未開社會考

Abstract

1. Primitive people form highly closed societies each of which has little contact with the rest of the world. 2. A primitive society is generally very small, existing on a limited area of land sparsely populated. 3. Primitive people living together in a small society tend to become homogeneous as a result of a limited number of people meeting and contacting one another all the time. This homogeneity is further maintained by means of tribal endogamy and by similarity in temper and talent due to common blood. 4. A primitive society is static and unchangeable to a high degree, because its closedness allows nothing new to enter it from outside, and its homogeneity makes it impossible for anything different to arise from within. This static character is reinforced by ancestral worship and cultural integration. The whole life of a primitive man is merged in customs ; the future as well as the present is to him but a part of the past. 5. The primitive man's absorption in customs is part and parcel of the an-sich-ness of his attitude to life. He has no consciousness of norms, nor is he clear about the distinction or conflict between individual and society. This an-sich-ness also manifests itself in the ethnocentricism, belief in magic, and some other features of a primitive society. 6. Members of a primitive society have frequently repeated contact with everything in the society; consequently they know each object in every detail. This accounts for the concreteness, intuitiveness, and individually specific nature of their understanding and treating every object. In this connection may also be mentioned the intense differentiation of language among primitive people, the concreteness of their conceptions of time and space, and their lack of general ideas. They can have an intuitive representation of an object whenever they entertain an idea closely related to it, just as well as when they have a sense perception of the object itself. Therefore, they feel that ideas and concrete objects always come and function together; to them the former are never separated from the latter. Thus they identify a man with his possessions, or a thing with its name. 7. The intuitive representation which a primitive man has of a thing is accompanied by strong emotions and, consequently, also by bodily movements. The time and space in which he lives and the pictures he paints are all conditioned by such emotions. His belief in demonic entities is also due to the emotional deformation of his ideas. His synaesthesia and the resultant identification of different things are also to be explained by his emotionality. The same emotionality manifests itself in the mutual affection between the members of a primitive community. 8. The mutual affection and the concrete and individually specific way of understanding and treating one another make the social life of primitive people harmonious, promoting mutual piety and mutual help. In a primitive society, therefore, there is perfect adaptation and consensus between individuals as well as between individual and society. Such people have a collectivistic sense of responsibility. They take for granted the unity and identity of individuals with one another, and of an individual with his society. 9. Because of their inclination to identify and unify different things, primitive people are subject to the Law of Participation (loi de participation).

10. As a primitive society is homogeneous, there are in it but slight or even no differences in political power or wealth. Such men as chieftains should be regarded as nothing more than care-takers ; there are yet no class distinctions. Only as the society grows larger and comes into conflict with other societies, there arise gradually the classes of priests, nobles, slaves, etc. The position of men or women is higher or lower according to the economic contributions brought to the society by either sex. Aged people are influential because they are better acquainted with traditions. 11. There are families even in a primitive society. As a matter of fact, most part of production and consumption are done by families as units. Property right is recognized to an individual as well as to a family, but such practices as giving gifts, lending and borrowing, and mutual aid are so common that economic life in a primitive society is very nearly communistic.