The Andaman Islander tends to look at the matter from a different angle; the right way is right because it is the one that has been followed from time immemorial, and any other way is wrong, is contrary to custom, to law. Law, for the Andaman Islander, means that there is an order of the universe, characterised by absolute uniformity; this order was established once for all in the time of the ancestors, and is not to be interfered with, the results of any such interference being evil, ranging from merely minor ills such as disappointment or discomfort to great calamities. The law of compensation is absolute. Any deviation from law or custom will inevitably bring its results, and inversely any evil that befalls must be the result of some lack of observance. The legends reveal to our analysis a conception of the universe as a moral order.

Here I must conclude my attempt to interpret the customs and beliefs of the Andaman Islanders, but in doing so I wish to point out, though indeed it must already be fairly obvious, that if my interpretation be correct, then the meaning of the customs of other primitive peoples is to be discovered by similar methods and in accordance with the same psychological principles. It is because I have satisfied myself of the soundness of these methods and principles, by applying them to the interpretation of other cultures, that I put forward the hypotheses of these two chapters with an assurance that would not perhaps be justified if I relied solely on a study of the Andamanese. To put the matter in another way, I have assumed a certain working hypothesis, and I have shown that on the basis of this hypothesis there can be built up a satisfactory explanation of the customs and beliefs of the Andamanese. But the hypothesis is of such a nature, stating or involving as it does certain sociological or psychological laws and principles, that if it be true for one primitive people it must be true for others, and indeed, with necessary modifications, must be true of all human society. Such a hypothesis, it is obvious, cannot be adequately tested by reference only to one limited set of facts, and it will therefore be necessary, if it is to become something more than a hypothesis, to test its application over a wider range of ethnological facts.

The matter is so important that it is necessary, even at the risk of wearisome repetition, to give a final statement of the hypothesis that, in this chapter and the last, has been applied to and tested by the facts known to us concerning the Andaman Islanders.

In an enquiry such as this, we are studying, I take it, not isolated facts, but a “culture,” understanding by that word the whole mass of institutions, customs and beliefs of a given people. For a culture to exist at all, and to continue to exist, it must conform to certain conditions. It must provide a mode of subsistence adequate to the environment and the existing density of population; it must provide for the continuance of the society by the proper care of children; it must provide means for maintaining the cohesion of the society. All these things involve the regulation of individual conduct in certain definite ways; they involve, that is, a certain system of moral customs.

Each type of social organisation has its own system of moral customs, and these could be explained by showing how they serve to maintain the society in existence. Such an explanation would be of the psychological, not of the historical type; it would give not the cause of origin of any custom, but its social function. For example it is easy to see the function of the very strong feelings of the Andamanese as to the value of generosity in the distribution of food and of energy in obtaining it, and as to the highly reprehensible nature of laziness and greediness (meaning by the latter word, eating much when others have little). It has only been by the cultivation of these virtues, or by the eradication of the opposite vices, that the Andaman society has maintained itself in existence in an environment where food is only obtainable by individual effort, where it cannot be preserved from day to day, and where there are occasional times of scarcity. It could be shown, to take a further example, how the manner in which the life of the family is organised is closely related to certain fundamental social needs. If we were attempting an explanation of the Andamanese culture as a whole and in all its details it would be necessary to examine all the moral customs of the people and show their relations one to another and to the fundamental basis on which the society is organised.

The necessary regulation of conduct in a given society depends upon the existence in each individual of an organised system of sentiments. That system of sentiments or motives will clearly be different in different cultures, just as the system of moral rules is different in societies of different types. Yet there is, so to speak, a general substratum that is the same in all human societies. No matter how the society may be organised there must be in the individual a strong feeling of attachment to his own group, to the social division (nation, village, clan, tribe, caste, or what not) to which he belongs. The particular way in which that sentiment is revealed in thought and action will depend upon the nature of the group to which it refers. Similarly, no society can exist without the presence in the minds of its members of some form or other of the sentiment of moral obligation—the sentiment that certain things must be done, certain other things must not be done, because those are right, good, virtuous, these are wrong, bad, vicious or sinful. Further, though perhaps less important, yet not less necessary, there is the sentiment of dependence in its various forms—dependence on others, on the society, on tradition or custom.

For a culture to exist, then, these sentiments (and others connected with them, that need not be enumerated) must exist in the minds of individuals in certain definite forms, capable of influencing action in the direction required to maintain the cohesion of the society on its actual basis of organisation. This, we may say, is the social function of these sentiments.

Leaving aside altogether the question of how sentiments of these kinds come into existence, we may note that they involve the existence of an experience of a particular type. The individual experiences the action upon himself of a power or force—constraining him to act in certain ways not always pleasant, supporting him in his weakness, binding him to his fellows, to his group. This force is clearly something not himself—something outside of him therefore, and yet equally clearly it makes itself felt not as mere external compulsion or support, but as something within his own consciousness—within himself, therefore. If we would give a name to this force we can only call it the moral force of society. The very existence of a human society, the argument has run, necessarily involves the existence of this actual experience of a moral force, acting through the society upon the individual, and yet acting within his own consciousness. The experience, then, is there, but it does not follow that the primitive man can analyse his own experience; it is obvious enough that such analysis is beyond him. Still the experience does lead him to form certain notions or representations, and it is possible to show how these notions are psychologically related to the experience of a moral force.

