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BRONISŁAW MALINOWSKI

Argonauts of the Western Paciﬁc

         -

    

o frien an teacher rofessor eigan

   . 

My esteemed iend, Dr. B. Malinowski has asked me to write a preface to his book,

and I willingly comply with his request, though I can hardly think that any words of

mine will add to the value of the remarkable record of anthropological research which

he has given us in this volume. My observations, such as they are, will deal partly with

the writer's method and partly with the matter of his book.

In regard to method, Dr. Malinowski has done his work, as it appears to me, under

the best conditions and in the manner calculated to secure the best possible results. Both

by theoretical training and by practical experience he was well equipped for the task which

he undertook. Of his theoretical training he had given proof in his learned and thoughtful

treatise on the family among the aborigines of Australia¹; of his practical experience he

had produced no less satisfactory evidence in his account of the natives of Mailu in New

Guinea², based on a residence of six months among them. In the Trobriand Islands, to

the east of New Guinea, to which he next turned his attention, Dr. Malinowski lived

as a native among the natives for many months together, watching them daily at work

and at play, conversing with them in their own tongue, and deriving all his information

om the surest sources — personal observation and statements made to him directly

by the natives in their own language without the intervention of an interpreter. In this

way he has accumulated a large mass of materials, of high scientiﬁc value, bearing on

the social, religious, and economic or industrial life of the Trobriand Islanders. These he

hopes and intends to publish hereaer in full; meantime he has given us in the present

volume a preliminary study of an interesting and peculiar feature in Trobriand society,

the remarkable system of exchange, only in part economic or commercial, which the

islanders maintain among themselves and with the inhabitants of neighbouring islands.

Little reﬂection is needed to convince us of the fundamental importance of economic

forces at all stages of man's career om the humblest to the highest. Aer all, the

human species is part of the animal creation, and as such, like the rest of the animals, it

reposes on a material foundation; on which a higher life, intellectual, moral, social, may

be built, but without which no such superstructure is possible. That material foundation,

consisting in the necessity of food and of a certain degree of warmth and shelter om

the elements, forms the economic or industrial basis and prime condition of human

life. If anthropologists have hitherto unduly neglected it, we may suppose that it was

rather because they were attracted to the higher side of man's nature than because they

deliberately ignored and undervalued the importance and indeed necessity of the lower. In

¹ treatise on the fai aong the aorigines of Austraia — he ai aong the Austraian Aorigines A o

cioogica tu . London University of London Press, .

² account of the naties of aiu in e uinea — he aties of aiu Preiinar esuts of the oert

on esearch Wor in ritish e uinea . „Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia”, vol. xxxix.,

.

excuse for their neglect we may also remember that anthropology is still a young science,

and that the multitude of problems which await the student cannot all be attacked at

once, but must be grappled with one by one. Be that as it may, Dr. Malinowski has

done well to emphasise the great signiﬁcance of primitive economics by singling out the

notable exchange system of the Trobriand Islanders for special consideration.

Further, he has wisely refused to limit himself to a mere description of the processes

of the exchange, and has set himself to penetrate the motives which underlie it and the

feelings which it excites in the minds of the natives. It appears to be sometimes held

that pure sociology should conﬁne itself to the description of acts and should leave the

problems of motives and feelings to psychology. Doubtless it is true that the analysis of

motives and feelings is logically distinguishable om the description of acts, and that

it falls, strictly speaking, within the sphere of psychology; but in practice an act has no

meaning for an observer unless he knows or infers the thoughts and emotions of the

agent; hence to describe a series of acts, without any reference to the state of mind of

the agent, would not answer the purpose of sociology, the aim of which is not merely to

task without calling in at every turn the aid of psychology.

It is characteristic of Dr. Malinowski's method that he takes full account of the

complexity of human nature. He sees man, so to say, in the round and not in the ﬂat.

He remembers that man is a creature of emotion at least as much as of reason, and he

is constantly at pains to discover the emootional as well as the rational basis of human

action. The man of science, like the man of letters, is too apt to view mankind only

in the abstract, selecting for his consideration a single side of our complex and many-

-sided being. Of this one-sided treatment Molière is a conspicuous example among great

writers. All his characters are seen only in the ﬂat: one of them is a miser, another

a hypocrite, another a coxcomb, and so on; but not one of them is a man. All are dummies

dressed up to look very like human beings; but the likeness is only on the surface, all

within is hollow and empty, because truth to nature has been sacriﬁced to literary eﬀect.

