3

5
A Little Glass of Rum
THE fregoing fble ha only one ec: tt it
illustates the disordered state of md into wh one u plunged by
te prolonged abnormality of te taveler's way of life. Bu te
problem h stll to be solved: how cte antopolo get fe of
te contradicton implict in te crcustance of bcoic? Und m
very nose, and at bdispositon, he ha a socety: bown. Why doe
he dede to dsdain it, reerving fr socete dt and deret fom
mown te patence and devoton which he mdeibrately with
fom b felow-ctens? It u not by chance tt te antropolog u
rarey on terms of neutralty wit bown socal group. Were he u a
missionary or an adator, he cbe preume t have idt
mmso entrey wit a certn order tt mbeerge are now
gven to it propagaton. And when bprofes onal actvity tae plae
on te scentc or higher academic leve, objeve nmby
c very probably b adduced to prove tat he uill- or wut
te socety into whic he wbm.He has, in fct, become an antro
pologist fr one of two resons: eter he hdit a practcl meod of
reconc b memberp of a group wit b sverely que
acceptance of it-or, more smply, he wise to mto advante an
muatttude of detachment whic halredy brought h a we say,
'half-way to meet' socete unke bown.
But if he tie to dstraight, he whave to mmwhete
he H rely justed in settng such great store by exotc sete (ad
te more exotc tey are, te more he w pre tem). b m not
rater a fncton of te disdn, not to say te hostlity, which bfeels
fr te customs of bown mieu? At home, te antropologist may b
a natural subversive, a conviced opponent of taditonal usage: but no
sooner hhe mfocus a socety deret fom mown mhe bome
respe of even te most conervatve prctce. Nor u mere
perversty: I have known antropologit who were confrmists,
)6!
]62 J0c cmm
Bu m Cu de retoely and at sond hand, as
a rt of Uhv a ma U own sO into te
t we invetg. t :s to te latter tat tey owe
auty have toug bof te mUrevolt against
Uo x,:tubmtey have made an addtonal conceson
t dO. UOtt ter own set a t would V
~ t b u dilemma u ineapable: eiter te anthro
p c t mnorms of mow group, in whic c te oters
c oly ie mhan ehemeral curioty in which tere u always
a emet Odipproval; or he mae mover completey to te
oj of mwin which c he c neer b perfectly objectve,
bm m g mto al see he cannot but ref
wtly or not, to one among tem. He cmD, tat i tO say, te
wit che rproache toe who queon te prlege st
pm voton.
I :st ban t worry souy abou Uat te tme of te ercd
sjou mte Atle which I have dbin my opg chaptrs.
m Mqu wet over O ructd, ha-bndoned r
d c whe um nor appatu had b chaed
eom.m Porto Y, b cu te OO
mm cmpy VD ejoy a quamonopoy of mc were
a wi whtelUand comiuplatd U.And
ye i Mqu, whe te anct wo bare sltd up wit
q m r w m vevet on te palat and had a dicous
st: in Port Ro Itw brut and vulgar. L:tbtat te mc
of mMq r was du to impute wh archa mcO
of mmd nong t db? Te cnuumu to my
way Otg, te paradox of cvton: we kow that it magic
dee fom U prc wt it of crn impurte, and ye we
c ne Ute impuls t clen up prey tose elemet whic
ge :t:uc.We are doubly right but that very rhtes prove us
wO. For we are right to w to mOm our producon and cut
manuc c Bu we are a right when we tesure some of
te impfeons wh we are doing our b to elte. Sety
st uin short, to deoy prey tose things which give it most
favou. T contadicon doe not seem to apply so directy to
se me our own. For as we are ourselve implicated in te
eoluton of our own sety, we are to some extent in te do wit
te ac. Our stuaton compels us to te certain cour of acon
towards certin OO, and tere u not we c do to preent m.
A Jnlc Llc:: of um
But whe anothe s cme under sy, uce: obje
ivity, out of t quon b, u ours fr te a. we Dd
ben aget in te tormatons in progres , we beome mere
spetators, athe more able to etmate the ston in tat te balance
of fture and past, which had ben pret t us as a moral dc,
C now b a pretext fr aeetc contemplaton and dUc
meditaton.
m tus tg te matter out, I may have sown jut where te
contadicton uC. I may have show where Jt began, and how we
managed to come to terms wit it. But I have cy not put an ed
to it. Must we terefre concude that it i wit us fr eer? Peple
have sometme said so, and inferred fom Uthat our wor was quit
pointes. Our vocaton exresed it tey s i a l fr
sete and culture very diferent fom our ow. It cu u in H
to overetiate te one at te ex of m oter. Surely Upoint
to a basc incomcy? How could we anouce that te soe
were 'important', Uour judgment were not bad on te value of te
sety whh insired us to begin our rerche? We ourseve were
te product of cert inepabl norm; and uwe cmed t bable
to ct one fr of soety in it reaton t anoter we wee
merey c, in a samefce and roundabout way, tat our
socety was superior t ate oters.
