THE SCIENCE SERIES
1. =The Study of Man.= By A. C. HADDON. Illustrated. 8º
2. =The Groundwork of Science.= By ST. GEORGE MIVART.
3. =Rivers of North America.= By ISRAEL C. RUSSELL. Illustrated.
4. =Earth Sculpture; or, The Origin of Land Forms.= By JAMES GEIKIE.
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5. =Volcanoes; Their Structure and Significance.= By T. G. BONNEY.
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6. =Bacteria.= By GEORGE NEWMAN. Illustrated.
7. =A Book of Whales.= By F. E. BEDDARD. Illustrated.
8. =Comparative Physiology of the Brain=, etc. By JACQUES LOEB.
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9. =The Stars.= By SIMON NEWCOMB. Illustrated.
10. =The Basis of Social Relations.= By DANIEL G. BRINTON.
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_For list of works in preparation see end of this volume._
The Science Series
EDITED BY
Professor J. McKeen Cattell, M.A., Ph.D.
AND
F. E. Beddard, M.A., F.R.S.
THE BASIS OF SOCIAL RELATIONS
[Illustration]
The Basis of Social Relations
A Study in Ethnic Psychology
By
Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D.
Late Professor of American Archæology and Linguistics in the University
of Pennsylvania; author of “History of Primitive Religions,” “Races and
Peoples,” “The American Race,” etc.
Edited by
Livingston Farrand
Columbia University
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR’S PREFACE
The manuscript of the following work was left by Dr. Brinton at his
death in 1899 in a state of approximate completion, lacking only final
revision at his hands. The editor has contented himself, therefore, with
making such verbal corrections as were necessary and, by slight
rearrangement of certain sections to conform to the obvious scheme of
the work, bringing the text into readiness for publication. The
verification and noting of references have not been attempted. The
author’s encyclopedic acquaintance with the literature of his subject as
well as his general method of quotation has made this impracticable.
Dr. Brinton’s contributions to anthropology are too well known to call
for especial comment, his writings, particularly in the fields of
American archæology and linguistics, being so numerous and valuable as
to give him a world-wide reputation. His interest, however, was general
as well as special, and the development of anthropology owes much to his
insight and ready pen. Among the doctrines for which he stood at all
times an active champion was the psychological unity of man, a principle
which is now widely accepted and forms the working basis for most of our
modern ethnology. Tacitly assumed, as it is and has been, for the most
part since the writings of Waitz, the need of a succinct statement of
the doctrine has long been felt, and this is now given, possibly in
somewhat extreme form, in the present work.
Apart from its intrinsic interest the book will be welcomed as the last
word of the distinguished author whose lamented death has deprived the
science of anthropology of one of its ablest representatives.
L. F.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
PART I
THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND
CHAPTER I
THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN MIND 3
CHAPTER II
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GROUP. THE ETHNIC MIND 23
CHAPTER III
PHYSIOLOGICAL VARIATION IN THE ETHNIC MIND. PROGRESSIVE AND
REGRESSIVE VARIATION. MODES AND RATES OF ETHNIC VARIATION 46
CHAPTER IV
PATHOLOGICAL VARIATION IN THE ETHNIC MIND 82
PART II
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND
INTRODUCTION 123
CHAPTER I
THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOMATIC ENVIRONMENT 126
CHAPTER II
ETHNIC MENTAL DIVERSITY FROM COGNATIC CAUSES. HEREDITY; HYBRIDITY;
RACIAL PATHOLOGY 147
CHAPTER III
THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT 163
CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE OF THE GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT 180
INDEX 201
INTRODUCTION
It is strange that not in any language has there been published a
systematic treatise on Ethnic Psychology; strange, because the theme is
in nowise a new one but has been the subject of many papers and
discussions for a generation; indeed, had a journal dedicated to its
service for a score of years; strange, also, because its students claim
that it is the key to ethnology, the sure interpreter of history, and
the only solid basis for constructive sociology.
Why this apparent failure to establish for itself a position in the
temple of the Science of Man? This inquiry must be answered on the
threshold of a treatise which undertakes to vindicate for this study an
independent position and a permanent value.
