World as View and World as Event’

WALTER J. ONG, S.J.

Dept. of English
St. Louis University
A s a concept atid term, “world view” is useful but can at times be misleading. It re-
flects the marked tendency o f technologized man to think of actuality as something
essentially picturable and to think o f knowledge itself by analogy with visual activity
to the exclusion, more or less, of the other senses. Oral or nonwriting cultures tend
much more to cast up actuality in comprehensive auditory terms, such as voice and har-
mony. Their “world” is not so markedly something spread out before the eyes as a
“view” but rather something dynamic and relatively unpredictable, an event-world rath-
er than an object-world, highly personal, overtly polemic, fostering sound-oriented,
traditionalist personality structures less interiorized and solipsistic than those of technolo-
gized man. The concept of world view may not only inierfere with the empathy neces-
sary for understanding such cultures but may even be outmoded for our own, since
modern technological man has entered into a new electronic compact with sound.

I from that of “world view.” We can grope

T HIS PAPER IS addressed to the ques-

tion of whether there are differences in
kind between the problem of discovering the
for other terms-conspectus, perhaps, or
contemplatio or even animus, opinio, senten-
ria de mundo, consilium de orbe terrarum,
world view of a technologized contemporary or propositum-but they all prove remote
society and the problem of discovering the from our twentieth-century concept. The cu-
world view of other societies. It appears that rious Latin word saeculum, which yields our
there may well be such differences. Our very English “secular,” comes closest of all per-
use of the concept “world view” advertises haps in its sense of “spirit of the age,” but it
the likelihood. This concept is of recent for- lacks sufficient subjective reference: one can
mation, part of the equipment of the postro- hardly refer to the saeculum of an individual.
mantic historicism that, somewhat surpris- Ancient Greek offers fhedria, but that too
ingly, grows up with technological culture. lacks adequate subjectivity: it suggests either
Its ready applicability to all cultures of the abstract theorizing or a public spectacle.
past or of the future can hardly be taken for “World view” is an elusive term, but
granted. when we speak of someone’s world view in
Many cultures have never generated this any of its senses, we do not mean simply the
particular concept. I suspect that no early world impressing itself upon his passive re-
culture has. In ancient Greek and Latin, for ceptors, sensory or intellectual. A person
example, there appears to be no way to ex- does not receive a world view, but rather
press “world view” short of circumlocutions takes or adopts one. A world view is not a
so vast as to be surely misleading. It is a datum, a donne‘, but something the individ-
waste of time to look for an entry under ual himself or the culture he shares partly
“world view” in most English-Latin word constructs; it is the person’s way of organiz-
lists, and if we try for something approxi- ing from within himself the data of actuality
mating it, such as “outlook,” we find that coming from without and from within. A
the best Latin equivalent offered is spes, world view is a world interpretation. This
hope, which is refinable into bona spes, makes it evidently a romantic or postroman-
good hope, and nulla spes, no hope. This tic formulation that suggests Coleridge’s idea
conjures up an atmosphere entirely different of the imagination as giving form to mate-
rial otherwise disorganized.
Accepted for publication 4 November 1968. M. H. Abrams (1953) has shown that, by
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
[ O W World as View and World as Event 635
and large, preromantic concepts of man hold major unifying perception, and it presents
that the art he creates imitates or mirrors the unification as taking place in a visual
nature, whereas romantic and postromantic field. “View” imp!ies sight, directly or analo-
concepts hold that it throws light onto na- gously. The concept is of a piece with many
ture, interpreting the world. This romantic other spatially grounded metaphors we com-
concept depends, as hinted above, on tech- monly avail ourselves of in treating percep-
nology. The reason is that it implies a de- tion and understanding: “areas” of study,
gree of control over nature unknown to “field” of investigation, “levels” of abstrac-
early man, one achieved only by the growth tion, “fronts” of knowledge, “waves” of in-
of technological skills and physical sciences terest, “movements” of ideas, “trains” of
that accelerates so remarkably during the thought, “grounds” for analysis, and so on
period running from the high Middle Ages indefinitely. We are used to these conceptu-
through the Enlightenment. This growth in alizations by now and have found them pro-
technological skills not only vastly enlarges ductive, so we often forget how thoroughly
technological control over the external metaphorical they are and how remote from
world but also enables knowledge to expand actual cognitive experience. Studying an-
at unprecedented rates through the develop- thropology or anything else gives one no ex-
ment of writing (which needs technology perience at all of moving one’s mind over an
for its materials) and of print, as well as “area.” We become aware in various ways
through the increase ot leisure time. For of changed interests, but we do not directly
early man the world was something he could experience a change of interest as a wave,
only participate in, not an object to be ma- whether we take a wave as visually or as ki-
nipulated in his consciousness. nesthetically perceived. Nor does anyone
On the lace of it. a concept so dated ever directly experience ideas of his as tak-
would appear probably more applicable to ing part in a movement. Ideas are ne ther
the cultures out of which it arose than to moving nor static; they simply are not that
earlier cultures. Discovering a world view in sort of thing, although we can consider them
cultures that talk of world views and in cul- analogously as one or the other.
tures that do not possess the framework for These metaphors and others like them are
such a concept might well be undertakings useful and beyond a doubt worth keeping.
differing in kind. I do not mean to suggest, Many of them have roots deep in the past.
however, that speaking of the world view of There is nothing new in taking the physical
an early culture is illegitimate. It would be universe as somehow a model for conscious
idi-tic to rule that we may study a given cul- intellectual activity. The macrocosm-micro-
ture only in terms the culture itself provides. cosm notion is an old one and an inevitable
That would freeze thought for good. Nev- one, But the metaphors just noted here, in-
ertheless, the limited distribution of the con- cluding that of “world view” itself, present
cept suggests that the term itself needs close both macrocosm and microcosm in a dis-
study, especially when it is applied to cul- tinctive fashion. In a way characteristic of
tures removed from those where it is cur- modern technologized man, they take the
rent. Such study can become very complex, physical world to which they relate con-
and I shall undertake it here in only a lim- sciousness as something visually perceived.
