Cassirer analyzes the theses of ethnologists about the distinction between primitive man and civilized man, denouncing those that, based on the par...

Cassirer analyzes the theses of ethnologists about the distinction between primitive man and civilized man, denouncing those that, based on the parallel opposition between magic and technique, implicitly rely on our notion of scientific causality, attributing to primitive man the predominance of subjective motives in his mythical-magical explanations, and forgetting that man, both in his magical and technical behavior, does not have a predetermined form of the world from the beginning, but rather has to search and find it through different paths.