iefs
of the Kai.]

After describing the manners and customs of the Kai people at some
length, the German missionary, who knows them intimately, proceeds to
give us a very valuable account of their old native religion or
superstition. He prefaces his account with some observations, the fruit
of long experience, which deserve to be laid to heart by all who attempt
to penetrate into the inner life, the thoughts, the feelings, the
motives of savages. As his remarks are very germane to the subject of
these lectures, I will translate them. He says: "In the preceding
chapters I have sketched the daily life of the Kai people. But I have
not attempted to set forth the reasons for their conduct, which is often
very peculiar and unintelligible. The explanation of that conduct lies
in the animistic view which the Papuan takes of the world. It must be
most emphatically affirmed that nobody can judge the native aright who
has not gained an insight into what we may call his religious opinions.
The native must be described as very religious, although his ideas do
not coincide with ours. His feelings, thoughts, and will are most
intimately connected with his belief in souls. With that belief he is
born, he has sucked it in with his mother's milk, and from the
standpoint of that belief he regards the things and occurrences that
meet him in life; by that belief he regulates his behaviour. An
objective way of looking at events is unknown to him; everything is
brought by him into relation to his belief, and by it he seeks to
explain everything that to him seems strange and rare."[433] "The
labyrinth of animistic customs at first sight presents an appearance of
wild confusion to him who seeks to penetrate into them and reduce them
to order; but on closer inspection he will soon recognise certain
guiding lines. These guiding lines are the laws of animism, which have
passed into the flesh and blood of the Papuan and influence his thought
and speech, his acts and his omissions, his love and hate, in short his
whole life and death. When once we have discovered these laws, the whole
of the superstitious nonsense falls into an orderly system which compels
us to regard it with a certain respect that increases in proportion to
the contempt in which we had previously held the people. We need not
wonder, moreover, that the laws of animism partially correspond to
general laws of nature."[434]

[Sidenote: The essential rationality of the savage.]

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