ited way, attending to some noetic implica- The senses other than sight do not count
tions of the term with relation to the condi- here or count very little, with the exception
tions of knowledge storage and retrieval in of touch insofar as it is allied to vision in
contrasting cultures. presenting extension and insofar as visual
perception itself perhaps never occurs with-
I1 out some admixture of the tactile imagina-
However we break it down or specify it, tion. (Touch, as both medieval scholastics
the term “world view” suggests some sort of and modern psychoanalysts remind us, is the
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
636 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
most basic sense, lying at the root of all the sciences. Whether it is equally rewarding in
others.) But touch enters into these concepts philosophy or anthropology is a question sel-
of the physical world unobtrusively or even dom, if ever, raised. Whatever the case with
subconsciously, however really and inevita- anthropologists, most philosophers from
bly. Essentially, when modern technological Locke through Kant and many down to the
man thinks of the physical universe, he present day not only accept the physical uni-
thinks of something he can visualize either verse in exclusively visualist terms but also
in itself or in terms of visual measurements treat understanding itself by analogy with vi-
and charts. The universe for us is essentially sual knowledge to the virtual exclusion of
something you can draw a picture of. analogies with any of the other senses (Ong
The history of this assertive and on the 1967:66-74). The success of vision (obser-
whole marvelously productive visualism is, vation) and quantification in the physical
in the main, fairly well known. Habitual re- sciences has charmed the modern mind into
sort to visual models or analogues is of a considering its own activity as essentially
piece with the modern stress on “observa- like that of sight. Until the past decade or
tion” (a concept referring essentially to so, there was little awareness that there are
sight; you cannot “observe” a sound or a any other options. Hence we are likely to
smell but only listen to the one and sniff the take for granted that the presence of the
other). Visualism grows to its present world to man or of man to the world should
strength under the aegis of modern science, be thought of in terms of a world “view.”
particularly with the application of mathe- Recent studies of oral or preliterate cul-
matics to physics from the seventeenth cen- tures, however, have brought out the fact
tury on. It has, of course, earlier roots too, that other options are indeed open. In par-
which can be discerned in ancient Greece ticular, the work of psychologists and psy-
but grew much sturdier in tne European Mid- chiatrists reported by J. C. Carothers
dle Ages. Elsewhere (1958) I have tried to (1959), Marvin Opler (1956), and others
show in some detail how medieval scholasti- whom they cite, provides evidence of “audi-
cism, most particularly arts scholasticism tory synthesis.” There are cultures that en-
rather than theological scholasticism, fos- courage their members to think of the uni-
tered quantification and visualization as verse less than we do as something pictur-
nothing before ever had, and how scholasti- able and more than we do as a harmony,
cism gave birth to the movement (there we something held together as a sound or group
are again!) known in the sixteenth and sev- of sounds, a symphony, is held together.
enteenth centuries as Ramism, after Peter Modern theological and biblical studies have
Ramus (1515-1572). Ramism gratified the made it a commonplace that the ancient He-
growing desire for quantified, diagrammatic brew concept of knowing expressed by
treatment of actuality. But the Ramist kind yadha‘ takes knowing as something like
of quantification is related to actuality only hearing-personal and communal-whereas
obliquely at best. Instead of applying mea- the ancient Greek concept expressed in
surements to carefully observed physical gigniiskii takes knowing as something like
phenomena, Ramists set up diagrammatic seeing-impersonal, fractioning, and ana-
arrangements of knowledge itself in dicho- lytic. Leo Spitzer (1963) showed, however,
tomized divisions and subdivisions ad infini- that the ancient Greeks also quite commonly
tum. thought of the world as a harmony, something
Nevertheless, despite the aberrancy of heard rather than something seen; the uni-
Ramist efforts, history from Ramus’s time verse was something one responded to, as to a
on shows that thinking of the universe as es- voice, not something merely to be inspected.
sentially something seen (and to a degree So did many other early peoples. We are sel-
touched) is highly rewarding in the physical dom aware of how strongly audile the sensi-
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 637
bility of early man could b e or that of mod- one’s foot, idealism, Johnson thought or pre-
ern, nontechnologized man often still is. Of tended, was doomed. His state of mind per-
sists and no doubt will always persist. “Real
the many rural cosmological concepts well as this stone,” we say, feeling ourselves
known i n nontechnologized cultures, that of clutching it with our fist, in actuality or in
the harmony of the spheres is perhaps the imagination. By touch we assure ourselves
only one generally familiar today to technol- that the stone is there, is objective, for, more
ogized man, even in learned circles. than other senses, touch indeed attests to ex-
istence which is objective in the sense of
Of course, the physical universe is both real-but-not-me.
seen and heard and is touched, smelled, and And yet, by the very fact that it attests the
tasted as well. But each of the various senses not-me more than any other sense, touch in-
has a n economy of its own, and each im- volves my own subjectivity more than any
other sense. When I feel this objective some-
pinges on the human life world differently, thing “out there,” beyond the bounds of my
particularly with regard to awareness of in- body, I also at the same instant experience
teriority and exteriority. my own self. I feel other and self simulta-
neously [Ong 1967: 169-1701.
