ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the characteristic areas of non-differentiation which define the primitive world-view. It develops the impression that the primitive world-view is subjective and personal, that different modes of existence are confused, that the limitations of man's being are not known. The idea of a primitive economy is slightly romantic. Part of our difficulty in England is that Lvy-Bruhl, who first posed all the important questions about primitive cultures and their distinctiveness as a class, wrote in deliberate criticism of the English of his day, particularly of James G. Frazer. The problem then was to discover the principles of selection and of association which made the primitive culture favour explanation in terms of remote, invisible mystic agencies and to lack curiosity about the intermediate links in a chain of events. Old Testament scholars do not hesitate to enliven their interpretations of Israelite culture by comparison with primitive cultures. Thus primitive means undifferentiated; modern means differentiated.
