Sharp County record., 1878-07-26
What is a Savage?

ButaOugh the ethnologist no longer
speakOf the inhabitants of Africa as
neerca or niggers, it is much more diff
ficultr convince the student Of history
that tSe races can not be Jumped to-
getheas savages, but that here, too, we
mustStinguish before we can compare.
Peops who talk very freely OF sayageS,
whet,r in Africa, or America, or Aus
traliaWould fnd-it extremely difficult
to giT any definition of the term, be-
vondlis, that savages are different from
ours7es. Savages with us are still
verynuch what barbarianS were to the
Gretss. But as the Greeks had to learn
thatome of these sO-called barbarians
posssed virtues which they might have
enyd themselves, so we also shall have
to clfess that some of these savageS
ha7a religion and philosophy of life
WIN may well bear comparison with
theelgion and philosophy Of what we
calhe civilized and civilizing nations
of ntiquity. Anyhow, the common
ideot savage requires considerable
Indication and differentiation, and
the is perhaps no branch of anthropOl-
ogbeset with So many difficulties as
thistudy of thesf=, cal led savage races.
Leus examinS = a o. the prejudices
commonly entertained with regard to
thso-called sayages. Their languages
ar supposed to be inferior to our own.
Nv here the science of language has
doe some good work. 1t has been
slwn, first Of all, that no human beings
arwithout language, and we know what
TIT implies. All the stories Of tribes
whout language, or with languages
nre like the twittering Of birds than the
aiculate sounds Of human beings, be-
log to the chapter of fethnologicalfables.
What is more importantstill is that many
othe so-called savage languages have
ben shown to possess a most perfect,
i many cases too perfect, that is to
sy, too artificial grammar, while their
dictionary presents wealth of names
rhich any poet might envy. True, this
7ealth of grammatical forms and this
uperabundance of names for special
biects are, from one point of view,
igns of logic weakness and of want
# powerful generalization. Languages
which have cases to express nearness to
N object, movement alongside an OBJ
ect, approach toward an object, en-
rance into an object, but which have no
purely objective case, no accusative,
nay be called rich, no doubt, but their
ichness is truly poverty. The same
Lpplies to their dictionary. 1t may con-
ain names for every kind Of animal /;
gain for the same animal when 1t is
,oung or old, male or female; it may
lave different words for the foot of a
nan, a horse, a lion, a hare; but it
is without a name for animal
n general, or even for such concepts as
member or body. There is here, as
elsewhere, loss and gain on both sides.
}ut however imperfect a language may
,e in one point or other, every language,
ven that of Papuas and Vedda8, is such
masterpiece of abstract thought that
t would battle the ingenuity of many
philosophers to produce any thing like
t. In several cases the grammar ofso-
allied savage dialect bears evidence to
far higher state of mental culture pos
y these people in former times. And
must not be forgotten that every Ian
uage has capacities, if they are only
allied out, and that no language has
ct been found into which it was not
ossible to translate the Lords Prayer.
IaI Muller, IN NacniIIan'S Magazine.