Very diﬀerent is the presentation of human nature in the greater artists, such as Cervantes

and Shakespeare: their characters are solid, being drawn not om one side only but om

many. No doubt in science a certain abstractness of treatment is not merely legitimate,

but necessary, since science is nothing but knowledge raised to the highest power, and

all knowledge implies a process of abstraction and generalisation: even the recognition of

an individual whom we see every day is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of

him formed by generalisation om his appearances in the past. Thus the science of man

is forced to abstract certain aspects of human nature and to consider them apart om

the concrete reality; or ratter it falls into a number of sciences, each of which considers

a single part of man's complex organism, it may be the physical, the intellectual, the

moral, or the social side of his being; and the general conclusions which it draws will

present a more or less incomplete picture of man as a whole, because the lines which

compose it are necessarily but a few picked out of a multitude.

In the present treatise Dr. Malinowski is mainly concerned with what at ﬁrst sight

might seem a purely economic activity of the Trobriand Islanders; but, with his usual

width of outlook and ﬁneness of perception, he is careful to point out that the curious

circulation of valuables, which takes place between the inhabitants of the Trobriand and

other islands, while it is accompanied by ordinary trade, is by no means itself a purely

commercial transaction; he shows that it is not based on a simple calculation of utility,

of proﬁt and loss, but that it satisﬁes emotional and aesthetic needs of a higher order

than the mere gratiﬁcation of animal wants. This leads Dr. Malinowski to pass some

severe strictures on the conception of the Primitive Economic Man as a kind of bogey

who, it appears, still haunts economic text-books and even extends his blighting inﬂu-

ence to the minds of certain anthropologists. Rigged out in cast-oﬀ garments of Mr.

Jeremy Bentham and Mr. Gradgrind, this horrible phantom is apparently actuated by

no other motive than that of ﬁlthy lucre, which he pursues relentlessly, on Spencerian

principles, along the line of least resistance. If such a dismal ﬁction is really regarded by

serious inquirers as having any counterpart in savage society, and not simply as a useful

abstraction, Dr. Malinowski's account of the ua in this book should help to lay the

  Argonauts of the Western Paciﬁc

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phantom by the heels; for he proves that the trade in useful objects, which forms part

of the ua system, is in the minds of the natives entirely subordinate in importance to

the exchange of other objects, which serve no utilitarian purpose whatever. In its combi-

nation of commercial enterprise, social organisation, mythical background, and magical

ritual, to say nothing of the wide geographical range of its operations, this singular in-

stitution appears to have no exact parallel in the existing anthropological record; but

its discoverer, Dr. Malinowski, may very well be right in surmising that it is probably

a type of institution of which analogous, if not precisely similar, instances will hereaer

be brought to light by further research among savage and barbarous peoples.

Not the least interesting and instructive feature of the ua , as it is described for

us by Dr. Malinowski, is the extremely important part which magic is seen to play in

the institution. From his description it appears that in the minds of the natives the

performance of magical rites and the utterance of magical words are indispensable for

the success of the enterprise in all its phases, om the felling of the trees out of which

the canoes are to be hollowed, down to the moment when, the expedition successfully

accomplished, the argosy with its precious cargo is about to start on its homeward voyage.

And incidentally we learn that magical ceremonies and spells are deemed no less necessary

for the cultivation of gardens and for success in ﬁshing, the two forms of industrial

enterprise which furnish the islanders with their principal means of support; hence the

garden magician, whose business it is to promote the growth of the garden produce by his

hocus-pocus, is one of the most important men in the village, ranking next aer the chief

and the sorcerer. In short, magic is believed to be an absolutely essential adjunct of every

industrial undertaking, being just as requisite for its success as the mechanical operations

involved in it, such as the caulking, painting and launching of a canoe, the planting of

a garden, and the setting of a ﬁsh-trap. „A belief in magic”, says Dr. Malinowski, „is

one of the main psychological forces which allow for organisation and systematisation of

economic eﬀort in the Trobriands”.

This valuable account of magic as a factor of fundamental economic importance for

the welfare and indeed for the very existence of the community should suﬃce to dispel

the erroneous view that magic, as opposed to religion, is in its nature essentially male-

ﬁcent and anti-social, being always used by an individual for the promotion of his own

selﬁsh ends and the iǌury of his enemies, quite regardless of its eﬀect on the common

weal. No doubt magic may be so employed, and has in fact probably been so employ-

ed, in every part of the world; in the Trobriand Islands themselves it is believed to be

similarly practised for nefarious purposes by sorcerers, who inspire the natives with the

deepest dread and the most constant concern. But in itself magic is neither beneﬁcent

nor maleﬁcent; it is simply an imaginary power of controlling the forces of nature, and

this control may be exercised by the magician for good or evil, for the beneﬁt or iǌu-

ry of individuals and of the community. In this respect, magic is exactly on the same

footing with the sciences, of which it is the bastard sister. They, too, in themselves,