It has been cultivated chiefly by German writers. The periodical to
which I have referred was begun in 1860, under the editorship of Dr. M.
Lazarus and Dr. H. Steinthal, the former a psychologist, the latter a
logician and linguist. The contributors to it often occupied high places
in the learned world. Their articles, usually on special points in
ethnography or linguistics, were replete with thought and facts. But
they failed to convince their contemporaries that there was any room in
the hierarchy of the sciences for this newcomer. The failure was so
palpable that after twenty years’ struggle the editors abandoned their
task. But the seed they sowed had not perished in the soil. Under other
names it struck root and flourished, and is now asserting for itself a
right to live by virtue of its real worth to the right understanding of
human progress.
Why, then, this failure of its earlier cultivation?
To some extent, but not in full, the answer to this may be found in a
critique of the spirit and method of the writers mentioned, offered by
one of the most eminent psychologists of our generation, Professor W.
Wundt.
With partial justice, he pointed out that these teachers proceeded on a
false route in their effort to establish the principles of an ethnic
psychology. They approached it imbued with metaphysical ingenuities,
they indulged too much in talk of “soul,” and they searched for “laws”;
whereas, modern psychology recognises only “psychic processes,” and is
not willing to consider that any “soul-constitution” enters to modify of
its own force the progress of the race. Wundt also asserted that the
field of ethnic psychology is already mainly occupied by general
ethnology, or else by the philosophy of history. Yet he did not deny
that in a sphere strictly limited to the subjects of language, custom,
and myth such a “discipline” might do useful work.
In his later writings, however, Wundt seems to have modified these
strictures, and in the last edition of his excellent text-book
acknowledges that there is no antagonism between experimental and ethnic
psychology, as has been sometimes supposed; that they do not occupy
different, but parts of the same fields, and are distinguished mainly by
difference of method, the one resting on experiment, the other on
observation.
The recognition of ethnic psychology by professed psychologists is,
therefore, an accomplished fact; and this was long since anticipated by
the general literature of history and ethnography.
Who, for instance, has denied that there is such a thing as “racial” or
“national” character? Did anyone take it into his head to denounce as
meaningless Emerson’s title, _English Traits_? Does not every treatise
on ethnography assume that there are certain psychical characteristics
of races, tribes, and peoples, quite sharply dividing them from their
neighbours?
Take, for instance, Letourneau’s popular work, and we find him expressly
claiming that the races and subraces of mankind can be classified by the
relative development of their psychical powers; and such a
“psychological” classification is not a novelty in anthropology.
These mental traits, characteristics, differences, between human groups
are precisely the material which ethnic psychology takes as its material
for investigations. Its aim is to define them clearly, to explain their
origin and growth, and to set forth what influence they assert on a
people and on its neighbours.
Ethnic psychology does not hesitate to claim that the separation of
mankind into groups by psychical differences was and is the one
necessary condition of human progress everywhere and at all times; and,
therefore, that the study of the causes of these differences, and the
influence they exerted in the direction of evolution or regression, is
the most essential of all studies to the present and future welfare of
humanity.
In this sense, it is not only the guiding thread in historical research,
but it is immediately and intensely practical, full of application to
the social life and political measures of the day.
Some have jealously feared that it offers itself as a substitute for the
philosophy of history. True that it draws some of its material from
history; but as much from ethnography and geography. Moreover, it is
not, as history, a chronologic, but essentially a natural science,
depending for its results on objective, verifiable facts, not on records
and documents.
To allege that this field is already occupied is wide of the mark. It is
no more embraced in general ethnology or in history than experimental
psychology is included in general physiology. The advancement of science
depends on the specialisation of its fields of research, and it is high
time that ethnic psychology should take an independent position of its
own.
To assist towards this I shall aim in the present work to set forth its
method and its aims as I understand them. In both these directions I
offer schemes notably different from those of the authors I have
mentioned, believing that this science requires for its independent
development much more comprehensive outlines than will be found in their
writings.