Sight presents surfaces (it is keyed to
reflected light: light coming directly from its I11
source, such as fire, an electric lamp, the sun,
rather dazzles and blinds us); smell suggests These examples may remind us of
presences or absences (its association with “worlds” we often neglect in our scientific
memory is a commonplace) and is connected commitment to vision. What was the
with the attractiveness (especially sexual) or “world” like to a culture that took actuality
repulsiveness of bodies which one is near or
which one is seeking (“I smelled him out”): in more auditory, less visual, terms than
smell is a come-or-go signal. Hence “It those to which we are accustomed? Relying
stinks” expresses maximum rejection or re- for support o n a much longer treatment of
pulsion: do not even go near-the farther my own (1967) that in turn draws upon the
away the better-do not even think about it. work of many others, I shall attempt a sum-
Taste above all discriminates, distinguishing
what is agreeable or disagreeable for intus- mary listing and description of f o u r salient
susception by one’s own organism (food) or features. (When I say “salient features,” that
psyche (aesthetic taste). . . . is, features that “stand out” or, more accu-
Sound, on the other hand, reveals the inte- rately, “leap out,” I betray my own visual or
rior without the necessity of physical inva-
sion. Thus we tap a wall to discover where it visual-tactile bias. A more aural expression
is hollow inside, or we ring a silver-colored might be “assertive qualities.”)
coin to discover whether it is perhaps lead in-
side. T o discover such things by sight, we D y nam’sm
should have to open what we examine, mak- The world of a dominantly oral or oral-
ing the inside the outside, destroying its inter-
iority as such. Sound reveals interiors be- aural culture is dynamic and relatively un-
cause its nature is determined by interior re- predictable, a n event-world rather than an
lationships. The sound of a violin is deter- object-world. What we are getting a t here
mined by the interior structure of its strings, can be understood in terms of the nature of
of its bridge, and of the wood in its sound-
board, by the shape of the interior cavity in sound as compared to other sensory percep-
the body of the violin, and other interior tions. Sound is of itself necessarily a n event
conditions. Filled with concrete or water, the in the way in which the object of no other
violin would sound different [Ong sense is.
1967: 117-1 181.
Sound signals the present use of power,
Touch attests “objective reality” in the sense since sound must be in active production in
of something outside that is not myself. order to exist at all. Other things one senses
may reveal actual present use of power, as
Dr. Johnson made this clear when he under- when one watches the drive of a piston in an
took to refute Berkeley tactilely-once one engine. But vision can reveal also mere quies-
felt contact with a stone one kicked with cence, as in a still-life display. Sound can in-
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
638 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
duce repose, but it never reveals quiescence. words. Homer expresses this awareness
It tells us that something is going on. In his when he sings of ‘‘wing6d words.” At the
Sound and Symbol, writing on the effect of
music, Victor Zuckerkandl notes that, by same time, oral cultures consider words
contrast with vision and touch, hearing regis- more powerful than we do, probably in the
ters force, the dynamic. This can be per- last analysis because whereas we interpret
ceived on other grounds, too. A primitive movement as instability, they are keenly
hunter can see, feel, smell, and taste an ele- aware of the moment of sound as signaling
phant when the animal is quite dead. If he
hears an elephant trumpeting or merely shuf- use of power. Words fly, which means that
fling his feet, he had better watch out. Some- they not only move but do so energetically.
thing is going on. Force is operating [Ong How to keep knowledge stable is thus a
1967: 1121. major problem in an oral culture. We know
Moreover, voice is for man the paradigm now the general lines along which the prob-
of all sound, and to it all sound tends to be lem is solved. Basically, the solution is to
assimilated. We hear the voice of the sea, standardize utterance, making it highly “tra-
the voice of thunder, the voice of the wind, ditional.’’ By contrast with verbal expres-
and an engine’s cough. This means that the sion, which is composed in writing, oral ver-
dynamism inherent in all sound tends to be balization is thematic and formulary, filled
assimilated to the dynamism of the human with epithets (standard, expected qualifiers),
being, an unpredictable and potentially dan- prolific of heroic figures (fixed, “heavy,”
gerous dynamism because a human being is more or less symbolic individuals, predict-
a free, unpredictable agent. able in performance, almost entirely free of
any character development). When writing
Traditionalism takes over from oral verbalization but be-
The world of a dominantly oral or oral- fore writing fully develops its own economy
aural culture is traditional. Its traditionalism of noetics and expression, these heroic
is closely related to the problems of acquir- figures become quasiscientific abstract types
ing, storing, and retrieving knowledge in a (writing makes science possible). Such are
voice-and-ear or oral-aural economy of the virtues and vices of medieval morality
thought and communication, operating with- plays or the related figures of Ben Jonson’s
out the use of records. drama and eighteenth-century comedy. Sta-
Recent studies, many involving massive bility of character helps anchor knowledge
recordings of oral performances, have re- for retrieval in an oral world. If Nestor is
vealed the noetic processes of oral cultures always wise, around a story about Nestor
as never before. We can only summarize can be clustered what Greeks knew and
here some relevant points in the new discov- could later treat more scientifically as wis-
eries, points that will be found explicated in dom. So wily Odysseus serves to store and
more detail in lengthier works (Lord 1960, retrieve what was known about wiliness,
Havelock 1963, Yates 1966, Ong 1958 and Achilles what was known about bravery, and
1967, Chadwick and Chadwick 1932-1940). so on. In the interest of stabilizing knowl-
An oral culture, we must remind our- edge, oral cultures make a great deal of
selves, is one in which nothing can be commonplace statements enshrined in popu-
“looked up.” Words are sounds, and sounds lar adages or proverbs and of apothegms at-
exist only as they are going out of existence. tributed to famous persons. Oral folk want
I cannot stop a word as I can a moving pic- to and need to hear the treasured utterances
ture in order to fix my attention on an im- of the past. “Tell us something from the
mobilized part of it. There are no immobi- tales of old.” Highest marks are given to su-
lized parts of sound. If I stop sound, I have perlatively skilled performance of the ex-
only its opposite, silence. An oral culture is pected, and there is little if any interest in
deeply aware of this evanescent quality of “originality” or “creativity,” such as grew up
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 639
with the late typographical phenomenon And they sing of those themes in formulas
called the Romantic age. or formulaic elements that they have accu-
Accustomed as we are to noetic condi- mulated by the thousands. A horse, to fabri-
tions, where virtually everything that men cate an English example that makes the
have ever known can be “looked up” on a point clear, is a “coal-black steed,” a “roan-
designated page in a locatable book on a red steed,” a “snow-white steed,” a “fast
specified shelf in a library, we forget how gray mare,” a “dapple-gray mount” (one
natural and inevitable the oral exploitation extra syllable), a “dapple-gray stallion”
of commonplace material is. In a society in (two extra syllables), and so on. If a rider
which articulate utterances or statements needs a horse, the singer has a number of
about a subject cannot be “looked up” (al- options he can trot out of his memory, a!l
though visual aides-memoire such as nietrically harnessed and ready to go. And
wampum belts or winter-count pictures may so with everything else he deals in.
