Prospero speaks to Caliban: ‘When thou didst not, savage, know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes with words that made them known.’ An anthropologist has not the magic art of Prospero that he may dare to speak like that; yet some would almost seem to. It is easy to think about other people's rites and symbols in terms of our own preoccupations. We have received ideas. Questions put by other anthropologists influence what we ask about in fieldwork, how we listen to answers and observe. Strange customs tempt an anthropologist more strongly to interpret them when he feels the people have not given him a good enough reason for following them. The question of what should count as a good reason runs through this book.

The anthropologist cannot escape from the complexity of his subject matter. Rather than suppose that one idea or theory should singly guide my comments, I have tried to find which ones help in understanding a rather short rite performed by the Gnau of New Guinea. In chapter 2 I present a general view of the problems and then in subsequent chapters take up various aspects of them for further exploration, in the light of what the Gnau had to say. I take extracts of Gnau conversation in chapter 3 to show what sense they have of ritual, and how they come to learn about it and how to do it.