Primitive materialism
Extract from Chapter Six of "Primitive Materialism".
Primitive ego-consciousness takes a different form. It is less intense – we might say closer to “unconsciousness” – our contemporary consciousness has been wrought up to a fever-pitch of anxiety – what the existentialists refer to as angst – but the consciousness of Stone Age man is closer to the dream-state; it seems that he drifts in and out of the dream and waking state, and barely distinguishes the two. In this sense, he is a part of nature, and his experience of time, space and what appears as permanent in both – substance – is very different from our own. We can infer all of this from his practices, and from the vestiges of his beliefs that manifest themselves in the earliest literature of man. In this borderline state of conscious consciousness, the distinction between appearance and reality is scarcely marked. We may say that man is a part of nature and so much within time that he can barely distinguish his ego as a separate entity from the whole, though it is ego. He characteristically experiences himself in the detached way that we occasionally find in dreams. Aristotle did not believe that the seat of consciousness was the brain – he located it in the heart – the primitive man of the Stone Age knows nothing even of the question: he just is. What is substance to him? It is an appearance that persists that gives or is life. Like food, milk, blood, corn, grain, flesh, flint, gold, intoxicating soma. Substances are imbrued with vital life. All, then is spirit. There is no antithesis of visible matter and that which is invisible, of body and soul, of flesh and spirit. He cannot conceive of that which is non-spatial, non-temporal. The soul, in which he devoutly believes, is a substance: it follows the same laws as any substance, and being a part of nature, is located somewhere when the body dies – and the most natural answer is that it continues to inhabit the place where the body is buried. Stone-age man is no logician and no mathematician, and he does not have a coordinate system, and hence the contradictions of locating the soul at one time below and at the same time above are no contradictions for him. It can be both below and above. The contradiction one thing in two places is inconceivable for him. Space is just what he sees before him and can remember – it is not an abstract thing extending infinitely in all directions.
"What does early man understand by death? … If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul." [1]
The manikin. This is the origin of the idea of the ghost in the machine (manikin) that contemporary philosophy regards as a fallacy. It is a fallacy to us, because we so firmly distinguish consciousness from matter that it is an error to attempt to locate the soul in the material realm or equate it to a material substance. But it is not a fallacy for primitive man, for whom that distinction does not exist.
For the primitive, since appearance is reality, appearances are potentially subject to his will – he does not know that merely by wishing a thing, it is impossible to make a thing happen. On the contrary, he imagines that he can make things happen by willing them to happen, though he recognises that he must do something special to make a thing happen, so mere wishing is not effective alone. His will must be canalised by magic. Everything, every substance, has a soul, endowed with vital power. Primitive man is immersed in magic, and this is his science, every bit a science for him, as natural science is science for us. Magic-science unlocks the power of magic-art over the world. He paints on cave walls and throws darts at his paintings; his paintings conjure up more game; his mimesis of the hunt makes the game more vulnerable to his skills. His incantations, provided he gets them right, bring on whatever effect he supposes his magic words can conjure.
Frazer in The Golden Bough describes sympathetic magic as the underlying science-metaphysic of man as he emerges from the Stone Age.
[1] J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter XVIII – The Perils of the Soul.
"What does early man understand by death? … If an animal lives and moves, it can only be, he thinks, because there is a little animal inside which moves it: if a man lives and moves, it can only be because he has a little man or animal inside who moves him. The animal inside the animal, the man inside the man, is the soul." [1]
The manikin. This is the origin of the idea of the ghost in the machine (manikin) that contemporary philosophy regards as a fallacy. It is a fallacy to us, because we so firmly distinguish consciousness from matter that it is an error to attempt to locate the soul in the material realm or equate it to a material substance. But it is not a fallacy for primitive man, for whom that distinction does not exist.
For the primitive, since appearance is reality, appearances are potentially subject to his will – he does not know that merely by wishing a thing, it is impossible to make a thing happen. On the contrary, he imagines that he can make things happen by willing them to happen, though he recognises that he must do something special to make a thing happen, so mere wishing is not effective alone. His will must be canalised by magic. Everything, every substance, has a soul, endowed with vital power. Primitive man is immersed in magic, and this is his science, every bit a science for him, as natural science is science for us. Magic-science unlocks the power of magic-art over the world. He paints on cave walls and throws darts at his paintings; his paintings conjure up more game; his mimesis of the hunt makes the game more vulnerable to his skills. His incantations, provided he gets them right, bring on whatever effect he supposes his magic words can conjure.
Frazer in The Golden Bough describes sympathetic magic as the underlying science-metaphysic of man as he emerges from the Stone Age.
[1] J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter XVIII – The Perils of the Soul.
Questions
1. Can we say that primitive man before c.600 BCE had (a) a different state of cognition, and (b) a different state of intesive (ego-) consciousness? Is there a fundamental divide between the thinking of the Paleolithic and the thinking of post-antiquity?
2. Do we distinguish appearance from reality? What does such a distinction entail?
3. If we do distinguish appearance from reality, then, in light of the arguments of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant, is this distinction valid?
4. If C18th philosophy regarded the distinction between appearance and reality as questionable, has the philosophy of the C20th (G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, American realism, Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein) demonstrated that C18th idealism is either (a) false, or (b) meaningless?
5. Did primitive man prior to c. 600 BCE believe in the immortality of the soul, and if so, why?
6. Is Frazer's description of the thinking of primitive man in terms of sympathetic magic correct? Could there be any validity to sympathetic magic as a system of explanation, albeit superceded in contemporary consciousness by natural science?
2. Do we distinguish appearance from reality? What does such a distinction entail?
3. If we do distinguish appearance from reality, then, in light of the arguments of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Kant, is this distinction valid?
4. If C18th philosophy regarded the distinction between appearance and reality as questionable, has the philosophy of the C20th (G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, American realism, Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein) demonstrated that C18th idealism is either (a) false, or (b) meaningless?
5. Did primitive man prior to c. 600 BCE believe in the immortality of the soul, and if so, why?
6. Is Frazer's description of the thinking of primitive man in terms of sympathetic magic correct? Could there be any validity to sympathetic magic as a system of explanation, albeit superceded in contemporary consciousness by natural science?