be used), even the expected is not so ex- That is why, as Albert B. Lord ( 1 960),
pected as it is for us. It is on hand only carrying on Milman Parry’s work, found with
when it is being recited. And one needs to oral epic singers of modern Yugoslavia, a
be assured that it can be retrieved by recita- singer can repeat an epic of an hour’s dura-
Con on demand. Under such conditions the tion after hearing it only once. Essentially
role of a poet in, for example, preliterate all the singers have the same thematic and
Homeric Greece, as Eric Havelock (1963) formulaic equipment-although each will
has shown in beautiful detail, is not simply have his own peculiarities in his manage-
that of an entertainer. The poet is also a re- ment of it-and it is simply a matter of put-
caller and a repeater; if he and others like ting the equipment to work on a new set of
him were not around, what knowledge the characters and situations. (Of course, even
society has would simply disappear. The or- today all narration is always thematic, in-
ator participates in the role of the poet. He cluding the most sophisticated kind of pres-
must likewise deal in the commonplace, the ent-day historiography, for the only way to
expected, the already known, as well as in cut verbally into the unbroken web 0: his-
the particular issues with which individual tory is to lift out certain themes; but the
forensic or deliberative problems engage themes of the oral epic are much more
him. fixed and limited in number than those of
We are now aware of just how conserva- today’s writers.)
tive, just how fixed, just how essentially re- Memory in an oral noetic economy is
petitive the poetry and the oratory of an never verbatim on any appreciable scale.
oral society are. Homer, recent studies Lord (1960) has shown this as an indisputa-
(Lord 1960 and others cited there) have ble fact in the case of the prodigiously
shown, is made up almost completely of skilled memory of the Yugoslavian epic
cliches. Everyone is familiar with his “wine- singers; recordings show that they never sing
dark sea” and “rosy-fingered dawn.” These any epic exactly the same way twice, despite
are among the most heavily worked epithets. their protestations (also recorded) that they
But close tabulatory study of the text shows do. I have reviewed elsewhere (1967) the
that virtually every image in Homer, line evidence-or, better, the utter lack of it-
after line, is of that sort. Epic poets sing of that leads us to believe that no oral culture
standard themes-the arrival of the messen- in the world achieves verbatim memory for
ger, the summoning of the council, the feast, lengthy passages of anything. But oral mem-
the arming of the hero, the description of ory is nevertheless tenacious and accurate; it
the hero’s shield or sword OK other armor, is locked in the themes and formulas. And it
the journey, the challenge, the combat, the is extensive. Innocent hearers from chiro-
despoiling of the vanquished foe, and so on. graphic and typographic cultures, who them-
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
640 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
selves generally memorize verbatim from Traffic in the commonplaces persisted as
texts, are likely to think that a person capa- oral residue through the age of Shakespeare
ble of reciting ex tempore thousands of lines (who is quotable because he is made up of
in a highly complex meter must have memo- quotations tooled and retooled and given
rized the material word for word. The fact their final resonance by his master voice)
is that such persons have in their store of and pretty strongly into the nineteenth cen-
expressions thousands upon thousands of tury. It endures in some political oratory
phrases that fit into the standard metrical even today, particularly in nontechnologized
pattern. They are “rhapsodizers” or “stitch- cultures, where “capitalist warmongers,”
ers,’’ as the Greeks called them (rhuptein, ‘to “colonialism,” and similar themes, whatever
sew together,’ from which rhaps6idein de- their validity, are repeated with a persistence
rives). It is significant that this kind of com- nauseating to technologized man but com-
position features complex meters but not pletely in accord with the older oral noetic
rhyme, which would be much more unman- patterns.
ageable. The noetic procedures illustrated by epic
Even today the “feel” of an oral tradition and oratory extend through the entire econ-
for unchanging themes and formulas is still omy of a completely oral culture, as Have-
accessible to the post-typographic man who lock (1963) has pointed out. Oral Homeric
is familiar with the telling of fairy stories to Greece contrasts here with Lord’s modern
children. Here there is no question of an Yugoslavia, where oral epic poets constitute
original author or of originality or of telling only a subculture in a society administered
the story each time in exactly the same by literates-and a dwindling subculture, as
words. But the story remains in its basic ele- Lord notes (1960), since growing literacy is
ments quite stable, and the audience expects destroying it. An oral poet must be illiterate
the story as a whole and its formulary ele- or he will take to matching written or
ments to be the same each time it is told. printed texts, thereby destroying the entire
Anyone who in repeating the story of The oral economy of performance. In contrast to
Three Little Pigs to a youthful audience var- modern Yugoslavia, Homer’s Greece not
ies the number from three to four or seven only included a population of illiterate,
will immediately meet with resistance from highly skilled epic singers but also was ad-
his hearers. And formulas, once uttered, are ministered from top to bottom by illiterates.
sacrosanct. I myself was pulled up by a five- In such a society the stitching or weaving of
year old some years ago for saying, “He thematic and formulary elements that the
huffed and he puffed, and he huffed and he epic singers practiced was a skill needed by
puffed” instead of the expected, “He huffed public officials too, although not to the same
and he puffed, and he puffed and he specialized degree. If an official wanted to
huffed.” get a substantial message from Ithaca to
Oratory, the other great oral art form, re- Argos, he would have to cast it up in some
mained an oral improvisation or rhapsodiz- mnemonic form or an illiterate messenger
ing (“stitching”) long after the appearance would never be able to deliver it.
