Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Customs, Volume 1H. Holt, 1874 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abipones Africa Algic ancient animals Archip Aryan Asien barbaric Bastian beasts belief belong body Book of Werewolves called century Chinook Jargon civilization connexion counting creatures culture dead death described doctrine early earth English European evidence express fact fancy father Fiji fingers funeral Greek Grimm hand heaven Hindi numerals Hine-nui-te-po human hyæna idea imitative Indian interjectional Islands J. G. Müller Journ Khonds language legend lower races Malay man's mankind Maori Maui Max Müller meaning Mensch metaphor mind modern Moon myth mythic mythology nations native nature nature-myth night numbers numerals Oestl Ojibwa origin philosophy Plin Polynesia primitive Quichua quinary reckoning relation religion remarkable rite rude saltee Sanskrit savage tribes Schoolcraft seems sneeze soul sound South America spirit story survival tails tell theory things thought tion Tonga traces tradition vigesimal words Yoruba Zealand Zulu
Popular passages
Page 16 - These are processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved.
Page 33 - The discoveries of ancient and modern navigators, and the domestic history or tradition of the most enlightened nations, represent the human savage naked both in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of arts, of ideas, and almost of language.
Page 397 - Cant'' is, by some people, derived from one Andrew Cant, who, they say, was a presbyterian minister in some illiterate part of Scotland, who by exercise and use had obtained the faculty, alias gift, of talking in the pulpit in such a dialect, that it is said he was understood by none but his own congregation, and not by all of them.
Page 35 - Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce, and religious zeal have diffused among the savages of the Old and New World these inestimable gifts: they have been successively propagated; they can never be lost. We may therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased and still increases the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
Page 433 - Among the Seminoles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire strength and knowledge for its future use...
Page 477 - There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.
Page 401 - Roman, pitched there ;) yet those old and inborn names of successive kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict an incredulity.
Page 34 - ... and of metals; the propagation and service of domestic animals; the methods of hunting and fishing; the rudiments of navigation ; the imperfect cultivation of corn or other nutritive grain; and the simple practice of the mechanic trades.
Page 429 - ... corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving the body far behind, to flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate from the body of which it bears the likeness; continuing to exist and appear to men after the death of that body; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even of things.
Page 2 - To many educated minds there seems something presumptuous and repulsive in the view that the history of mankind is part and parcel of the history of nature, that our thoughts, wills, and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern the motion of waves, the combination of acids and bases, and the growth of plants and animals.