The experience of this moral force comes to the individual in definite concrete experiences only. We first learn to experience our own dependence in our dealings with our parents, and thus we derive the concrete form in which we clothe our later adult feeling of our dependence upon our God. Or, to take an example from the vast number provided by the customs of the Andamanese, the Andaman Islander, like other savages, the main concern of whose lives is the getting and eating of food, inevitably finds his experience of a moral force most intimately associated with the things he uses for food. Inevitably, therefore, he regards food as a substance in which, in some way, the moral force is inherent, since it is often through food that the force actually affects him and his actions. The psychology of the matter can be traced, I hope, in the arguments of the last chapter. From the analysis there given of different customs and beliefs it should be obvious that the way in which the Andaman Islander regards all the things that influence the social life is due to the way in which they are associated with his experience of the moral force of the society.

In this way there arises in the mind of primitive man, as the result of his social life and the play of feeling that it involves, the more or less crude and undefined notion of a power in society and in nature having certain attributes. It is this power that is responsible for all conditions of social euphoria or dysphoria because in all such conditions the power itself is actually experienced. It is the same power that compels the individual to conform to custom in his conduct, acting upon him both within as the force of conscience and without as the force of opinion. It is the same force on which the individual feels himself to be dependent, as a source of inner strength to him in times of need. It is this force also that carries him away during periods of social excitement such as dances, ceremonies or fights, and which gives him the feeling of a sudden great addition to his own personal force.

The Andamanese have not reached the point of recognizing by a special name this power of which they are thus aware. I have shown that in some of its manifestations they regard it, symbolically, as being a sort of heat, or a force similar to that which they know in fire and heat. In more developed societies, however, we find a nearer approach to a definite recognition of this power or force in its different manifestations by means of a single name. The power denoted by the word mana in Melanesia, and by the words orenda, wakan, nauala, etc., amongst different tribes of North America, is this same power of which I have tried to show that the notion arises from the actual experience of the moral force of the society.

These sentiments and the representations connected with them, upon the existence of which, as we have seen, the very existence of the society depends, need to be kept alive, to be maintained at a given degree of intensity. Apart from the necessity that exists of keeping them alive in the mind of the individual, there is the necessity of impressing them upon each new individual added to the society, upon each child as he or she develops into an adult. Even individual sentiments do not remain in existence in the mind unless they are exercised by being expressed. Much more is this the case with collective sentiments, those shared by a number of persons. The only possible way by which such collective sentiments can be maintained is by giving them regular and adequate expression.

Here then, according to the argument of the last chapter, we find the function of the ceremonial customs of primitive peoples such as the Andamanese. All these customs are simply means by which certain ways of feeling about the different aspects of social life are regularly expressed, and, through expression, kept alive and passed on from one generation to another. Thus the customs connected with foods serve to maintain in existence certain ways of feeling about foods and the moral duties connected with them, and similarly with other customs.

Affective modes of experience (sentiments, feelings or emotions) can be expressed not only in bodily movements but also by means of language. I have tried to show that the function of the myths and legends of the Andamanese is exactly parallel to that of the ritual and ceremonial. They serve to express certain ways of thinking and feeling about the society and its relation to the world of nature, and thereby to maintain these ways of thought and feeling and pass them on to succeeding generations. In the case of both ritual and myth the sentiments expressed are those that are essential to the existence of the society.

Throughout these two chapters I have avoided the use of the term religion. My reason for this is that I have not been able to find a definition of this term which would render it suitable for use in a scientific discussion of the beliefs of such primitive peoples as the Andamanese.

When we use the term religion we inevitably think first of what we understand by that term in civilised society. It is not possible, I believe, to give an exact definition which shall retain all the connotations of the word as commonly used and which shall at the same time help us in the study of the customs of undeveloped societies. The definition of religion that seems to me on the whole most satisfactory is that it consists of (1) a belief in a great moral force or power (whether personal or not) existing in nature, and (2) an organised relation between man and this Higher Power. If this definition be accepted it is clear that the Andamanese have religious beliefs and customs. They do believe in a moral power regulating the universe, and they have organised their relations to that power by means of some of their simple ceremonies. Yet it does not seem possible to draw a sharp dividing line between those beliefs and customs that properly deserve to be called religious, and others which do not deserve the adjective. It is not possible, in the Andamans, to separate a definite entity which we can call religion from things that may more appropriately be regarded as art, morality, play, or social ceremonial.

Nevertheless the purpose of these two chapters has been to explain the nature and function of the Andamanese religion. Amongst the fundamental conditions that must be fulfilled if human beings are to live together in society is the existence of this thing that we call religion, the belief in a great Unseen Power, between which and ourselves it must ever be the great concern of life to establish and maintain harmony. The Andaman Islander with his somewhat childish faith, the Australian black-fellow decorated with paint and feathers impersonating his totemic ancestor, the Polynesian sacrificing human victims on the marae of his god, the Buddhist following the Holy Eight-Staged Path, are all following in however different ways the same eternal quest.

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