of writing (Ong 1967). Cicero wrote his or- The fixed-formula economy of an oral
ations only after he had delivered them, that culture of course governs not only what it
is, performed them. Oratory as an oral form can repeat but also what it can know. Man
proceeded in much the same fashion as epic, knows what he can recall-all else is so
exploiting the set commonplaces or loci ephemeral as to be negligible. In an oral cul-
communes relentlessly, such as Cicero’s “0 ture this means that he knows what is cast
tempora! 0 mores!” which was his “things- in fixed thematic and formulary patterns.
are-going-to-pot” bit, and other comparable Anything else will seem unreal, nonknowl-
prefabricated purple patches on dishonesty, edge, reprehensible, and dangerous. This is
valor, a dark night, a long time, and so on. the noetic foundation for the traditionalism
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 64 1
stemming from oral cultures. What is not tent we often fail to appreciate. The list of
traditional-cast in recognized themes and the ships in the Iliad (ii. 494-875) is prob-
formulas-is dangerous because it is slip- ably the closest thing to a national directory
pery and unmanageable. Oral-aural man that an oral culture could produce. Where
does not like the nontraditional because, be- else would such material be verbalized? Sim-
yond his limited means of control, it adver- ilarly, the description of shipbuilding in the
tizes the tenuousness of his hold on actu- Odyssey (v. 225-261), when Odysseus is
ality. Only when recordkeeping, first by getting away from Circe, is the closest thing
chirography and then much more effectively to a shipbuilding manual that an oral cul-
by print, anchored knowledge in space for ture would know. Where else in a culture
facile visual retrieval could traditionalism without writing would the method of build-
yield to a more flexible relationship to the ing a ship be articulated? Perhaps in an ora-
world and a more flexible understanding of tion, but orations were constructed in much
what the world is. the same way that epic poems were. What
we find in Homer or a shipbuilding manual
Polemicism today would hardly be recited by a ship-
The world of a dominantly oral-aural cul- wright who learned and taught his trade by
ture is highly personal and polemic, at least an apprentice system.
in part because of its orality. Although this Whether in an epic narrative or in an ora-
does not mean that polemic qualities in tion built around some expected personal re-
early cultures cannot also be related to other sponse, factual material and even technical
features besides orality, it is not entirely im- description thus was stored and retrieved by
possible that all the other features in some being built into the human life world. Ob-
way or other relate significantly to orality, jects and objective fact did not inhabit an
making it the major component in a com- isolated section of actuality purportedly alto-
plex of causes. gether screened off from contact with
Without records, oral cultures have quite human “subjectivity” or personal relevance,
limited means of storing knowledge by cate- as they do for modern technologized man.
gorization in what we may call scientific or Everything was part of human activity,
highly abstract fashion. The development of more or less objective and subjective simul-
bodies of knowledge of the sort we call arts taneously.
and sciences has to wait on the advent of By the same token, in one way or another
writing. Although it is fortunately out of everything was caught up in the polemic of
date to say that primitive man has no idea the human life struggle. The action of the
of causality, it is true that complex chains of heroic figures generated in an oral economy
causality elude him. A is caused by B, B by of narration would naturally at root consist
C , and C by D, but D happens because Zeus of a battle between forces of good and evil.
was peeved at Athena. This means, in effect, When so much of the lore of a culture was
“I pass.” When divine causality is later ana- retained through narrative tales or songs
lyzed in a sophisticated Christian tradition, about great heroes, even what would other-
it is no help at all in accounting physically wise be completely neutral material thus ac-
for physical phenomena. It operates at an- quired a moral flavor by association with the
other level. polemic or agoniu of the hero and his adver-
The larger conceptual and verbal struc- saries. The entire world thereby tended to be
tures in which oral-aural man stores what he polarized in terms of “good guys” and “bad
knows consist in great part of stories that guys” and later in terms of abstract personi-
turn on human action and on the interaction fications of virtues and vices (at least in
of man and man. Thus the Zliad and the Western European cultures around the Mid-
Odyssey function not merely as entertaining dle Ages, when writing was encouraging ab-
stories but also as encyclopedias to an ex- straction but had not yet crushed domi-
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
642 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
nantly oral structures). In the highly moral of medieval and Renaissance Europe. But
climate of heroic song the Iliad‘s catalogue enough has been retailed here from the
of ships is thus not merely a national direc- more substantial studies to give some indica-
tory, but, from the technically rhetorical tion of the noetic roots of polemic in oral
point of view, it is also an encomium or cultures.
“praise” of the Greeks: the Greek leaders It was against the personal world inher-
and their followers are “good guys.” Learn- ited from preliterate Greece that Plato’s phi-
ing itself takes place in an agonistic setting losophy took form, as Havelock (1963) has
under these oral-aural conditions. Puberty circumstantially shown. Plato’s expulsion of
rites of early societies correspond in many the poets from his Republic and his touting
ways to academic education in more devel- of the “ideas” are t h e two sides of the same
oped cultures. Through puberty rites the coin. His expulsion of the poets was his re-
young men are initiated into the lore of the jection of the old paideia, in which learning
tribe, its myths and intellectual heritage, as was basically oral, only slightly modified by
well as into its various skills. In this lore ob- writing; the Iliad and Odyssey were learned
jective fact and man’s subjective world inter- from a written text. The pupil was made to
penetrate. In the process of learning the identify with heroic figures in a life world in
youths are often subjected to excruciating which all things, even objective fact, were
physical torment, which gives their new caught up. Plato’s ideas launched the new
knowledge its requisite agonistic tone. world, the opposite of the old, which his at-
By an extension of oral practices into tack on the poets proscribed, The old world
literate society and even for a while into had made much of man’s activities and of
early typographical society, the agonistic ele- human struggle as the focus or axis of all
ment in learning is perpetuated through the reality. Where the old world had been warm
arts of rhetoric and dialectic, which gov- and human, Plato’s “ideas” or “forms”
erned all academic practice from antiquity (Greek idea, ‘outline’: a concept based on
through the Renaissance. During that period visual perception) were cold and abstract;
no one was ever formally taught neutral ob- where the old world had been mobile,
jectivity, although many doubtless did event-full, visualized as narrative is often vi-
achieve it in their own way. A scholar was sualized, but not visualized in explicatory,
taught to defend a stand he had taken or to analytic fashion. The vision of narrative was
attack the stand of another; rhetorical per- a swirl of exciting activity. In contrast, Pla-
formance and dialectical debate governed all to’s new ideas were motionless, ahistorical;
subjects. Truth was a human possession, to where the old view had held all knowledge
be defended as one’s own life. This long per- in a concrete human setting, the new traced
sistence of agonistic frames of reference everything to the abstract, the other-worldly,
suggests how thoroughly polemic had been the totally objective, the fixed, modeled on
oral man’s life world. an immobile figure visualized on a motion-
More could be said about the polemic less field.
