The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1878-07-04
What is a Sav8geg

But though the ethnologist no longer
| speaks of the inhabitants of Africa as
negroes or niggers, it is much more diff
ficult to convince the student of history
that these races can not be Jumped to-
gether as sayages, but that here, too, we
must distinguish before we can compare.
People who talk very freely of savages,
whether in Africa, or America; ,or Aus
| tralia, would find it extremely difficult
to give any definition of the term, be-
yond this, that savages are different from
ourselves. Savages with us are still
very much what barbarians were to the
Greeks. But as the Greeks had to learn
| that some of these so-called barbarians
possessed virtues which they might have
envied themselves, so we also shall have
to confess that some of these savages
have a religion and philosophy of life
which may well bear comparison with
the religion and philosophy of what we
call the civilized and civilizing nations
of antiquity. Anyhow, the common
idea of a savage requires considerable
modification and differentiation, and
there is perhaps no branch of anthropol-
ogy beset with so many difficulties as
the study of these so-called savage races.
Let us examine few of the prejudices
commonly entertained with regard to
the so-called savages. Their languages
are supposed to be inferior to our own.
Now here the science of language has
done some good work. 1t has been
shown, first of all, that no human beings
are without language, and we know what
that implies. All the stories of tribes
without language, or with languages
more like the twittering of birds than the
articulate sounds of human beings, be-
long to the chapter of ethnologicalfables.
What is more important still is that many
of the so-called savage languages have
been shown to possess a most perfect,
in many cases too perfect, that is to
say, too artificial grammar, while their
dictionary presents wealth of names
which any poet might envy. True, this
wealth of grammatical forms and this
superabundance of names for special
objects are, from one point of view,
signs of logic weakness and of want
Of powerful generalization. Languages
which have cases to express nearness to
an object, movement alongside an OBJ
ject, approach toward an object, en-
trance into an object, but which have no
purely objective case, no saecusative,
may be called rich, no doubt, but their
richness is truly poverty. AThe tsame
applies to their dictionary 1T may con-
tain names for every kind Of animal;
again for the Same animal whenit is
young or old, male or female; it may
have different swords for Che foot of a
hman, q shorss d lion, b shAres Sbut it
probably is without name for animal
in general, or even for such concepts as
member sor body. There is here, as
elsewhere, loss and gain on both sides.
But however imperfect language may
be lin one point or other, every1anguage,
even that of Papuas and Veddas, IS such
a masterpiece of abstract thought that
itwould battle the ingenuity of many
philosophers to produce any thing like
it. In several cases the grammarlof So
called savage dialect bears evidence to
far higher state of mental culture pos
by these people in former times. And
it must not be forgotten that every Ian
guage has capacities, if they are only
called out, and that no language has
yet been found into which it was not
possible to translate the Lords Prayer.
Mar Muller, in MacnillGn's Magazine.