CULTURE & ETHNOLOGY
CULTURE & ETHNOLOGY
BY
ROBERT H. LOWIE, PH.D.
Associate Curator, Anthropology
American Museum of Natural History
NEW YORK
DOUGLAS C. McMURTRIE
1917
CONTENTS
Page
I. Culture and Psychology 5
II. Culture and Race 27
III. Culture and Environment 47
IV. The Determinants of Culture 66
V. Terms of Relationship 98
PREFACE
This booklet is an attempt at popularization. The first four chapters
are practically identical with as many lectures, delivered in 1917 as
the January course offered by the Department of Anthropology of the
American Museum of Natural History. The purpose of the January series,
which was instituted in 1914 by Dr. P. E. Goddard and the writer, is to
acquaint an audience of intelligent laymen with some of the results of
modern ethnological work, the emphasis being on principles and problems,
rather than on purely descriptive detail. The course, in short, occupies
an intermediate position between technical discourses addressed to
scientists and the more popular lectures which are designed to furnish
mainly entertainment. Each year different topics have been chosen and
several members of the staff have cooperated. Owing to the dearth of
recent ethnological literature reflecting the position of American
field-workers, and at the same time accessible to the interested
outsider, I was easily persuaded to issue the 1917 lectures in the
present form.
The last chapter may not seem to fit within the scope of this
publication. It is obviously more technical than the rest in treatment
and may appear to deal with too special a topic. My object, however, was
to conclude with a concrete illustration of ethnological method, and I
naturally selected a subject to which I had paid considerable attention
during the last two years. It is a subject in which Morgan was able to
arouse the interest of hundreds of laymen; and I can see no reason why
an up-to-date exposition of the problems involved should not be able to
hold their attention.
ROBERT H. LOWIE
_May, 1917_
I. CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY[1]
With the beginning of the European war the word ‘culture’ acquired a
sense in popular English usage which had long prevailed in ethnological
literature. Culture is, indeed, the sole and exclusive subject-matter of
ethnology, as consciousness is the subject-matter of psychology, life of
biology, electricity of a branch of physics. Culture shares with these
other fundamental concepts the peculiarity that it can be properly
understood only by an enlarged familiarity with the facts it summarizes.
There is no royal shortcut to a comprehension of culture as a whole by
definition any more than to a comprehension of consciousness; but as
every analysis and explanation of particular conscious states adds to
our knowledge of what consciousness is, so every explanation of
particular cultural phenomena adds to our insight into the nature of
culture. We must, however, start with some proximate notion of what we
are to discuss, and for this purpose Tylor’s definition in the opening
sentence of his _Primitive Culture_ will do as well as any: “Culture ...
is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society.”
For purely practical reasons, connected with the minute division of
labor that has become imperative with modern specialization, ethnology
has in practice concerned itself with the cruder cultures of peoples
without a knowledge of writing. But this division is an illogical and
artificial one. As the biologist can study life as manifested in the
human organism as well as in the amoeba, so the ethnologist might
examine and describe the usages of modern America as well as those of
the Hopi Indians. In these lectures I shall therefore not hesitate to
draw upon illustrations from the higher civilizations where these seem
most appropriate.
Indeed, it may be best for pedagogical reasons to commence with an
enumeration of instances of cultural activity in our own midst. And
since there is a persistent tendency to associate with culture the more
impressive phenomena of art, science, and technology, it is well to
insist at the outset that these loftier phases are by no means necessary
to the concept of culture. The fact that your boy plays ‘button, button,
who has the button?’ is just as much an element of our culture as the
fact that a room is lighted by electricity. So is the baseball
enthusiasm of our grown-up population, so are moving picture shows,
_thés dansants_, Thanksgiving Day masquerades, bar-rooms, Ziegfeld
Midnight Follies, evening schools, the Hearst papers, woman suffrage
clubs, the single-tax movement, Riker drug stores, touring-sedans, and
Tammany Hall.
These, then, represent the type of phenomena comprised under the caption
of culture. They exist, and science, as a complete view of reality,
cannot ignore them. But a question ominous for the worker who derives
his bread and butter from ethnological investigation arises. All the
phenomena mentioned and the rest of the same order relate to man, and
they relate to man not as an animal but as an organism endowed with a
higher mentality. Tylor’s definition expressly speaks of ‘capabilities
and habits’. But there is a science that deals with capabilities and
habits, to wit, psychology. Is it, then, necessary to have a distinct
branch of knowledge, or can we not simply merge the cultural phenomena
in those of the older science of psychology? It is this question that
concerns us here. On the answer must depend our conception of culture
and our attitude towards a science purporting to deal with cultural
phenomena as something distinct from other data of reality.
In seeking light on this subject we must understand what sort of
problems arise from the contemplation of cultural facts and attempt to
connect them with the established principles of psychology. A few
concrete examples will illustrate the situation.