Behind te argument of te worty spokeme tee was
notg but an eeable play upn words: tey pretded tat myst
:ton (which ty tve s of practse) u contary of
my (wit which tey, qute wrongly, reroa u). O
quie of archloy and antropology show that c ctons
-sme of tm now va otes mWus-ve kow qut
wel how Ot solve problems wit Vwe are sg ling. To
take one mce only: it unow only a fw yers Dwe dvered te
phyc and phyolo ppl on which a hI`
ce and ma e of m.bte Cc in U conitons, it u
nt fom long cnditoning, or fom an ectonal phy cn
tuton, bu fom Udisvey of sietc prinpl of whch we had
untl laty no ide at . b u was m tat it m exloded te
prteons of tho elorers who had cmed to have 'improved
upon' Emo cOe: te reult were te opposte of tose that had
b hopd fr. o had alredy arrived at te perfet
soluton: atat we ne to b conviced of , was to grasp te
teory which lay beat it.
J|c cmni
The difcuty does not lie there. Certain social groups must be
adjudged superior to ourselves, if the comparison rests upon teir
success i reaching objectves comparable to our own; but, i the same
instant, we ear the right to pass judgment upon them, and therefre
to condemn tose other objectves which do not coincide with our
own. Implicitly we Cfr our own socety, fr its customs, and fr
its norms, a positon of privilege, since an observer fom a diferent
social group would pass derent verdicts upon tose same examples.
This beig so, how can we C fr our studies the rank of a
science? If we are to get back to a positon of objectvity, we should
abstain fom al judgments of this sort. We have to admit that human
societes can coose among a gamut of possibilites. These choices
canot be compared with each other: one is as good as anoter. But
then tere arises a new problem; fr if in the fast istance, we are
threatened by obscurantsm, in the frm of a blind rejection of anything
that is not our own, there is also an alterative danger: that of an
eclectcism which bids us reject nothig at a, when fced with an
alien culture. Even if that society shoud itself protest against the cruelty,
te ijustce, and the poverty which characterize it, we must not pass
judgment. But as tese abuses also exst among ourselves, how shall
we have te right to fght tem at home if when tey appear elsewhere,
we make no move to protest?
The antropologist who is critc at home and conformist elsewhere
is terefre in a contadictory positon. But beneath this contadicton
is anoter, fom which it is even less easy to ecape. If he wishes to
contribute to te improvement of m own social system he cannot but
condemn, wherever he comes upon tem, conditons analogous to
those which he deplores at home. He loses, in so doig, all Cto be
objective and impartal. Conversely te detachment enjoined upon him
by moral scruple, and by the rigorous methods of science, Wprevent
mfom :nding fut with mown society, once it is taken fr granted
that his business is to know, not to pass judgment. Te man who takes
action in mown country cannot hope to understand te word outside:
te man who takes all kowledge fr m ambiton must give up te
idea of ever changing anythig at home.
If te contadicton were insurmountable the antopologist would
be wrong to heitate over te alteratve which are open to m.He is
what he has chosen to be: an antopologist; terefre he must accept
the mutated condition which is te price of his vocation. He has
cosen and must accept the consequences of m choice: hs place lies
A !t//lc Llc::of Rum
with 'the oters', and his role is to understand them. Never can he act
their name, fr teir very otheress prevents him fom thg or
wlg in teir place: to d so would be tantamount to identfing
himself wt them. He must also resign hself to taking no acton
his own society, fr far of adoptng a partisan's positon in respect of
values which may recur in oter societies: such a positon could not
but then prejudice his judgment. M inital choice alone w remain,
and he w make no attempt to justf tat choice. It is a pure, a
motveless act: or, if motivated at all, w derive fom exteral
consideratons, borrowed fom the history or te character of each one
of us.
Luckily we have not yet reached that point. We are on the edge of
the abyss, and we have peeped into it, but we can stll look fr a way
out. And get out we can, provided tt we are not too exteme our
judgment and are willing to phase the dicuty in two stages.
No socety is perfct. Each nwthin itself by nature, an impurity
incompatible wit the norms to which it lays C: this impurity fnds
outlet in element of injustce, cruelty, and insensitivity. How are we
to evaluate tose elements? Anthropological enquiry can provide te
answer. For while te comparison of a smal number of societe w
make tem seem very diferent fom one anoter, tese diferences w
seem smaller and smaler as the feld of investgaton is enlarged. It w
eventually become plain tat no human society is fdamentally good:
but neiter is any of tem fdamentally bad; all ofer teir members
certain advantages, though we must bear in mind a residue of iniquty,
apparently more or less constant in its importance, which may corre
pond to a specifc inerta which ofers resistance, on te level of socia
lif, to all attempt at organation.