The method, it need hardly be said, must be that of the so-called
“natural sciences”; but it must be based, as Wundt remarks, not on
experiment—that were impossible—but on observation. This is to extend,
not, as he argued, to a few products of culture, but to everything which
makes up national or ethnic life, be it an historic event, an object of
art, a law, custom, rite, myth, or mode of expression. The origins of
these, in the sense of their proximate or exciting causes, are to be
sought, and the conditions of their growth and decay deduced from their
histories.
We are dealing with facts of Life, with collective mental function in
action, and we can appeal, therefore, to the principles of general
biology to guide us. We can, for example, since every organism bears in
its structure not only the record of its own life-history but the
vestiges of its ancestry, confidently expect to find in the traits of
nations the survivals of their earlier and unrecorded conditions.
Understood in this sense, ethnic psychology does not deal with
mathematics and physics, but with collections of facts, feelings,
thoughts, and historic events, and seeks by comparison and analysis to
discover their causal relations. It is wholly objective, and for that
reason eminently a “natural” science. The objective truths with which it
deals are not primary but secondary mental products, as they are not
attached to the individual but to the group. For this reason it has an
advantage over other natural sciences in that it can with propriety
search not only into growth but into origins, for, in its purview, these
fall within the domain of known facts.
We must recognise that the psychical expressions of life are absolutely
and always correlated to the physical functions and structure; and that,
therefore, no purely psychical causes can explain ethnic development or
degeneration. As the past of an organism decides its future, so the
future of a people is already written in its past history.
As in ethnic psychology the material is different from that in
experimental psychology, so in the former we must abandon the methods
suitable in the latter. The ethnic _psyche_ is made up of a number of
experiences common to the mass, but not occurring in any one of its
individual members. These experiences of the aggregate develop their own
variations and modes of progress, and must be studied for themselves,
without reference to the individual, holding the processes of the single
mind as analogies only.
While fully acknowledging the inseparable correlation between all
psychical activities and the physical structures which condition them,
let us not fall into the common and gross error of supposing that
physical is in any way a measure of psychical function. All measurements
in experimental psychology, be they by chemistry or physics, are
quantitative only, and can be nothing else (Wundt); whereas psychical
comparisons are purely qualitative.
A single example will illustrate this infinitely important
fact:—precisely the same quantity of physico-chemical change may be
needed for the evolution into consciousness of two ideas; but if the one
is false and the other true, their psychic values are indefinitely
apart.
We perceive, therefore, that in psychology generally, and especially in
ethnic psychology, where we deal with aggregates, we must draw a
fundamental distinction between those agents which act quantitatively on
the psychical life, that is, modify it by measurable forces, and those
which act qualitatively, that is, by altering the contents and direction
of the _psyche_ itself.
The former belong properly to “natural history,” and can be measured and
estimated just to the extent that we have instruments of precision for
the purpose; the latter wholly elude any such attempts, and must be
appraised by the results they have historically achieved, that is, by
arts, events, or institutions.
The recognition of these two factors of human development, radically
distinct yet inseparably associated, has led me to adopt the division
into two parts of the present work. The first is the “natural,” the
second, the “cultural,” history of the ethnic mind.[1]
Footnote 1:
The author had apparently decided to reverse this order of treatment
after writing the above. The “natural history of the ethnic mind”
forms the second part of the work.—EDITOR.
Note that I say _ethnic_ mind. For let it be said here, as well as
repeated later, that there is no such thing as progress or culture in
the isolated individual, but only in the group, in society, in the
_ethnos_. Only by taking and giving, borrowing and lending, can life
either improve or continue.
The “natural” history will embrace the consideration of those general
doctrines of continuity and variation which hold true alike in matter
and in mind, in the soul as in the body, and a review of the known
forces which, acting through the physical structure and function upon
the organs which are the vehicles of mental phenomena, weaken or
strengthen the psychical activities.
The “cultural” history will present something of a new departure in
anthropology—a classification of all ethnologic data as the products of
a few general concepts, universal to the human mind, but conditioned in
their expressions by the natural history of each group. The
justification of this procedure, which is _not_ a return to the ideology
of an older generation, will be presented in the introduction to the
second part.
