Note 2 — Chapter V · THE INTERPRETATION OF ANDAMANESE CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS: CEREMONIAL (continued 2)

The Andaman Islander, like many other savages, is afraid of the dark. It might perhaps be thought that this fear is immediate and instinctive, a result of the physiology of the human nervous system, but that, I think, would be a false assumption. Many infants would seem not to be at first afraid of darkness, but to learn to fear it, as they learn to fear many other things. It is not possible here to enter into a discussion of the matter, but I would hold that in the Andaman Islanders and probably in other savages, the fear of darkness, of night, is a secondary or induced feeling, not by any means instinctive, and is in large part due to the social sentiments, to the fact that at night the social life ceases. The savage feels, and rightly so, that for everything he has and is, for the safety and well-being of his body and the comfort of his soul, he depends on the communal life in which his own life is merged. When, at the close of day, the social life ceases, he feels, should anything occur to direct his attention to his own condition, less secure than when the social life is proceeding actively around him2.