This may surprise te habitual reader of travel-books, who deight
in hearing of te 'barbarous' customs of this people or tat. But these
superfcial reactons are soon put in teir place, once te fc have been
correctly interpreted and re-established m a wder perspectve. Take
te case of cannibalism, which is of all savage practices the one we fnd
the most horrible and disgustng. We must set aside those cases in
which people eat one anoter fr !c of any oter meat-as was te
case in certain part of Polynesia. No societyis proof, moraly speaking,
against the demands of hunger. m tmes of starvaton men W eat
literally anythng, as we latey saw i the Nazi extermaton-camps.
There remain to be considered what we may call the positve
frms of cannibaism-tose whose origins are mystcal, magical, or
2B
3
86
The Retur
religious. By eatng part of the body of an ancestor, or a fagment of an
eemy corpse, te cannibal hoped to acqure the virtues, or perhaps to
neutralize the power, of te dead man. Such rites were often observed
wit great discreton, te vital mouthful being made up of a small
quantty of puverized organic matter mxed, on occasion, with oter
frms of fod. And even when te element of cannibalism was more
openly avowed, we must acknowledge tat to condemn such customs
on moral grounds implies eiter belief in a bodily resurrecton, which
would be compromised by te material destructon of the corpse, or
te afrmation of a m between body and spirit, and of the resulting
dualism. These convictions are of the same nature as those in the name
of which ritual cannibalism is practsed, and we have no good reason
fr prefrring the one to te other-all the more so as te disregard fr
te sanctity of death, with which we reproach the cannibal, is certainly
no greater, and indeed arguably much les, tan tat which we tolerate
in our European 'anatomy lessons'.
But above all we must realize tat certain of our own usages, if
investigated by an observer fom a diferent society, would seem to
m similar in kind to te cannibalism which we consider 'uncivilized'.
I am tg here of our judicial and penitentary customs. If we were
to look at tem fom outside it would be temptng to distguish two
opposing types of society: tose which practse cannibalism-who
believe, that is to say, that te only way to neutralize people who are
te repositories of certain redoubtable powers, and even to t them
t one's own advantage, i to absorb them into one's own body.
Second would come tose whic, like our own, adopt what might be
called anthropoemia (fom te Greek emein, to vomit). Faced wit the
same problem, they have chosen the opposite soluton. They exel
these frmidable beings fom the body public by ioktng them fr a
time, or fr ever, denying them all contact wit humanity, in establish
ments devised fr tat express purpose. In most of te societes which
we would call primitve this custom would inspire the profundest
horror: we should seem to them barbarian in te same degree as we
impute to them on te ground of their no-more-tan-symmetrical
customs.
Societes which seem to us frocious may tu out, when examined
fom another point of view, to have their humane and benevolent
sides. Take te Plains Indians of Nort America: they are doubly
signifcant-frst because some of them practised a moderated frm of
cannibalim, and second because tey are one of te fw primitve
A Little Glass of Rum
peoples who were endowed with an organized police frce. Ths frce,
which also had to mete out justice, woud never have imagied that
the punishments accorded to te guty could take the frm of a
severance of social links. An Indian who broke te laws of his tibe
would be sentenced to the destructon of all his belongings-his tent
and his horses. But at the same tme the police became indebted to him
and were required, in fct, to compensate him fr the harm he had been
made to sufer. This restituton put te criminal, once again, in debt to
the group, and he was obliged to acknowledge this by a series of gifs
which the entire community-including the police-would help him
to get together. These reciprocities contnued, by way of gifts and
counter-gifts, until the inital disorder created by the crime and its
punshment had been completely smooted over and order was once
again complete. Not only are such customs more humane than our
own, but they are more coherent, even if we are to frmulate the
problem in terms of modem psychology. It would seem logical that
in return fr the 'infntilaton' of the guty man whic is implied in
te noton of puishment, we should also acknowledge tat he is
enttled to a gratifcaton of some sort. If this is not done, the inital
step loses its efectiveness and may even bring about results directly
contrary to those hoped fr in te frst place. The summit of absurdity
in this context is to do as we do and treat the guilty simultaneously as
children, in that they are meet fr puhment, and as grown-ups, in
tat we refuse them all subsequent consolaton. It is grotesque to believe
that we have made a 'great spiritual advance' simply because, instead
of eating our fllow human beings, we prefer to mutilate tem, both
physically and morally.
If analyses of this sort are sincerely and metodically conducted
they have two results. First, tey encourage us to take a level-headed
and unbiassed view of customs and ways of lif remote fom our own
-witout, however, attributing to tem absolute merits such as no
society can claim to possess. Second, they dissuade us fom taking fr
granted te 'rightness' or 'naturalness' of our own customs, as can easily
be the case if we kow of no oters, or kow of tem only partly
and with bias. Anthropological analysis tends, admittedly, to enhance
the prestge of oter societies and diminish tat of our ow: in tat
respect its action is contradictory. But refection W show, I think,
that U contadicton is more apparent Ureal.