One of the striking characteristics of our civilization, a trait of our
material culture that is nevertheless an invaluable, nay indispensable,
means for the propagation of knowledge under modern conditions, is the
existence of paper, that is, of a cheap, readily manufactured material
for writing and printing. The obvious problem that develops from this
fact is, How did we get the art of paper-manufacture? Now we shall
search in vain our psychological literature in quest of an explanation.
Höffding and James, Wundt and Titchener have no answer to offer. An
answer, nevertheless, exists. Europe learnt the art of paper-making from
the Arabs, who as early as 795 A. D. had established a paper factory in
Bagdad. These in turn got their knowledge from the Chinese, who must be
regarded as the originators of the technique. The answer is a perfectly
satisfactory one, but it is obviously not couched in psychological
terms: its nature is purely _historical_.
Nevertheless, an objection may plausibly be raised here. Though an
explanation has certainly been given, it does not account for all
aspects of the phenomena we are considering. There is a psychological
basis for each and every one of the events in our historical series.
This series we may subdivide into three stages--the invention by the
Chinese, the borrowing of this invention by the Arabs, and its
transmission from Arab to European. Now the two last-named processes of
transmission may not suggest the necessity of a special explanation at
all. One may think that all that was required was for the Europeans to
watch the Arabs and for the Arabs to watch the Chinese, and presto! the
thing was done. This indeed, seems to be the view of an influential
school of modern ethnologists. But the case is far from being so simple.
We know of many instances, in the higher no less than in the lower
cultures, corresponding to what the biologist calls symbiosis--a
condition where distinct communities or countries persist in a division
of labor for mutual benefit, each trading some of its intellectual or
material products for equivalents secured from the other. In many parts
of Africa there are fixed markets in which negroes from fairly remote
localities congregate for the barter of wares, which are thus diffused
far from their source of origin; but it is the finished products, not
the arts, that are diffused. In New Guinea trading-vessels carry such
objects as pottery hundreds of miles from the area of manufacture to
natives who remain as ignorant of the ceramic technique as before. In
northern Arizona the Hopi Indians occupying three eminences not more
than eight miles distant from one another have no perfect uniformity of
industrial knowledge. Pottery, which flourishes on the eastern Mesa, is
wholly unknown as an art, though constantly used in its specimens, by
the people of the central Mesa; a certain type of basketry plaque is
made only at Oraibi village; another type is manufactured exclusively on
the central Mesa. Conditions more ideal _a priori_ for a transfer of
knowledge than among the practically homogeneous neighboring Hopi groups
could not be conceived. Nevertheless, it has not taken place. Cultural
diffusion, therefore, cannot be taken for granted. We cannot take one
people, place it alongside of another, and effect a cultural osmosis in
the same way in which we produce a chemical reaction when two substances
are brought together under proper conditions of temperature. We are face
to face with a selective, with a _psychological_ condition. But when we
turn once more to our text-books of psychology, we again find nothing
that fits the case. About choice in general we get ample information.
But we may rummage all the psychological seminar rooms in the world and
yet shall find no reason why the Arabs learned the technique of
paper-making from the Chinese instead of ignoring it or only importing
Chinese paper.
Nor are we more fortunate when we turn to psychology for an account of
how the original Chinese inventor came to conceive his epoch-making
idea. This fact, of course, falls under the heading of ‘imagination’,
and about imagination psychologists have much to tell us. But what,
after all, does their interpretation amount to? We learn that
imagination, as distinguished from the power of abstract thought, is the
power of forming new concrete ideas. Since even the concrete individual
idea is complex, being a product of association, its elements may be
linked differently so as to produce new combinations. “The inventor of a
new mechanism,” says Höffding, “combines given elements, the laws of
whose activity he knows, into a totality and a connection which has no
complete parallel in experience.” The scientist tries all possible
combinations among his elements of experiences, forming a succession of
individual ideas, which are rejected until the one appears that
adequately represents reality.
We need hardly go farther to realize the impotence of psychological
science for illuminating the _psychology_ as well as the history of the
paper-making art. The formulation of psychological science is admirable,
but it is too general. It explains the invention of the steam-engine and
the phonograph, the sewing-machine and the harvester no less than the
origin of paper-making. We, however, do not want to know merely what
ultimate psychological processes the invention of paper-making shares
with all other inventions whatsoever, but also the _differential_
conditions that produced this one and unique result under the given
circumstances. It is as though we asked about a man’s character and were
told that he was a vertebrate. The type of psychological explanation we
want is by no means unknown; however, we shall find its illustrations
not in text-books of psychology, but in histories of literature,
science, and art. When Taine raises the question how such a bore as Dr.
Samuel Johnson could conceivably have attained his position in English
literature and answers that it is because of the English predilection
for sermons, he is giving the type of solution--whether right or
wrong--that we want to secure for our cultural problem; it explains why
the average Englishman, as a member of English society, acquires the
habit of regarding Johnson in a certain way. When we inquire why Newton
closes his treatise on optics with a statement as to the vanity of human
things, our curiosity is satisfied when this expression appears as only
one instance of the blending of theological and scientific thought
current in his day. It is nonsense to say that these explanations are
purely historical; they are psychological, for they take fully into
account the subjective attitudes involved in the phenomena studied; and
it is hopeless to expect this sort of explanation from psychological
science, which deals with a quite distinct and far more generalized form
of mental activity.
