Boas, Franz: Primitive art (Oslo , Leipzig [u.a.], 1927)

PREFACE

This book is an attempt to give an analytical description of the
fundamental traits of primitive art. The treatment given to the
subject is based on two principles that, I believe, should guide
all investigations into the manifestations of life among primitive
people: the one the fundamental sameness of mental processes in
all races and in all cultural forms of the present day; the other,
the consideration of every cultural phenomenon as the result of
historical happenings.
There must have been a time when man’s mental equipment was
different from what it is now, when it was evolving from a condi-
tion similar to that found among the higher apes. That period lies
far behind us and no trace of a lower mental organization is found
in any of the extant races of man. So far as my personal experience
goes and so far as I feel competent to judge ethnographical data on
the basis of this experience, the mental processes of man are the
same everywhere, regardless of race and culture, and regardless of
the apparent absurdity of beliefs and customs.
Some theorists assume a mental equipment of primitive man
distinct from that of civilized man. I have never seen a person in
primitive life to whom this theory would apply. There are slavish
believers in the teachings of the past and there are scoffers and
unbelievers; there are clear thinkers and muddleheaded bunglers;
there are strong characters and weaklings.
The behavior of everybody, no matter to what culture he may
belong, is determined by the traditional material he handles, and
man, the world over, handles the material transmitted to him ac-
cording to the same methods.
Our traditional experience has taught us to consider the course
of objective events as the result of definite, objective causation.
Inexorable causality governs here and the outer world cannot be
1 — Kulturforskning. B. VIII.