It has sometmes been said that only in wester society have anthro
pologists been produced. Therein, it was said, lay its greatness;
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3
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The Return
antropology might queton al its other merits, but here at least was
one befre which we could not but bow our heds, since, but fr that,
we ourselves would not exist. But the contary argument could also
be sustained: that uthe West has produced anthropologists, it is because
it was so tormented by remorse that it had to compare its own image
with that of other societes, in the hope that they would either display
the same shortcomings or help the West to explan how these defcts
could have come into being. But even if it is true that the comparison
of our own society wit al others, present or past, w lead to the
collapse of the fundatons on which it rests-even so, others will meet
te same fte. The general average of which I spoke earlier throws into
relief the exstence of a fw sociological ogres, among whom we
ourselves must be numbered. Nor is man accident: ifit were not that
we deserved, and fr that matter stll deserve, frst prize in this grim
competton, anthropology would never have come into being; we
should have flt no need of it. Uanthropology cannot take a detached
view of our civton, or declare itself not responsible fr that
civilzaton' s evls, it is because its very existence is unintelligible unless
we regard it as an attempt to redeem it. Yet other societes have shared
in the same original sin, toug tey are doubtless few in number, and
fewer stlas we descend the ladder of progress. I need cite one instance
only: that open wound on the fa of Americanism, the Aztecs. Their
maniacal obsession with blood and torture is a uversal trait, but
comparison alows us to defne it in their case as excessive, even if it
can be exlained in terms of the necessity of tang the far of death.
That obsession puts them on a par with ourselves; fr, if tey were not
alone in their iquity, they neverteless stand, as we ourselves stand in
other respects, on the side of immoderaton.
And yet this se1iicted self-condemnaton does not mean that we
award a first prize fr excellence to this or that society, present or past,
localized at a determible point in space or tme. That would be a
great injutce: fr we should be fg to. reaize that if we had been
members of that prize-wn g society we might have fud it
intolerable and condemned it, just as we condemn the one to which we
belong today. Is it then the case that anthropology tends to condemn
all frms of social order, whatever they may be, and to glorif a
conditon of Nature which can only be corrupted by the establishment
of social order? 'Don't tust te man who comes to put things in order,'
said Diderot, whose positon has jut been stated. For mthe history
of our race could be summed up as fllows: 'Once there was natural
A Little Glass of Rum
Man. Witin that natural Man, an artificial Man was later introduced.
Between the two, war broke out, and wll go on raging till lf comes
to an end.' This conception is absurd. Whoever says 'Man', says
'Language', and whoever says 'Lang1age', says 'Society'. The Poly
nesians visited by Bougainville (and it was in the 'Supplement' to
Bougainville's travels that Diderot put frward his theory) lived in
society every bit as much as we do. Ayone who questons this is
moving couter to the direction in which anthropological analysis
would have us go.
Tug over these problems in my mid, I become convinced
that Rousseau's is the only answer to them. Rousseau is much decried
these days; never has his work been so lttle known; and he has to fce,
above all, the absurd accusaton that he glorifed te 'state of Nature'
fr its own sae. (That may have been Diderot' s error, but it was never
Rousseau's.) What Rousseau said was the exact contary; and he
remains the only man who shows us how to get clear of the con
tradictions into which his adversaries have led u. Rousseau, of all the
p
hiloso
p
hes, came nearest to being an anthropologist. He never travelled
in distant countries, certaiy; but his documentaton was as complete
as it could be at that time and, ue Voltaire, he brought his know
ledge alve by the keenness of his interest in peasant customs and
popular thought. Rousseau is our master and our. brother, great as has
been our ingratitude towards m; and every page of this book could
have been dedicated to him, had the object thus profered not been
unworthy of his great memory. For there is only one way in which
we can escape the contradiction inherent in the notion of positon of te
anthropologist, and that is by refrmulating, on our own account, the
intellectual procedures which allowed Rousseau t move frward fom
the ruins left by the Discours sur l'Origine de l'Inegalit to the ample
design of the Social Contract, of whic Emile reveals the secret. He it is
who showed u how, afer we have destroyed every exsting order, we
can stll discover te principles which allow us to erect a new order in
their stead.
Never did Rousseau make Diderot's mistake-that of exalting the
'natural Man'. There is no risk of his confusing te state of Nature with
the state of Socety; he knows that the latter is inherent i manind,
but that it brings evils with it, and that te queston to be solved is
whether or not these evils are themselves inherent in that state. We must
go beyond the evidence of te inustces of abuses to which the social
order gives rise and discover te unshakable basis of human society.
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The Return
There are two ways in which anthropology contibutes to this quest.
It shows that tat base cannot be fund in our own civton: of 1
te societe we can examine ours is indeed perhaps the one frthest
fom it. Secondly, by eabling us to distnguish the characteristcs
common to te majority of human societies, it helps us to consttute a
model, to which no society corresponds exactly, but which defnes
closey the direction in whch our investgatons should be oriented.
