An Eskimo mask may depict walrus-wolf-seal; turned this way, the walrus is emphasized, but wolf and seal remain; turned another way, the wolf is emphasized, etc.

One may describe the alteration as if the object had altered before one's eyes. But what altered was not the picture. It was the observer's impression of it, his point of view, his emphasis upon one organization over another.

Suppose he has no "point of view," at least none resembling the private, delimiting one of literate man. Suppose his art, language, everything in his culture, deny a private point of view, and stress, instead, group awareness, with many points of view simultaneously presented. Suppose, finally he is capable of grasping such a multilevel pattern instantaneously, with total awareness, no delay, no suppression, all sense (simultaneously!) involved. Suppose all this and you have gone a long way toward describing tribal man, a man who has no private point of view because he doesn't "view" experience, nor conceive of himself as a point. Instead, he conceives of each person as containing, simultaneously, many selves, all in flux, yet each present.