ABSTRACT
A hardy, alld perhaps a foolhardy C0111lnentator would turn to tIle construction of a 111assive syntllesis of the notion of primitive peoples in eighteenth a11d nineteent}l century European consciousness, would attend to the papers of tourist and administrator, of trader, explorer and missionary, would unearth popular sayings, and the likenesses of savages in art and literature, would consult works of theory and test theln against unguarded correspondence, would elicit the structure of a grand historical movelncnt of ideas.