Rousseau thought that the image nearest to it, fr experimental
purposes, was what we now call the neolthic age. I am inclined to
Uthat he was right. mthe neolthic age, Man had already made most
of the inventons which are indispensable to his security. We have seen
why writng need not be included among these; to say that writing is
a doubleedged weapon is not a mark of 'primitivism'; te cyber
netcians of our own day have rediscovered that tuth. During the
neolithc age, Man put himself beyond the reach of cold and huger; he
acquired leisure to m; and although he was more or less at the
mercy of diease it u not certain that our advances in the feld of
hygiene have done more tan transfer to other mechanisms the
reponsibility of maintg a certain measure of demographic
equilibrium: te epidemics whch contributed to that equilibrium were
no more dreadfl u the fmines and wars of exterminaton which
later took their place.
m tat myth-minded age, Man was no more fee than he is today;
but it was his humannes alone which kept him eslaved. As he had ony
a very restricted control over Nature, he was protected, and to a certain
degree emancipated, by the protectve cushion of his dreams. As and
when these dreams tued into knowledge, so did Man's power in
crease; U gave us, i I may so put it, the 'upper hand' over the
universe, and we stll take an immense pride in it. But what is it, in
reality, if not the subjectve awareness that humanity is being pro
gresively more and more sundered fom the physical universe? The
great deterg fctors in that universe are no longer acting upon
us as redoubtable strangers; rather is their operation not now through
the intermediacy of thought, as they colonize us in the interests of the
silent world whose agents we have now become?
Rousseau was probably right when he held that it would have been
better fr our happines i humanity had kept to 'the middle groud
between the indolence of the primitive state and the questng activity
to which we are prompted by our amour-
p
ro
p
re'. That midde state
was, he said, 'te best fr Man'; and only some 'ill-boding turn of
A Little Glass o Rum
39
1
events' could have caused us to leave it. That tum of events was fund
in the
development of mechanical civilizations-a phenomenon doubly
exceptional in that it was frst, unique, and second, belated. And yet it
remains clear that the middle state of which Rousseau wrote is in no
way a primitve condition. It presupposes and tolerates a certain degree
of progress; and although no society as yet described correponds to its
privileged image, even if 'the example of the savages, who have almost
always been fund at this point of development, seems to conrm that
mankind was designed to remain at it fr ever'.
The study of these savages does not reveal a Utopian state of
Nature; nor does it make us aware of a perfct socety hidden deep i
the frests. It helps us to construct a theoretical mode of a society which
corresponds to none that can be observed in reality, but whelp us to
disentangle 'what in the present nature of Man is origina, and what is
artcial'. It also helps us 'to know closely a state which no longer
exsts, which may never have existed, which probably never wexst,
and of which we must, none the less, have an exact noton if we are to
judge our present situaton correctly'. I have already quoted this in
order to bring out the signcance of my observations among the
Nambikwara; fr Rousseau's tl1ought, ever in advance of his time, does
not dissociate theoretcal sociology fom those researches in the
laboratory, or in the feld, which he knew to be necessary. 'Natural
Man' does not pre-date Socety; nor is he outside it. Our task is to re
discover the 'natural Man' in his relaton to the social state outside of
which our human condition cannot be imagined; the anthropologist
must draw up, therefre, the programme of the experiments which 'are
necessary if we are to understand natural Man'; and he must' determine
the best way of makig these experiments WUSociety itself'.
But this model-and here les Rousseau's solution-is eteral and
universal. Other societes may not be better than our own; even if we
believe them to be so we have no way of proving it. But knowing
them better does none the less help us to detach ourselves fom our own
society. It is not that our society is absolutely evil, or that others are
not evil also; but merely that ours is te only society fom which
we have to disentangle ourselves. m doig so, we put ourselves in a
positon to attempt the second phase of our undertaking: that in which,
while not clinging to eements fom ay one partcular society, we
make use of one and of them in order to distnguish those principles
of social lif which may be applied to the refrm of our own customs,
and not of those of socetes freign to our own. m relation to our
39
2
The Retr
own socety, that is to say, we stand in a position of privilege which
is exacty contrary to that whch I have just described; fr our own
society is the only one which we can transfrm and yet not destroy,
since the changes whch we should introduce would come fom within.
