and spiritedly, the rest is easy." The tales published by Professor Hartt are chiefly animal stories, like those current in Africa and among the Red Indians, and Hartt even believed that many of the legends had been imported by Negroes. But as the majority of the Negro myths, like those of the Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian myths were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief in the intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of Negroes on the reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it turns out that both Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do satisfy an unscientific curiosity, and it is even held that the Negroes lent the Amazonians these very stories.[1] The Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give themselves a reason why for everything, according to their own lively fancy, and do not leave the smallest matter uncriticised."[2] Rather than go without an explanation, the Australians, Sir George Grey found, would invent a tradition.[3] As far, then, as Mr. Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may consider them over-weighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naïve savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's craving to know the causes at work in each
- ↑ See Amazonian Tortoise-Myths, pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr. Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.
- ↑ Steller, p. 267. Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.
- ↑ Op. cit., p. 275.
