change of custom.  The only thing that we can say is that, after carefully watching the natives during the performance of their ceremonies and endeavouring as best we could to enter into their feelings, to think as they did, and to become for the time being one of themselves, we came to the conclusion that if one or two of the most powerful men settled upon the advisability of introducing some change, even an important one, it would be quite possible for this to be agreed upon and carried out.”

This passage is worth quoting at length if only for the admirable method that it discloses.  The policy of “trying to become for the time being one of themselves” resulted in the book that, of all first-hand studies, has done most for modern anthropology.  At the same time Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, it is evident, would not claim to have done more than interpret the external signs of a high individuality on the part of these prominent natives.  It still remains a rare and almost unheard-of thing for an anthropologist to be on such friendly terms with a savage as to get him to talk intimately about himself, and reveal the real man within.

There exist, however, occasional side-lights on human personality in the anthropological literature that has to do with very rude peoples.  The page from a human document that I shall cite by way of example is all the more curious, because it relates to a type of experience quite outside the compass of ordinary civilized folk.  Here and there, however, something like it may be found amongst ourselves.  My friend Mr. L.P.  Jacks, for instance, in his story-book, Mad Shepherds, has described a rustic of the north of England who belonged to this old-world order of great men.  For men of the type in question can be great, at any rate in low-level society.  The so-called medicine man is a leader, perhaps even the typical leader, of primitive society; and, just because he is, by reason of his calling, addicted to privacy and aloofness, he certainly tends to be more individual, more of a “character,” than the general run of his fellows.

I shall slightly condense from Howitt’s Native Tribes of South-East Australia the man’s own story of his experience of initiation.  Howitt says, by the way, “I feel strongly assured that the man believed that the events which he related were real, and that he had actually experienced them”; and then goes on to talk about “subjective realities.”  I myself offer no commentary.  Those interested in psychical research will detect hypnotic trance, levitation, and so forth.  Others, versed in the spirit of William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, will find an even deeper meaning in it all.  The sociologist, meanwhile, will point to the force of custom and tradition, as colouring the whole experience, even when at its most subjective and dreamlike.  But each according to his bent must work out these things for himself.  In any case it is well that the end of a book should leave the reader still thinking.