The illustrative examples I shall frequently draw from savage conditions
of life. This is in accordance with the custom of ethnologists, and is
based on the fact that in such conditions the motives of action are
simpler and less concealed, and we are nearer the origins of arts and
institutions.
Only by such direct examples can a true psychology be established. The
time has passed when one can seek the laws of mental development from
the “inner consciousness”; and we smile at even so recent a philosopher
as Cousin, when he tells us that, to discover such laws, “_il nous
suffit de rentrer dans nous-mêmes_.”
PART I
THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND
CHAPTER I
_THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN MIND_
In a treatise on psychology we have to do with the Mind; and what is
Mind? So far as we can define it, it is the sum of those activities
which distinguish living from dead matter, the organism from the
inorganic mass.
So broad a definition would include both the vegetable and the animal
worlds; and this is not an error; but for the present purpose, which is
the consideration of the mind of man, it is enough if we recognise that
this mind of his is a development of that of the brute; the same in most
of its traits, contrasted to it in a few. It is profitable, in truth
indispensable, to scrutinise both closely.
_Identities and Differences of the Human and the Brute Mind._—There is a
branch of science called “comparative psychology.” Its province is to
trace the evolution of human mental powers to their earlier phases in
the inferior animals. So successfully has it been pursued that not a few
of its teachers claim that there is nothing left as the private property
of man in this connection; that he has no powers or faculties which are
peculiarly his own; that all his endowments differ in degree only from
those evinced by some one or other of the lower species.
The brute has his fine senses, as acute as, often acuter than, ours; no
one can deny him emotions of love and fear, hate and affection, sorrow
and joy, as poignant as ours, and often expressed in strangely similar
modes; his memory is retentive, his will strong, his self-control
remarkable; he has a lively curiosity, a love of imitation, a sense of
the beautiful, and it is acknowledged that we cannot deny him either
imagination or reason. Mental progress is not unknown in the brute, and
it is well to remember that it is not universal among men.
What, then, is man’s proud prerogative? What the gift which has given
him the world and all that therein is? The answer is in one
word,—_ideation_. The last efforts of modern science can but paraphrase
the words which the philosopher Locke penned nigh two centuries ago:
“The having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction
between man and brute.” The latest American writer on the subject merely
repeats this when he phrases it “the ability to think in general terms
by using symbols (words) which summarise systems of association.”
Let us avoid the metaphysical snares which have been spread around this
simple statement. No matter about such words as “concepts,” “notions,”
“apperceptions,” “abstractions,” and the like. Let us fix in mind the
formula of Romanes: “Distinctively human faculty belongs with
distinctively human ideation.” This, the power to form general
ideas,—which are necessarily abstract,—is the one prerogative which
lifts man above brute. By it he can compare what he learns and thus
develop an intellectual life for comparison; to borrow the metaphor of a
famous student of his kind, it is the magic wand, the diamond-hilted
sword, by which man will conquer his salvation through learning the
truth. We exclaim, with Pascal, “It is Thought which makes Man.”
Outside of this and its developments, all that man has of soul-life is
in common with the brute. Why should he be ashamed of it? What folly to
pretend, as the common phrase goes, to “get rid of the brute in man”!
Parental love, social instincts, fidelity, friendship, courage,—these
are parts of his heritage from his four-footed ancestor. What would he
become, dispossessed of them?
Already, in that long alienation from his brethren which made man the
one species of his genus and the one genus of his class, has he lost
certain strange powers of mind which excite our special wonder when we
see their manifestations in his remote relations. The chief of these is
Instinct. We are all familiar with its extraordinary exhibitions in
bees, ants, and higher animals, and its seeming total absence in
ourselves. What can we make of it?
_Instinct and Intelligence._—Throughout all nature there is an unceasing
eternal conflict between the old and the new, between motion and rest,
between the fixed and the variable, between the individual and the
universe. This cosmic contest is reflected within the realm of animal
life in the contrast between Instinct and Intelligence.