frame of mind and its connection with an
economy of scarcity, with the linguistic situ- Structuring of Personality
ation that fragmented most of mankind into In oral cultures the external world sets up
small groups hostile to outsiders, with the and impinges on personality structures quite
common acceptance of war as the perma- different from our own. The clinical studies
nent state of human existence, with the in- reported by Carothers (1959) and Opler
credibly harsh punishments, including execu- (1956) correlate definite psychological o r
tion even for minor offenses, found in early personality structures with differences be-
conquest states and some other early soci- tween illiteracy (studied pretty well across
eties, including the residually oral societies the globe) and literacy (as represented only
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 643
by alphabetic writing, not character writing oral culture there is no private study.
such as Chinese, which might produce a Learning is communal, unless it is achieved
third, intermediate personality structure). at the hands of that most dangerous and
The difference in psychological structures worst of teachers, raw experience.
can be summarized by noting that in oral
cultures schizophrenia virtually never mani- IV
fests itself by delusional systematization, Script and print, with all that they entail,
that is, by systematic day dreaming, by con- have transformed the oral world into the
structing a private, imaginary, unreal world one we know t o d a y - o r at least into the one
in which one’s problems are solved or non- we have known up to the past few years.
existent. When subject to the kind of strain Script, and particularly the alphabet, con-
that produces schizoid behavior, the illiter- verted the dynamic event-world in which
ate from an oral culture (illiterates from oral-aural man stored his knowledge into a
literate cultures are not quite total illiterates, world of static visual record. Many, perhaps
for they experience the effects of literacy vi- even all, primitive peoples make much of
cariously) reacts, too, by losing contact with sight, but the alphabet warped sound itself
actuality. But his typical pattern is an out- into a visual mold. The alphabet triumphed
break of intense anxiety and hostility and only slowly and never entirely, but inexora-
psychic disorganization that shows itself in bly. Print, by locking words into the same
extreme violence toward others and some- place in thousands of copies of a book and
times toward himself; Carothers attributes thereby making indexing and retrieving in-
the pattern to a lack of ego defences due to formation possible to a degree utterly un-
tribal reliance on the group. The outbreak known in pretypographic manuscript cul-
of anxiety and hostility is rioting, which is ture, consolidated the work of the alphabet
a regular phenomenon in many oral cultures in reducing evanescent sound to the repose
and which is represented by the ancient of space.
Scandinavian warrior who goes berserk or The conversion from totally oral to
the southeast Asian warrior who runs amok largely visualized vocalization took a long
as well as by more recent Congolese rioters, time, though its success was inevitable.
whose behavior is interpreted by their own Three thousand years and more after the
culture as regrettable but inevitable. The ab- invention of the first script (around 3500
sence of schizophrenic delusional systemati- B.c.) and a thousand years after the inven-
zation appears to be the correlative of the tion of the alphabet (around 1500 B.c.),
individual’s inability to isolate himself and classical antiquity remained largely oral. Its
his thought processes from the group, from modes of composition were still largely
the tribe, in the ways that become possible based on the commonplaces and the oration,
for the first time with reading. (The shift to even in genres such as historiography. Its
reading, however, does not make withdrawal stance was polemic, its educational goal the
the only recourse of schizophrenics: in Iiter- training of the rhetor, the orator, the public
ates, too, violence can occur, perhaps as a speaker, outfitting him for verbal combat.
more primitive response.) Just as physical The Middle Ages were far more textually
personal privacy is at best a rare luxury in oriented than antiquity and yet by our stan-
oral, tribal cultures, so psychological with- dards still impossibly oral. Their universities
drawal is infrequent or even impossible in applied themselves to texts as man never
such cultures. Thought is not advanced by had before, and yet the testing of intellec-
Aristotles or Einsteins or other individual tual achievement was never by writing but
discoverers but rather moves ahead with gla- always by oral agonia or dialectical debate.
cial slowness; everyone must advance to- Even the Renaissance, which culminated the
gether. We must remind ourselves that in an medieval drive toward the written word by
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
644 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
producing the printing press and modern Specialization in visually based concepts
textual scholarship, still felt itself committed thus appears to be a sign of progress be-
in principle and to a surprising degree in ac- cause they afford preferred information of a
tuality to the oratorical culture of classical sort otherwise unavailable. It does not make
antiquity. As I have undertaken to spell out much sense to say that we should not exam-
in great detail (1967), all Western culture ine an oral culture in terms of our concept
remained significantly oral until well into of a world view because an oral culture
the Romantic age, only slowly relaxing its tended to synthesize less in terms of view
hold on the traditionalism and the polemi- and more in aural terms than we do. For
cism marking oral society and personality the same reason, oral culture was in fact
structure. quite incapable of analyzing itself or any-
thing else in the ways that have become fea-
V sible and even mandatory for us.
