PRIMITIVE MAN AND ENVIRONMENT 175
aristocracy. It is this state of society which has been termed "gerontocracy" by Sir J.G. Frazer and W.H.R. Rivers, and we do not doubt that the privileges accorded to the old men ate the survivals of an infantile mental attitude towards the father?- For the child the father is a "great man" and he "looks up to him"! thus showing how these two metaphoric expressions must origi- nally be interpreted in an absolutely literal sense. All those who stand above their fellows in society are "fathers", but fathers projected beyond the limits of the family circle into the wider sphere on another unit. It is from society that these same concepts radiate into space and call forth the concepts of a heaven and an underworld (Hell). All the words which in the languages of the American Indians express their most general ideas of the supernatural involve a transference of the conception of space, just as our idea of the supernatural refers to something which is above nature as the common order of things, "The transfer is no mere figure of speech but has its origin in the very texture of the human mind. The heavens, the upper regions, are in every religion the supposed abode of the divine. What is higher is always the stronger and nobler, a superior is one who is better then we are and thereiore a chieftain in Algonkin is called oghee-ma, the higher one".* The Voguls call their chief deity "Our Father, Sky-Above".» Californian tribes speak of the "Old Man" above.* The supreme beings of the Yuchi are called the "Sun", "Old Man" and "He who makes Indians" just as it is
» Cf. J. G. Frazer: Lectures on the Early History of Kinship, 1905, 107; W.H.R. Rivers: The History of Melanesian Society, 1914, H, p. 46. Melanesian Gerontocracy. The interpretation of gerontocracy which I give in the text is not in accordance with the views of Dr. Rivers on this subject. (He states his objections to theories which would connect gerontocracy with Atkinson's views on the origin of society, loc. cit. H, p. 69). Dr. Rivers ex- plains the social rank of the old men as a consequence of the belief in their magical powers. However, I shall have opportunity to show that these magical powers are survivals of the infantile attitude which attributes a sort of om- nipotency to the father; or, if we explain this belief from the subjective standpoint of the elders, we may say that in vindicating these powers to themselves they find a fictilious substitute for their waning physical powers. Fiction is a substitute for inhibited reality.
• D. G. Brinton: Myths of the New World, 1905, pp. 62, 63.
» Munkacsi: Vogul N^pkSltdsi Gyttjtem^ny (Collection of Vogul Folklore). Vol, I, p. CCLXXXI.
- H. H. Bancroft: Native Races of the Pacific States, HI, p. 158.