Instinct is hereditary; it belongs to the species; its performance is
unconscious, resulting from internal impulse; its tendency is endless
repetition, not improvement; it is petrified, inherited habit.
Intelligence belongs to the individual; it is neither inherited nor
transmissible by blood; its tendency is toward advancement, progress. It
is the source of all knowledge not purely empirical, and of all
development not of chance.
Habits which are forced upon organisms by the environment under penalty
of extinction become hereditary modes of procedure. They are persisted
in because vitally beneficial. Comparative anatomy shows us that those
organs and structures which are most persistent have their functions
most instinctive; and conversely, as individual freedom of action
increases, instinct retires and intelligence takes its place,
accompanied by higher plasticity in the structures involved in the
action.
Intelligent action is personal initiative from compared experiences. It
is not merely repetition, as in the tricks of animals, but deduction;
therefore it introduces new tendencies into life, which instinct never
does; and these tendencies are not the direct sequences of external
stimuli, as are instincts, but are psychic in origin, proceeding from
the mental conclusion reached.
No more interesting comparison between instinct and intelligence can be
found than that offered by the social communities of the lower
animals,—the bees, ants, beavers, and the like. Their well-regulated
activities excite our surprise and admiration. Each member of the little
state has his duty and performs it, with the result that all are thereby
benefited and the species successfully perpetuated.
But much of the admiration expended on these societies in the lower life
has been misplaced. Their perfect organisation is due to narrower
development of mental powers. The one object at which they aim is
species-continuation, and to this all else is subordinated. They are in
no sense comparable to the reflective purpose which is at the base of
human society, whose real, though oft unacknowledged, and ever
unsuccessful, aim is to insure to each individual the full development
of his various powers. Hence it is that human society is and must be
ever changing with individual aspirations, and can never be iron-bound
in one form.
_Imagination._—There is another faculty of mind, which, if not
exclusively human, is so in all its higher manifestations, and indeed
is, in its development, perhaps the best mental criterion we could
select to measure the evolution of races, nations, and individuals. I
refer to Imagination, Fancy, the source of our noblest enthusiasms, of
our loftiest sentiments, of poetic rapture, and artistic inspiration.
These spiritual sentiments are wholly absent in the brute, and are rare
in inferior personalities. They arise from the vivid presentation to the
mind of real or fancied experiences directed to some end in view. But
this is just the definition of active imagination. It is a rehearsal of
our perceptions, real, or those analogous to reality. Though not a
collation of ideas, its processes are closely akin to those of logical
thought; and, as an eminent analyst says, “The principle of an organic
division according to an end in view governs all processes of active
imagination.”
In this phrase we see why imagination ranks as a criterion of mental
development. Ruled chiefly by unconscious instinct the brute has no
other aims than to feed and sleep and reproduce his kind; men of low
degree add to these, perhaps, the lust of power or of gold or of
amusement, or other such vain and paltry ambitions; but the soul that
seeks the highest has aims beyond all fulfilment, but which by their
glory stimulate its activities to the utmost and lift it into a life
above all mundane satisfactions.
_The Ideal._—By the plastic power of the active imagination is formed
the Ideal, the most potent of all the stimulants of the higher culture.
Based on reality and experience, it transcends the possibilities of
both, and lifts the soul into realms whose light is not on sea or land,
and whose activities aim at results beyond any present power of human
nature to achieve. But it is only by striving for that which is beyond
reach that the utmost effort possible can be called forth.
The ideal, some ideal, is present in every human heart. It is the goal
toward which each strives in seeking pleasure and in avoiding pain.
Through the unity of the human mind, the same ideals, few in number,
have directed the energies of men in all times and climes. Around them
have concentrated the labours of nations, and as one or the other became
more prominent, national character partook of its inspiration, and
national history fell under its sway. Constantly in the history of
culture do we see such general devotion to an ideal lead groups toward
or away from the avenue to progress and vitality.
_Consciousness and Self-Consciousness._—Through ideation arises man’s
consciousness of himself as an independent personality. In its broadest
sense, that of reaction to an external stimulus, consciousness is a
property of all animals, perhaps of all organic tissues. Contractility
and motility depend upon it. What it is, “in itself,” we have no means
of knowing; therefore it is safe to agree with Professor Cope in his
negative opinion that it “is qualitatively comparable to nothing else.”