In the light of the foregoing explanation, Nevertheless, we can ask whether we are
which is uncomfortably sketchy but cannot not too exclusively and unreflectively ex-
be enlarged on here, we can reflect on the ploiting visual models today to the neglect
applicability of the concept of world view to of analogs from the other senses. Insofar as
earlier cultures. Is an oral world unduly dis- understanding of the life world of a given
torted by having applied to it the concept of culture requires participation in it, or a kind
“view”? Are the very differences that mark of empathy for it, the hypervisualism of our
it off from our own thereby obscured? The sensorium may to a degree disqualify us for
visual synthesis the concept endorses cer- understanding whatever unity an earlier cul-
tainly makes the concept congenial to the ture may have known in its relationship to
psyche developed in a context of writing actuality.
and print and technological design. We take
very readily to synthesizing “world” as some VI
kind of picture. But does this very type of Finally, our hypervisualism may already
synthesis somehow vitiate what we make of be outmoded. It may hinder our understand-
earlier man’s life world? ing of our own life world as it is reorganiz-
Perhaps we cannot do otherwise. Freud- ing itself today and for the immediate fu-
ians have long made the point that for ture. If it is true, as I have suggested else-
thought and civilization itself to advance, where (1967; see also others there cited),
man must minimize the proximity senses of that we are moving into a new era of sound,
touch, taste, and smell and maximize the we can ask ourselves whether the term “world
senses of hearing and sight. The latter are view” alone is adequate to conceptualize the
more abstract in that they report on objects kind of unification man of coming genera-
that can be and to a degree must be at a tions will experience or undertake to realize.
greater distance from the perceiver. Touch The new era into which we have already en-
requires contact, which the eyeball cannot tered is marked by an unprecedented aug-
tolerate. Thus hearing and sight keep the in- mentation of sound-communication devices.
dividual and the object of perception nicely We live each succeeding day in an increas-
distinct. (Touch includes a perception of ingly oral world. Telephone supplements let-
self-as-touching far more than hearing in- ter-writing, radio makes voice present all over
cludes a sense of the self-as-hearing or sight the world simultaneously, television (much
a sense of the self-as-seeing.) Of the two, more an aural device than its name sug-
sight is the more abstract and thus the more gests) does the same, rapid transportation
“objective.” The latter-day history of civili- has multiplied personal confrontation in
zation has entailed a marked movement conventions, discussion groups, and assem-
from the aural to the visual world sense. blies of all sorts. Sonar is even used to catch
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 645
fish. As sound gains, in certain ways sight is and hippies traditionalists of a new kind? Or
downgraded. With radio telescopes and in- of a reverse kind? Their drive to conform-
terplanetary television mediated through ism is marked.
codes of binary numbers, the use of all Further, the personal and polemic cast of
kinds of complex nonvisual probes in physi- preliterate oralism is represented only par-
cal and chemical analysis, and other similar tially in the present situation. Personalism is
developments, the direct use of sight is on indeed stressed. The protest against overme-
the wane in science. Our oralism profoundly chanization is one of the many manifesta-
differs from that of preliterate man, for it is tions of attention to the person as such;
programmed by means that include writing other manifestations are the growth of coun-
and print. But at the same time we are often seling in all its forms, the proliferation of
more effectively oral than early man, who discussion groups of all sorts, the cult of the
could not make an individual’s voice heard outsider, the study of group dynamics and
in every quarter of the globe simultaneously. group relations, and so on. Again, in con-
How far does our new oralism make our trast to earlier spontaneous or unreflective
culture like that of early oral-aural man, personalism, ours is reflective and program-
man before the advent of writing? Marshall matic. This makes it in one way less human
McLuhan’s statement that we live in a and in another way more human. But the
“global village” has become a commonplace. polemic associated with older, feudal, per-
But it is a gnomic and paradoxical common- sonalist structures is missing. Despite our
place. For what is global cannot be a vil- much publicized strife, the irenic quest
lage, with the village’s feeling of an in-group marks our age. We are still distressingly
affording shelter from the larger outside warlike, but being so troubles our collective
world. There is no longer an outside world. consciences as it seldom if ever troubled the
When we examine the present situation collective or even most individual con-
for evidence of the four features of early sciences of earlier man. Strong in their feel-
oral-aural culture we noted above (there are ing for in-groups, earlier cultures believed
other features, of course, in addition to quite generally that war, though perhaps re-
these), we find some striking correspon- grettable, was an inescapable part of life.
dences and some striking differences. First, Finally, are we entering into the older
our present world has become an event- pattern of schizoid behavior, with rioting re-
world to a significant, self-conscious degree. placing schizophrenic withdrawal? Perhaps
Preliterate cultures were immersed in an to a degree. It is probably significant that
event-world because of their inability to much rioting centers in groups who are ei-
structure knowledge other than around ther largely illiterate in tradition or ill at
human beings. We construct an event-world ease in centers of literacy, such as universi-
self-consciously and programmatically to ties. Elsewhere (1958, 1962) I have at-
strengthen the human in a world filled with tempted to detail the connections the alpha-
objective structures of the mind. And we d o bet and alphabetic printing have with a
so, as I have attempted to show elsewhere sense of order. It would appear that these
(1962:223-229, 1967:87-1 l o ) , by massive connections are being shaken up in our pres-
exploitation of sound. ent stage of oralism.
