6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be
considered in this brief summary. The savage, like the civilised
man, is curious. The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit
are at work in his brain; he is anxious to give himself an account
of the world in which he finds himself. But he is not more curious
than he is, on occasion, credulous. His intellect is eager to ask
questions, as is the habit of children, but his intellect is also
lazy, and he is content with the first answer that comes to hand.
"Ils s'arretent aux premieres notions qu'ils en ont," says Pere
Hierome Lalemant.[1] "Nothing," says Schoolcraft, "is too
capacious (sic) for Indian belief."[2] The replies to his
questions he receives from tradition or (when a new problem arises)
evolves an answer for himself in the shape of STORIES. Just as
Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in
the despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to
almost every question that he can ask himself. These stories are
in a sense scientific, because they attempt a solution of the
riddles of the world. They are in a sense religious, because there
is usually a supernatural power, a deus ex machina, of some sort to
cut the knot of the problem. Such stories, then, are the science,
and to a certain extent the religious tradition, of savages.[3]


[1] Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1648, p. 70.

[2] Algic Researches, i. 41.

[3] "The Indians (Algonkins) conveyed instruction--moral,
mechanical and religious--through traditionary fictions and
tales."--Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 12.