his relatively undeveloped intelligence, has as good a chance as we have of discriminating accurately and soundly between his better and his worse impulses. But, as we have just seen, he is at least capable of giving to the cult of power for power's sake an ennobling interpretation. For he recognizes a spiritual kind of power, whereby we may become masters of that inner world which is the true kingdom of man.
Indeed, I believe, with my friend Mr. M'Dougall, that the emotional nature of man is on the whole so stable as to vary little in its most characteristic manifestations from age to age and from race to race. Thus, even in a psychological sense, we are justified in speaking of the everlasting values. At heart a man, be he civilized or savage, knows whether he is worthy or unworthy of his own self-respect, whether he has or has not a right to rejoice in the plenitude and strength of his inward being. He may rank as a great lord, yet know himself a lackey; may see the buffoon's face in the glass while he paints it up for the part of stage-hero.
When a king was raised to the throne in Madagascar, he must cry aloud three times: 'Have I the power?' Whereupon the assembled people cried back: 'The power is thine.' And the word they used, hasina, means 'spiritual power.'[1] Suppose a man to be crowned emperor of all the world; and suppose all his dutiful subjects, the professors of ethics with the rest, to shout, 'Thou art the most powerful and therefore the best of men.' Would he be satisfied, if his heart told him it was a lie? He might believe that his temporal power made him the best of men, if his heart had gone rotten, if he had contracted the lie in the soul. But not otherwise—to judge at least by what anthropology has to teach concerning the healthy instincts of the natural man.
- ↑ A. van Gennep, Tabou et Totémisme à Madagascar (1904), 82.