There is a risk, certainly, in placing beyond space and tme the
model fom which we take ou inspiraton: the risk of uderestimating
te reality of progress. Our argument u, in brief that men have always
and everywhere undertaken the same task, and assigned to themselves
te same object; all that has difered is the means employed. I must own
that this atttude does not at all disturb me; it seems the closest to the
fcts, as they are revealed to us by history and anthropology; and above
all it seems to me to yied results. The zealots of progress run the risk
of underestmatng, and thus of knowing too lttle about, the immense
riches which our race has accumulated to one side and the other of the
narrow frrow on which they keep their eyes :xed. By overvaluing
the importance of what has been done in the past, tey depreciate what
still remains to be done. Uour race has concentrated on one task, and
one alone-that of building a society in whch Man can lve-then
the sources of stength on whch our remote ancestors drew are present
also in ourseves. A the stakes are stl on the board, and we can take
them up at any tme we please. Whatever was done, and done badly,
can be begu aover again: 'The golden age which blind superstiton
situated behind or ahead of us is in us.' Human brotherhood acquires
a palpable signifcance when we fnd our image of it confrmed in the
poorest of tribes, and when that tribe ofers us an experience whch,
when joined with many hudreds of others, has a lesson to teach us.
That lesson may even come to u with a milleniary fesness; fr,
knowing as we do that fr thousands of years past mankind has done
notng but repeat itsel we shall attain that noble cast of thought
which, transcending all that has been done and redone, assigns as the
startng-point of our refections that indefnable grandeur whch is the
mark of true beggs. To be a man means, fr each of us, member
shp of a class, a society, a county, a contnent, and a civilization. For
those of u who are earth-bound Europeans, our adventurings into the
heart of the New World have a lesson to teach us: that the New World
was not ours to detoy, and yet we destroyed it; and that no other w
be vouchsafd to us. mgrasping these truths we come fce to fce with
ourselves. Let us, at any rate, set them out as they frst appeared to us,
in that place, and at that moment in time, when our world lost the
chance that was stl open to it: tat of choosing between its missions.
3
6 Conclusion
IT WAS in Asia, many years later, tat-fr myself at
any rate-te problems suggested by this book were to fnd their
soluton. DSeptember 1

j0 was in a Mogh village in the Chittagong

htracts. For some days had been watching the women as they went
each morning to the temple with fod fr the bonzes. During the
siesta hours listened to the strokes on the gong which punctuated the
prayers, and to the chidren's voices softly itong the Burmese
alphabet. The kyong stood at the edge of the vilage on the top of a
little wooded hilock lie those wth which Tibetan painters like to
garsh their fr distances. At its fot was the jedi, or pagoda. U tat
poor vilage it was no more than a circular earthen constructon whch
rose fom the ground in seven concentric stages, rising step by step, in a
square encosure trellised wit bamboo. We took of our shoes befre
climbing up, and the moistened surface of the clay was very agreeable
to the fet. Here and there on the steep litte slope we could see te
stalks of pineapples that had been wrenched of the day befre by
people fom the village who flt it to be improper that their priests,
whose needs were looked to by the lay popuaton, should also allow
themselves to grow fuit. The top of te hilock looked lie a tny
town-square surrounded on three sides by straw hangars, beneath
whch were shelering large objects made of bamboo and hung with
many-coloured paper. These Lm creatons were made fr
use in
local processions. On the furth side stood te temple itsef it stood on
stakes like te houses of te vlage, and difred fom them only Hthat
it was bigger and that a thatch-roofd square featue dominated the
main part of the building. Afer our upward scramble trough the mud,
the ritual ablutions came quite naturally and seemed t have no
religious signicance. We went into the temple. There was no light
but that whch came dow fom the top of the lanter frmed by the
holow cage in te centre, just above where the altar was bedecked with
J

J
3>+
The Return
standards of rag or mattng. Certain glimmers also penetrated the
tatch of the walls. About fy brass statues stood about on the altar
and beside it was hung a gong. On the walls we could see one or two
pious chromolithographs and the skul of a stag. The floor was made
up of large sectons of bamboo, split down the mddle and plaited
together. Shny fom the contnual movement of bare fet, it yielded
to the touch as sofly as any carpet. A peaceful bar-like atmosphere
prevailed and there was a smell of hay. The simple, spacious room
mght have been an abandoned hay-loft; and when combined with the
courtesy of te two bonzes, erect, with their two straw pallets on
bedsteads, and with the touchg care and devotion which had been
lavished on the assemblage or manufacture of a the accessories of
worship, all this brought me nearer than ever befre to having some
idea of te meaning of a sanctuary. 'You ned not do as I do,' said my
companion as he prostrated himself fur tmes befre the altar: and I,
respectng his opinion, remained motonless. This was rather fom
discreton than fom amour-
p
ro
p
re: he knew that I did not subscribe to
m fait, and I should have been afaid of abusing the ritual gestures
had I given hm to believe that I thought them no more than con
ventions. And yet, fr once, I should have felt no embarrassment had I
fllowed his example. Between that frm of worshp and myself there
was no misuderstanding to get in the way. It was not a queston of
bowing down to idols, or of adoring a supposedly superatural order
of things, but simply of paying homage to decisive refections which
had been frmed twenty-fve centuries earlier by a thker, or by the
society which created his legend. To those refections my civiizaton
could contribute only by confrming them.