In simpler forms of organic life it must be merely rudimentary; but in
most animals it reaches what has been called the “projective” stage;
that is, the animal is conscious of the existence of others, like or
unlike himself, though he is not yet conscious of himself as a separate
entity. This has been held to explain, psychologically, the “gregarious
instincts” of many lower species.
As a result of the absence of general concepts, the brute does not
contemplate himself as a single individual in contrast to the others of
his species. He is unable to class these under a general term or
thought. Hence _self_-consciousness belongs to man alone.
Attempting to define this trait, we may say that it is the perception of
the unity and continuity of the individual’s psychological activities.
Just in proportion as this perception becomes clear, positive, sharply
defined, does the individual become aware of his own life, his real
existence, its laws, and its purposes.
Hence the study of this mental characteristic becomes of the highest
importance in ethnology; for it has been well said (Post) that the
growth or decay of individual self-consciousness is an unfailing measure
of the growth or decay of States.
Physiologically, the sense of self, the Ego, is produced by outgoing
discharges from the central nervous system which are felt. They may
arise from external forces or from the internal source which we call
Volition, or Will. In both cases the repetition of _feeling_ them yields
the notion of Personality.
It is instructive to note how differently races and nations have
understood and still do understand this notion; instructive, because it
has much to do with their characters and actions.
Naturally enough many have identified the _I_ with the body, or with
that portion of the body least destructible, the bones. For this reason,
in Egypt, Peru, Teneriffe, and many other localities there was the
practice of preserving the entire body by exsiccation or mummification,
the belief being that, were it destroyed, the personal existence of the
decedent would also perish. In other lands the bones were carefully
guarded in ossuaries or shrines, for in them the soul was held to abide.
Not less widely received was another opinion, that the self dwells in
the name. The personal name was therefore conferred with ceremony, and
frequently was not disclosed beyond the family. The individual could be
injured through his name, his personality impaired by its misuse.
In higher conditions the Person is usually defined by attributes and
environment, as sex, age, calling, property, and the like. Ask a man who
he is, he will define himself “by name and standing.”
Few reach the conception of abstract Individuality, apart from the above
incidents of time and place; so that it is easy to see that
self-consciousness is still in little more than an embryonic stage of
development in humanity. It differs notably in races and stages of
culture. Dr. Van Brero comments on the slight sense of personality among
the Malayan islanders, and attributes to that their exemption from
certain nervous diseases. Its morbid development in self-attention and
Ego-mania is frequently noticed in the asylums of highly civilised
centres.
I shall have frequent occasion to insist that the utmost healthful, that
is, symmetrical, development of the individuality is the true aim of
human society. This is directly due to the fact that self-consciousness,
the “I” in its final analysis, depends on the unity and independence of
the individual Will, which in a given moment of action can be One only.
The cultivation of individuality is therefore the cultivation of the
will, to direct and strengthen which must be the purpose of all
education.
_The Intellectual Process._—The chasm between the human and the brute
mind widens when we come to look more closely at the various steps of
the intellectual process, that is, at the method of reasoning. To be
either clear or conscious, this must be carried on by general ideas, in
themselves abstractions. For example, the so-called “syllogisms” of
logic depend upon the relation of a general to a particular idea; and
thinking can no more be conducted without this relation than talking
without grammatical rules; though neither the formula of the syllogism
nor the rules of grammar are consciously present to the mind.
The logical process is everywhere and at all times the same, in the sage
or the savage, the sane or the insane. To reach any conclusion, the mind
must work in accordance with its method. This is purely mechanical. An
English philosopher (Jevons) invented a “logical machine,” which worked
as well as the human brain. The logical process has been formulated by a
mathematician (Boole) in a simple equation of the second degree. It must
consist of subject and predicate, of general and particular. But the
process has nothing to do with the proceeds. A mill grinds equally well
wheat, tares, and poisonberries. Not upon the fact that the pepsin
digests, but that it digests proper aliments, depends the health of the
body. So the content of the intellectual operation, not its form, is of
good or harm, and merits the attention of ethnographer or historian.
