Primitive culture, vol. 1 (of 2): Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom

About this book

Edward Burnett Tylor’s *Primitive Culture* is a scholarly survey that expands the scope of his earlier “Researches into the Early History of Mankind.” Opening with a detailed preface, Tylor explains that the work gathers fresh ethnographic evidence gathered over a decade, then arranges it into a systematic argument about the laws governing culture, myth, language, art and religion. He emphasizes the “survival” of ancient customs in modern rites, the development of numeracy from finger‑counting, and the animistic philosophy that underlies early religious thought. The book is organized into extensive chapters that move from a general theory of culture to specific topics such as magical practices, emotional language, and the origins of myth, each supported by foot‑noted citations to contemporary scholars and field reports.

Written in the formal, exhaustive style of late‑Victorian scholarship, the text reflects the scientific optimism of the 1870s while engaging with debates on evolution, anthropology and philosophy. Readers who relish dense, evidence‑driven argumentation, students of the history of ideas, comparative religion, or the foundations of anthropology, will find Tylor’s meticulous synthesis rewarding. Those preferring narrative histories or light introductions to mythology may find the volume’s exhaustive detail and nineteenth‑century prose demanding.

Opening lines

The present volumes, uniform with the previous volume of ‘Researches into the Early History of Mankind’ (1st Ed. 1865; 2nd Ed. 1870), carry on the investigation of Culture into other branches of thought and belief, art and custom. During the past six years I have taken occasion to bring tentatively before the public some of the principal points of new evidence and argument here advanced. The doctrine of survival in culture, the bearing of directly-expressive language and the invention of numerals on the problem of early civilization, the place of myth in the primitive history of the human mind, the development of the animistic philosophy of religion, and the origin of rites and ceremonies, have been discussed in various papers and lectures,[1] before being treated at large and with a fuller array of facts in this work. …

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