The Islanders of the Pacific —— Or the Children of the Sun

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ISBN: 9781330289365 出版年：2016 页码：374 T R Johnston Forgotten Books

I have tried to work out answers to the natives' problems from the natives' point of view to put myself for a moment in their place, to think with their mind, and I feel that my long years of residence among them, in some degree, enables me to do this. To have to attack a native problem, shackled by the convention of our own way of thinking, is a great handicap, of which I have tried whenever possible to divest myself. I may not always have succeeded — many of my answers are no doubt wrong — but we are none of us infallible, and least of all do I consider myself so, for ethnology to me is only a hobby. But if my scientific methods do not always follow in the beaten path, my interest in the natives is a very real one, perhaps because they appeal to the child that is present in all of us. They are the Peter Pans of humanity, and if in governing them we remember this great will be our ultimate reward.