_The Mechanical Action of Mind._—The Germans have a saying, framed first
by their writer, Lichtenstein, known as “the Magician of the North,”
that “_we_ do not think. Thinking merely goes on within us”; just as our
stomachs digest and our glands excrete. Another one of their authors
originated the once-celebrated apothegm, “Without phosphorus there is no
thought.”
The aim of both expressions is to put pointedly the principle that the
intellectual process is of a mechanico-chemical character, a mere bodily
function, to be classed with digestion or circulation. This opinion has
of late years been warmly espoused in the United States.
That intellectual actions are governed by fixed laws was long ago said
and demonstrated by Quetelet in his remarkable studies of vital
statistics. That the development of thought proceeds “under the rule of
an iron necessity” is the ripened conviction of that profound student of
man, Bastian. We must accept it as the verdict of science.
What, then, becomes of individuality, personality, free-will? Must we,
as the great dramatist said, “confess ourselves the slaves of chance,
the flies of every wind that blows?”
Not yet. That we are subject to our surroundings and our history; that
our forefathers, though dead, have not relaxed their parental grasp;
that time, clime, and spot master thought and deed, is all true. But
above all is Volition, Will, a final, insoluble, personal power, the one
irrefragable proof of separate existence, not itself translatable into
Force, but the director, initiator, of all vital forces.
_The “Psychic Cells.”_—Mind brings man into kinship with all organic
life. Long ago Aristotle said if one would explain the human soul, he
must accomplish it through learning the souls of all other beings.
The physiologist explains mental phenomena as the function of
specialised cell-life. He points out the cells, strange triangular
masses in the cortex of the brain, with long processes and spiny
branches, touching but never uniting. In the lower animals the network
is simple, the branches short; as mental capacity advances, they become
more complex and longer.
These are the “psychic cells” in whose microscopic laboratory is worked
the magic of mind, transforming waves of impact, some into sweet music,
others into colour and light and all the glory of the landscape;
changing sights and sounds into emotions of joy or dread; transmitting
them into passions or lusts; assorting the gathered stores of
comparison, and from them building ideas base or noble, and awakening
the Will to direct the use of all.
_The Question of Soul._—But, it will be exclaimed, in this discussion of
Mind, is nothing to be said of a _Soul_? Has man not an immortal element
which removes him infinitely from the brute which perishes, and which
guarantees his personal existence after death?
The answer of modern science is that between “mind” and “soul” no
distinction can be drawn; and that this very quality of “ideation” is
not a sudden acquisition, some free gift of the gods, bestowed
full-blown and perfected, but the development of a very slow process,
traceable in its beginnings in some beasts, faint in the lowest men,
strictly conditioned on the growth of articulate expression, far from
complete in the ripest intellects. It neither excludes nor assumes
persistence after corporeal death. We may use the word “soul,”
therefore, because it is rich in associations; but use it as a synonym
of “mind.”
The soul is not some transcendental substance outside of the individual,
but exists by virtue of the connection of his psychic processes with
each other. This does not lessen the reality of his personal existence,
but explains it.
As for the relation which mind or soul in general bears to the material
external world, most thinkers are of opinion now that the contrast
formerly supposed to exist is one merely of view-point; that natural
science considers all our experiences as external, while mental science
studies them as wholly internal.
_Are the Mental Faculties the Same in Man Everywhere?_—The lines thus
clearly drawn between the human and the brute mind, we ask, do they hold
good for the whole human species, of all races and degrees of culture?
And has man in the past always possessed these faculties which have been
thus attributed to him alone of all organised beings?
To these inquiries I shall address myself.
It is true, as I shall have many occasions to show hereafter, that in
mental endowment tribes and races widely differ; but so do individuals
of the same race, even of the same family; and in regard to many of
these differences we can so accurately put our finger on what brings it
about that we have but to alter conditions in order to alter endowments.
