Great Battles of the American Civil War Author:John MacDonald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE PRIMITIVE PEOPLES. The beginnings of art lie, then, where the beginnings of culture lie. But the light of history illuminates only the las... more »t, shortest stretch of the long road that mankind has left behind it, and history can give no clew to those beginnings. Ethnology, on the other hand, is competent to show us primitive peoples in the light of the present. But, before giving ourselves up to its leading, we must make clear one term which pressingly requires a more exact definition than has been usually given to it. Every sociologist talks of primitive peoples, and nearly every one uses the word in a somewhat different sense. It is saying mneh, but not too much, to call the idea of primitive peoples one of the most varying and obscure ideas in the whole science of culture. Except the ancient civilized nations of Asia, there is hardly a people outside of Europe which has not at some time or other been declared to be a primitive people. The corresponding term,Natureolker (peoples in a state of Nature), which prevails in ethnology, likewise leaves much to be desired. It ifl therefore unavailable for our special purpose, because it covers too much, even when its boundary lines are more exactly and distinctly drawn. Waltz's usage, for example, is to designate the civilly organized negroes of the Soudan and the straggling Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, as both people in a state of Nature, liatzel tries to specialize the people of the first sort as half civilized; but the term Naturviilker is still with him wide enough to include a motley mixture of the most diverse forms of culture. The tribes of dwarfs that lead a rude hunter's life in the primitive forests of central Africa are in his view a Naturviilk equally with the firmly organized, agricultural, and cattle-r...« less