are neither good nor evil, though they become the source of one or other according to

their application. It would be absurd, for example, to stigmatise pharmacy as antisocial,

because a knowledge of the properties of drugs is oen employed to destroy men as well

as to heal them. It is equally absurd to neglect the beneﬁcent application of magic and

to single out its maleﬁcent use as the characteristic property by which to deﬁne it. The

processes of nature, over which science exercises a real and magic an imaginary control,

are not aﬀected by the moral disposition, the good or bad intention, of the individu-

al who uses his knowledge to set them in motion. The action of drugs on the human

body is precisely the same whether they are administered by a physician or by a poiso-

ner. Nature and her handmaid Science are neither iendly nor hostile to morality; they

are simply indiﬀerent to it and equally ready to do the bidding of the saint and of the

sinner, provided only that he gives them the proper word of command. If the guns are

well loaded and well aimed, the ﬁre of the battery will be equally destructive, whether

the gunners are patriots ﬁghting in defence of their country or invaders waging a war of

uǌust aggression. The fallacy of diﬀerentiating a science or an art according to its appli-

cation and the moral intention of the agent is obvious enough with regard to pharmacy

  Argonauts of the Western Paciﬁc

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and artillery; it is equally real, though to many people apparently it is less obvious, with

regard to magic.

The immense inﬂuence wielded by magic over the whole life and thought of the

Trobriand Islanders is perhaps the feature of Dr. Malinowski's book which makes the

most abiding impression on the mind of the reader. He tells us that „magic, the attempt

of man to govern the forces of nature directly by means of a special lore, is all-pervading

and all-important in the Trobriands''; it is „interwoven into all the many industrial and

communal activities”; „all the data which have been so far mustered disclose the extreme

importance of magic in the ua . But if it were a questions of treating of any other

aspect of the tribal life of these natives, it would also be found that, whenever they

approach any concern of vital importance, they summon magic to their aid. It can be

said without exaggeration that magic, according to their ideas, governs human destinies;

that it supplies man with the power of mastering the forces of nature; and that it is his

weapon and armour against the many dangers which crowd in upon him on every side”.

Thus in the view of the Trobriand Islanders, magic is a power of supreme importance

either for good or evil; it can make or mar the life of man; it can sustain and protect

the individual and the community, or it can iǌure and destroy them. Compared to this

universal and deep-rooted conviction, the belief in the existence of the spirits of the dead

would seem to exercise but little inﬂuence on the life of these people. Contrary to the

general attitude of savages towards the souls of the departed, they are reported to be

almost completely devoid of any fear of ghosts. They believe, indeed, that the ghosts

return to their villages once a year to partake of the great annual feast; but „in general

the spirits do not inﬂuence human beings very much, for better or worse”; „there is

nothing of the mutual interaction, of the intimate collaboration between man and spirit

which are the essence of religious cult. This conspicuous predominance of magic over

religion, at least over the worship of the dead, is a very notable feature in the culture

of a people so comparatively high in the scale of savagery as the Trobriand Islanders. It

furnishes a esh proof of the extraordinary strength and tenacity of the hold which this

world-wide delusion has had, and still has, upon the human mind.

We shall doubtless learn much as to the relation of magic and religion among the

Trobrianders om the full report of Dr. Malinowski's researches in the islands. From the

patient observation which he has devoted to a single institution, and om the wealth

of details with which he has illustrated it, we may judge of the extent and value of the

larger work which he has in preparation. It promises to be one of the completest and

most scientiﬁc accounts ever given of a savage people.

J. G. Frazer.

The Temple, London, th March, .

  

thnoog is in the sadly ludicrous, not to say tragic, position, that at the very moment

when it begins to put its workshop in order, to forge its proper tools, to start ready for

work on its appointed task, the material of its study melts away with hopeless rapidity.

Just now, when the methods and aims of scientiﬁc ﬁeld ethnology have taken shape,

when men fully trained for the work have begun to travel into savage countries and study

their inhabitants — these die away under our very eyes.

The research which has been done on native races by men of academic training

has proved beyond doubt and cavil that scientiﬁc, methodic inquiry can give us results

far more abundant and of better quality than those of even the best amateur's work.

Most, though not all, of the modern scientiﬁc accounts have opened up quite new and

unexpected aspects of tribal life. They have given us, in clear outline, the picture of social

institutions oen surprisingly vast and complex; they have brought before us the vision

of the native as he is, in his religious and magical beliefs and practices. They have allowed

us to penetrate into his mind far more deeply than we have ever done before. From this

new material, scientiﬁcally hall-marked, students of comparative Ethnology have already

drawn some very important conclusions on the origin of human customs, beliefs and

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