[88]
It has been said of some peoples of lowly culture that they have no
conception of merely mechanical causation, and that every material
object is regarded by them as animated in the same sense as among
ourselves common opinion regards the higher animals as animated. On
the difficult question whether such a statement is true of any people
we will not presume to offer an opinion; but we do not think that it
could be truthfully made about any of the peoples of Borneo. It would
be absurd to deny all recognition or knowledge of mechanical causation
to people who show so much ingenuity in the construction of houses,
boats, weapons, and a great variety of mechanical devices, such as
traps, and in other operations involving the intelligent application
of mechanical principles. These operations show that, though they
may be incapable of describing in abstract and general terms the
principles involved, they nevertheless have a nice appreciation of
them. If a trap fails to work owing to its faulty construction, the
trapper treats it purely as a mechanical contrivance and proceeds
to discover and rectify the faulty part. It is true that in this
and numberless similar situations a man's movements may be guided by
his observation of omens; but if, after obtaining good omens, he has
success in trapping, he does not attribute the successful operation of
the trap to any, activity other than its purely mechanical movements;
though it may be, and probably in some such cases is, true that the
Kayan believes the omen bird to have somehow intervened to direct
the animal towards the trap, or to prevent the animal being warned
against it.
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