For what, afer all, have I leart fom the masters I have listened to,
the philosophers I have read, the societies I have investgated, and that
very Science in whch te West takes such a pride? Simply a fagmentary
lesson or two which, if laid end to end, would reconstitute the
meditatons of the Sage at the fot of his tree. When we make an
efrt to understand, we destroy the object of our attachment, substi
tutng another whose nature is quite diferent. That other object re
quires of u anoter efrt, which in its tu destroys the second object
and substtutes a third-and so on untl we reach the only enduring
Presence, which u that in which all distncton between meaning and
te absence of meaning disappears: and it is fom that Presence that we
started in the frst place. It u now two thousand fve hundred years
since men discovered and frmulated thee truts. Since then we have
Conclusion
395
discovered nothg new-unless it be that whenever we investgated
what seemed to be a way out, we met with a frther proof of the
conclusions fom which we had tied to escape.
Of course I am also aware of the dangers of a state of resignaton
tat has been arrived at too hastly. This great religion of not-knowg
ness is not based upon our incapacity to understand. It bears witess,
rather, to our natural gif, raising us to the point at whch we discover
truth in the guise of the mutual exclusiveness of being and knowing.
And, by a frter audacity, it has achieved sometg that, esewhere,
only Marxism has brought of: it has reonciled th problem of meta
physics with the problem of human behaviour. Its schsm appeared on
the sociological leve, in that te fudamental point of dif erence
between the Great and the Little Vehice is whether or not we should
believe that the salvation of any one idividual depends on te
salvation of humanity as a whole.
And yet the historical solutions of Buddhist morality lead to a
ch ing alteratve: either Man must answer 'Yes' to the queston I have
just outlined, in which case he must enter a monastery; or he U
diferently and gets of lightly with te practice of a virtuous egoism.
But injustce, poverty, and sufering exst: and, by exstng, provide
an intermediary solution. We are not alone, and it is not wit our
control eiter to remain deaf and blind to the rest of mand, or to
plead guty, in ourselves, fr all humanity. Buddsm can remain
perfctly coherent and, at the same time, respond to appeals fom
witout. Perhaps even, in a vast secton of te world, it has fund the
missing link in the chain. For if te last moment in te dialectical
process which leads to enightenment is of value, so also are athose
moments whch precede and are similar to it. The absolute 'No' to
meaning is te last of a series of stages which leads fom a lesser to a
greater meaning. The last step needs, and at the same tme validates,
all tose whch went befre it. m its own way, and on its own level,
each of them corresponds to a tuth. Between Marxst critcism which
sets Man fee fom hs :rst chais, and Buddist criticism, whc
completes that liberation, there i neither opposition nor contradicton.
(The Marxst teaches that the apparent signicance of Man's condition
wvanish te moment he agrees to enarge the object tat he has under
consideraton.) Marxsm and Buddhism are doing the same thg, but
at diferent levels. The passage between te two extreme is guaranteed
by all those advances in knowledge tat our race has accomplished in
the last two thousand years, thanks to an indissoluble movement of
39
6
The Retur
thought which runs fom East to West and, perhaps ony to conrm its
origin, hr removed fom one to the other. Just as belief and super
sttons dissolve when we try to uclearly in our minds the truth about
human relatons, so does morality give way to history, and fuid frms
give way to constructons, and creaton give way to nothingness. We
have only to t te it move back upon itself to discover its
symmetry; its parts can be superimposed one upon the other, and the
stages through whic we have already passed are not cancelled, but
rater confrmed, by those which succeed them.
As he moves frward within his environment, Man takes with hm
all the positons that he boccupied in the past, and all those that he
w occupy in the fture. He i everhere at the same tme, a crowd
which, in te act of moving frward, yet recapitulates at every instant
every step that it b ever taken in the past. For we lve in several
worlds, each more true than the one wthin it, and each flse in relation
to that witn which it is itself enveloped. Some of these worlds may
be apprehended in acton, others exst because we have them in our
thoughts: but the apparent contradictoriness of their co-existence is
reolved by the fct that we are constained to accord meang to those
worlds which are nearer to us, and to refuse it to those more distant.
Truth lies rather in the progressive expansion of meang: but an
exansion conducted inwards fom without and pushed home to
exlosion-point.
As an anthopologist I am no longer, therefre, the only person to
sufer fom a contradiction which is proper to humanity as a whole
and bears witn itself the reason fr its exstence. Only when I isolate
the two extremes does te contradiction st persist: fr what is the use
of acton, if the tg which guides that acton leads to the discovery
of meaninglessness? But that discovery cannot be made immediately:
it must be thought, and I cannot U it all at once. There may be
twelve stages, as in te Boddhi; but whether they are fwer, or more
numerous, they exst ra single whole, and if! am to get to the end of
them, I shall be called upon contnually to live trough situations, each
of whch demands sometng of me: I owe myself to mankind, just as
much as to .nowledge. History, politcs, the social and economic
universe, the physical world, even the sky-all surround me in
concentric circles, and I can only escape fom those circes in thought i
I concede to each of them some part of my being. Like the pebble
which marks the surfce of the wave with cicles as it passes through it,
I must throw myself into the water i I am to plumb the depths.