The Fuegian savage is one of the worst specimens of the genus; but put
him when young in an English school, and he will grow up an intelligent
member of civilised society. However low man is, he can be instructed,
improved, redeemed; and it is this most cheering fact which should
encourage us in incessant labour for the degraded and the despised of
humanity.
There is another proof, strong, convincing, of the substantial sameness
of the human mind throughout the species. This is Language, articulate
speech. No tribe has ever been known in history or ethnography but had a
language ample for its needs. The speechless man, _Homo alalus_, is a
fiction of a philosopher. He never lived.
Language, however, is the guarantor of thought in general terms. The
words are the “associative symbols” of abstract ideas. Wherever men
talk, they think in a solely human fashion.
Philologists talk of “higher” or “lower” languages. The assertion has
been made that some more than others favor abstract expressions. Such
statements may be granted; but the fact remains that every word itself
is the symbol of an abstraction, and only as such can it be rationally
uttered.
We can trace language back to its pristine rudiments, to the form that
it must have had among the hordes of the “old stone age,” cave-dwellers,
naked savages. I have made such an attempt. But the essentials of speech
as a vehicle of thought still remain; and though doubtless there was a
period when articulate separated from inarticulate speech, that was
during the morning twilight of man’s day on earth, when he as yet
scarcely merited the name of man.
From all analogy we may be confident that the early palæolithic men who
shaped the symmetrical axes of Acheul, scrapers, punches, and hammers;
who carefully selected and tested the flint-flakes; who had enough of an
eye for beauty to preserve fine quartz pebbles; and who lived in social
groups, in stationary homes along watercourses,—these men unquestionably
had a spoken language, and minds competent to deal in simple
abstractions. Yet these are the most ancient men of whom we know
anything, dwellers in central Europe before the Great Ice Age.
When we have such evidence as this for the psychical unity of the human
species, is it worth while going into that antiquated discussion of the
“monogenists” and “polygenists” as to whether man owns one or several
birthplaces? Surely not. We declare all nations of the earth to be of
one blood by the judgment of a higher court than anatomy can furnish;
though it also hands down no dissenting opinion.
_The Elementary Ideas and their Development._—These two principles, or
rather demonstrated truths,—the unity of the mind of man, and the
substantial uniformity of its action under like conditions,—form the
broad and secure foundation for Ethnic Psychology. They confirm the
validity of its results and guarantee its methods.
As there are conditions which are universal, such as the structure and
functions of the body, its general relations to its surroundings, its
needs and powers, these developed everywhere at first the like psychical
activities, or mental expressions. They constitute what Bastian has
happily called the “elementary ideas” of our species. In all races, over
all continents, they present themselves with a wonderful sameness, which
led the older students of man to the fallacious supposition that they
must have been borrowed from some common centre.
Nor are they easily obliterated under the stress of new experiences and
changed conditions. With that tenacity of life which characterises
simple and primitive forms, they persist through periods of divergent
and higher culture, hiding under venerable beliefs, emerging with fresh
disguises, but easily detected as but repetitions of the dear primordial
faiths of the race.
_The Ethnic Ideas and their Origin._—From the monotonous unity of the
elementary ideas, the common property of mankind in its earliest stages
of development, branched off the mental life of each group and tribe,
not discarding the old, but adding the new under the external compulsion
of environment and experience.
Where such externals were alike or nearly so, the progress was parallel;
where unlike, it was divergent; analogous in this to well-known
doctrines of the biologist.
Such branches were constantly blending in peace or colliding in war,
leading to a perpetual interaction of the one growth with the other,
engendering a complexity of relation to each other and to the primitive
substratum. But the ethnic character, once crystallised, remained as
ingrained as the national life or the bodily stigmata. It compelled the
members as a mass to look at life and its aims through certain lights,
to comprehend the world under certain forms, to move to a measure, and
dance to a tune.
Such is the power of the Ethnic Mind, fraught with weal or woe for the
nation over whom it rules, tyrannical, portentous, a blind natural
force, which may lift its helpless followers to skyey heights or drag
them into the abyss.
How it is formed and what decides its fateful beneficent or maleficent
decrees, I shall consider in detail in the next chapters.