‘Positions one never held’

’It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics’ [i. 26, 27].

I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man ever consciously misrepresents the ideas of an opponent.  If it is not too flippant an illustration, I would say that no bowler ever throws consciously and wilfully; his action, however, may unconsciously develop into a throw.  There would be no pleasure in argument, cricket, or any other sport if we knowingly cheated.  Thus it is always unconsciously that adversaries pervert, garble, and misrepresent each other’s opinions; unconsciously, not ‘audaciously.’  If people would start from the major premise that misrepresentations, if such exist, are unconscious errors, much trouble would be spared.

Positions which I never held

Thus Mr. Max Muller never dreamed of ‘audaciously misrepresenting’ me when, in four lines, he made two statements about my opinions and my materials which are at the opposite pole from the accurate (i. 12):  ’When I speak of the Vedic Rishis as primitive, I do not mean what Mr. A. Lang means when he calls his savages primitive.’  But I have stated again and again that I don’t call my savages ‘primitive.’  Thus ’contemporary savages may be degraded, they certainly are not primitive.’ {93a} ’One thing about the past of [contemporary] savages we do know:  it must have been a long past.’ {93b} ‘We do not wish to call savages primitive.’ {93c} All this was written in reply to the very proper caution of Dr. Fairbairn that ‘savages are not primitive.’  Of course they are not; that is of the essence of my theory.  I regret the use of the word ‘primitive’ even in Primitive Culture.  Savages, as a rule, are earlier, more backward than civilised races, as, of course, Mr. Max Muller admits, where language is concerned. {94} Now, after devoting several pages to showing in detail how very far from primitive even the Australian tribes are, might I (if I were ill-natured) not say that Mr. Max Muller ‘audaciously misrepresents’ me when he avers that I ’call my savages primitive’?  But he never dreamed of misrepresenting me; he only happened not to understand my position.  However, as he complains in his own case, ‘it is not pleasant to have to defend positions which one never held’ (i. 26), and, indeed, I shall defend no such position.