Conclusion
3>
The world began without the human race and it will end without
it. The insttutions, manners, and customs whch I shall have pent my
lf in cataloguing and trying to uderstand are an ephemeral efores
cence of a creative process in relation to whch they are meaningless,
unles
s it be that they allow humanity to play its detined role. That role
qoes not, however, assign to our race a position of independence. Nor,
even if Man himself is condemned, are hs vain eforts directed towards
the arresting of a universal process of decle. Far fom it: hs role is
itself a mache, brought perhaps to a greater point of perfcton than
any other, whose activity hastens the disintegration of an initial order
and precipitates a powerfully organized Matter towards a conditon of
inerta whic grows ever greater and w one day prove definitve.
From the day when he frst leared how to breathe and how to keep
himself alive, through the discovery of fre and right up to the in
venton of the atomic and thermonuclear devices of the present day,
Man has never-save ony when he reproduce himsef-cone other
than cheerfuly dismantle million upon mllion of structures and reduce
their elements to a state in which they can no longer be reintegrated.
No doubt he has built cties and brought the soil to fuition; but if we
examine these actvities closely we shall fnd that tey also are inerta
producing machnes, whose scale and speed of acton are itely
greater than the amount of organization implied in them. As fr the
creatons of the human mind, they are meaningful only in reaton to
that mind and will fall into nothngness as soon as it ceases to exst.
Taken as a whole, therefre, civilization can be described as a pro
digiously complicated mechanism: tempting , as it would be to regard
it as our universe's best hope of survival, its true fucton
to produce
what physicists call entropy: inerta, that is to say. Every scrap of
conversaton, every line set up in type, establishes a communicaton
between two interlocutors, levelling what had previously existed on
two diferent planes and had had, fr tat reason, a greater degree of
organizaton. 'Entropology', not anthropology, should be te word fr
the discipline that devotes itself to the study of this process of disinte
graton in its most highly evolved frms.
Ad yet I exist. Not in any way, admittedly, as a individual: fr
what am I, in that respect, but a constanty renewed stake mthe struggle
between the society, frmed by the several milon nerve-cells which
take shelter in the zmof the brain, ad my body, which serves that
society as a r
obot? Neiter psychology, nor metaphysics, nor art c
provide me with a refge; fr one and all are myts subject, within
The Return
and without, to that new kind of sociology which will arise one day
and treat tem as severey as has our earlier one. Not merely is the frst
person singular detestable: tere is no room fr it between 'ourseves'
and 'nothing'. And if i the end, I opt fr 'ourselves', although it is no
more tan an appearance, it because uless I destroy myself-an act
which would wipe out the conditons of the decision I have to make
tere ureally only one choice to be made: between tat appearance and
nothing. But no sooner have I chosen than, by that very choice, I take
on mysef, ueevedy, my conditon as a man. Thus lberated fom
an itelectual pride whose ftty is only equaled by that of its object,
I also agree to subordate its Camto the objectve will-to-emancipa
ton of tat multtude of human begs who are st denied the means
of choosig teir own destny.
Man is not alone i the uverse, any more tan te individual is
alone i the group, or any one society alone among other societes.
Even uthe rainbow of human cultues should go down fr ever ito
the abyss which we are so insaney creatng, tere will stremain open
to us-provided we are alive and te world is i exstence-a precarious
arch tat points towards the inaccessible. The road which it indicates
to us is one tat leads directly away fom ou present serfdom: ad
even if we cannot set of along it, merey to contemplate it will procure
us the only grace that we know how to deserve. The grace to call a
halt, tat to say: to check te impulse which prompts Man always to
block up, one afer another, such :ssues as may be open i the blank
wall of necessity and to round of m achievement by slammg shut
te doors of his own prison. This is the grace fr which every society
longs, irrespectve of its belef, its poltcal regime, its level of
civilaton. It stands, in every case, fr leisure, and recreation, and
feedom, and peace of body and md. On this opportuity, this chance
of fr once detaching oneself fom te implacable process, lf itself
depends. Farewell to savages, ten, frewel to journeying! And
istead, durg the brief intervals i which humanity can bear to
iterrupt its hive-like labours, let us grasp the essence of what our
species has been and st , beyond tought and beneath society: an
essence tat may be vouchsafd to us in a meral more beautifl than
any work of Ma; i the scent, more subty evolved than our books,
tat lingers i the heart of a lily; or in the wik of an eye, heavy with
patence, serenity, and mutul frgiveness, that sometmes, through an
ivoluntary understandg, one can echange with a cat.