On the other hand, our world is certainly The foregoing is no more than a sketch of
not traditional in the way in which the old the present state of oralism, but it shows
oral-aural world was. We rely on too many that the world ahead of us, like the world of
records and too exhaustive historical knowl- the distant past, may call for new tools of
edge to need this sort of support. But is analysis. Man’s experience of the “world”
there some kind of new traditionalism organizing itself today may to a significant
among us? Faddism, perhaps? Are beatniks degree elude us if we unthinkingly equate
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
646 American Anthropologist [71, 1969
“world” with some sort of canvas spread out cause of the relationship of smell to mem-
before us, as something of which we have ory. A particular odor can conjure up a
primarily a “view.” presence or presences very effectively, al-
The concept of world view of course need though it may leave the impression very
not and should not be discarded. But how vague. Still, the sense of presence appears
can it be supplemented? We can perhaps not to be founded on any one sensory field
start from a more generic concept, thinking in particular.
of not merely a world view but a world What happens if we think of world pres-
sense. In fact, such a generic concept would ence or the world-as-presence rather than of
seem to be demanded by the terms we use, the world as something viewed, something
or are likely to use, in analyzing various toward which we have an outlook? We do
world views. Although the concept of view suffer some disabilities. In terms of presence
is visually grounded, it is also quite meta- we cannot achieve the precision we achieve
phorically interpreted, and analyses of world by resort to the visual imagination for mod-
views do not in fact commonly restrict els representing the structures in conscious-
themselves to the use of visually grounded ness. But by thinking of world-as-presence
terms. We can analyze a world view in we gain in immediacy and in a certain kind
terms of texture, which is based patently on of relevance.
the sense of touch, or in terms of tonality or The conditions in which we find ourselves
concordance, which refer to hearing. We today call for consideration of the world as
might, however, gain a good deal if we re- a kind of presence chiefly because of what
flected more on the sensory field or fields in Teilhard has called quite aptly the hominiza-
which the various concepts we use are tion of the globe. The ambiance in which
grounded. Perhaps it would be productive to man finds himself today is made up of
cultivate some aurally based concepts, such human beings more than ever before. For
as those just mentioned as well as “har- the first time in man’s history the globe is
mony,” “cacophony,” and “melody,” al- pretty well covered with men all of whom
though doing so might seem to suggest a are in contact with one another, at least in
certain affectation. the large. Nature is more and more sub-
But I believe that another productive way jected to man’s management and is becom-
to supplement our concept of world view is ing a kind of extension of humanity. Our
to move from the concept of world sense to environment is more and more a peopled
the concept of world-as-presence. By pres- environment in which things themselves
ence I mean the kind of relationship that ex- exist in a context of people. This is the kind
ists between persons when we say that two of world the concept of presence expresses.
persons are present to one another. Presence Presence applies most directly to persons. If
in the full sense of the term entails more I am in a room with a chair, a plant, a cat,
than sensation. Insofar as it is grounded in and a human being, it is the human being
the senses, it appears to be grounded in all who normally will be felt as a presence, not
of them simultaneously. We speak of a the other things. In the strict sense only per-
“sense” of presence, rather than a sight, sons are real presences. A world conceived
sound, smell, taste, or touch of presence. of in terms of presence is a hominized
There is some special relationship, of world.
course, between presence and touch; proba- Thinking of the world as a kind of pres-
bly because with touch is associated our ence is, of course, not entirely new. There is
sense of reality and presences are eminently a good deal of evidence that in the past it
real, we can say that we feel someone’s pres- was thought of this way after a fashion.
ence. There is also some special relationship First, as has been noted earlier, oral-aural
between presence and smell, presumably be- cultures predispose man to personalize even
 15481433, 1969, 4, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1969.71.4.02a00030 by The University Of Melbourne, Wiley Online Library on [02/08/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ONG] World as View and World as Event 647
impersonal phenomena because he has to sual models of the universe as never before.
store knowledge in narrative rather than ab- But we also need some nonvisual concepts,
stract scientific categories. Secondly, as including even some that have not yet been
phenomenologists like to remind us, inter- born. In the present situation, this paper can
subjectivity is a primary mode of human ex- pretend to be no more than maieutic.
perience. When I walk alone through a dark
wood at night and hear what I know is the NOTE
branch of one tree rubbing against another
‘This paper was originally prepared for and
in the breeze, I cannot keep niy imagination presented at Wenner-Gren Foundation Burg
from persistently suggesting that the noise is Wartenstein symposium no. 41, “World Views:
the voice of some living being, and indeed Their Nature and Their Role in Culture,” Au-
of some person who, being otherwise un- gust 2-11, 1968.
known and of uncertain intent, may well
wish to harm me. My imagination wants REFERENCES CITED
persons around. Every infant is initiated into ABRAMS, M. H.
an awareness of himself from the beginning 1953 The mirror and the lamp, New York:
in a context of persons who mediate the ex- Oxford University Press.
terior world to him, and he can never after CAROTHERS, J. C.
1959 Culture, psychiatry, and the written
release himself from that context. Where word. Psychiatry 22:307-320.
persons are missing, he projects them. Ani- CHADWICK, H. MUNRO, AND N. KERSHAW
mism exists in primitive cultures for a vari- CHADWICK
ety of reasons, no doubt, but one reason 1932-1940 The growth of literature ( 3
vols.). Cambridge: Cambridge University
would appear to be the relative emptiness of Press.
the primitive universe. Since there are very HAVELOCK, ERICA.
few persons around, personal presences are 1963 Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Mass.:
projected into the otherwise empty world. Belknap Press.
Animism can persist for a while in urban LORD,ALBERT B.
1960 The singer of tales. Cambridge: Har-
populations, but it is more typically a phe- vard University Press.
nomenon of loosely dispersed groups. ONG,WALTER J.
We no longer need animism today. The 1958 Ramus, method, and the decay of dia-
wood nymphs vanished as the woods filled logue. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
with trailer camps. Water sprites have been 1962 The barbarian within. New York:
crowded out by submarines and scuba div- Macmillan.
ers. We need no longer project presences 1967 The presence of the word. New
into the world, for they are already there. Haven: Yale University Press.
Besides the persons just down the street or OPLER,MARVIN K.
1956 Culture, psychiatry, and human
in the next room or at our elbow, there are values. Springfield,Ill.: Charles C Thomas.
all the others permanently available on tele- LEO
SPITZER,
vision. For dealing with our superpeopled 1963 Classical and Christian ideas of world
environment we seem to need some atten- harmony: prolegomena to an interpretation
tion to the notion of presence if we are to of the word “Stimmung.”
YATES,FRANCES A.
think of the world in post-Cartesian terms. 1966 The art of memory. Chicago: Univer-
We must, of course, refine our various vi- sity of Chicago Press.