To turn from the technique of paper manufacture to a very different
cultural feature in order to test the possibility of merging the
observed phenomena in the principles of psychology. In several parts of
the globe, and most prominently in parts of South America, the
aborigines practise a custom known as the ‘couvade’, which forces the
father of a new-born child to subject himself to a period of inactive
confinement and a series of rigorously observed dietary and other
regulations. Let us, for the sake of bringing out the point in high
relief, ignore all historical considerations and concentrate exclusively
on the subjective elements involved. Whence, then, this strange and
wholly irrational association of ideas between fatherhood and a group of
taboos? Now the subject of the association of ideas occupies hundreds of
pages in psychological literature, yet all this, in itself valuable
enough, material has no bearing on our problem, because it is again far
too general. We do not doubt for a moment that the association we desire
to have illuminated is due either to contiguity or to a perceived
similarity of ideas, but why have we this particular association instead
of the limitless multitude of associations that would be equally
intelligible by the same formulae?
Again, many aboriginal tribes of Australia are subdivided into two
halves, membership in which is inherited through the father, in some
cases, through the mother in others. These moieties are what is
technically called ‘exogamous’, _i.e._, marriage with a fellow-member is
strictly forbidden. The regulation is, indeed, so stringent, the feeling
of horror evoked by a transgression so violent, that in former times
offenders were promptly put to death. This sentiment is so strong that
even when visiting a remote tribe, perhaps a hundred miles away, where
there is no possibility of blood-kinship, an Australian will avoid
marriage with a member of the moiety bearing the same name as his own.
Here, surely, there is matter for psychology. An Australian has a
violent emotional reaction akin to our aversion to incest, and may
translate his feelings into the most violent action. Or, looking at the
matter from another angle, the Australian exercises an admirable
self-control, eschewing on principle marital relations with half the
women of his community. Yet all that psychologists tell us of the
ethical feelings and the will leaves the problem before us wholly
untouched. Why this particular curious feeling developed, what place it
occupies in mental life, the psychologist fails to explain. We get,
again, simply general formulæ about feeling and will that are equally
applicable to the case of a man’s beating his wife or a boy’s resisting
the temptations of a lollypop. And this, it must be noted, is dealing
with the distinctively psychological aspect of the data. Whether the
rule in question originated in a common center and thence spread to
other tribes, is also a cultural question of great importance, and this
historical phase of the subject psychology is avowedly incompetent to
deal with. Psychology, then, fails throughout to supply us with the
interpretation we want. It is as impotent to reduce to really
interpretative psychological principles the subjective aspect of
cultural phenomena as it is to explain the historical sequence of
events.
It is not necessary to multiply examples to establish the point. It is
clear that cultural phenomena contain elements that cannot be reduced to
psychological principles. The reason for the insufficiency is already
embodied in Tylor’s definition of culture as embracing ‘capabilities and
habits _acquired_ by man as a member of _society_’. The science of
psychology, even in its most modern ramifications of abnormal psychology
and the study of individual variations, does not grapple with _acquired_
mental traits nor with the influence of _society_ on individual thought,
feeling and will. It deals on principle exclusively with _innate_ traits
of the _individual_. Now, whether the sharp separation assumed here
between the innate and the acquired, between individual activity as
determined by uniquely individual potentialities and as determined by
social environment, can be made in practice or not, one thing is clear:
there _are_ phenomena that are acquired and in no sense innate, that are
socially and not individually determined. When a Christian reacts in a
definite way to the perception of a cross, it is clearly not because of
an individual psychic peculiarity, for other Christians react in the
same way. On the other hand, we are not dealing with a general human
trait since the reactions of a Mohammedan or a Buddhist will be quite
different. Innumerable instances of this sort show that individual
thought, feeling and volition are co-determined by social influences. In
so far forth as the potency of these social factors extends we have
culture; in so far forth as knowledge, emotion, and will are neither the
result of natural endowment shared with other members of the species nor
rest on an individual organic basis, we have a thing _sui generis_ that
demands for its investigation a distinct science.
Does it follow from the foregoing that there is no possible relation
between psychology and culture, that psychological results are a matter
of utter indifference to the ethnologist? In their desire to vindicate
for their own branch of knowledge a place in the sun, some ethnologists
have come very near, if they have not actually reached such a
conclusion. To me the case appears in a somewhat different light.
Whatever division of labor may be desirable for the economy of
scientific work, knowledge as a whole knows nothing of watertight
compartments. Further, the nominally distinct sciences are not
subordinated to one another, but coexist in a condition of democratic
equality and coöperativeness. We cannot reduce cultural to psychological
phenomena any more than we can reduce biology to mechanics or chemistry,
because in either case the very facts we desire to have explained are
ignored in the more generalized formulation. But for specific purposes,
the student of culture can call for aid upon each and all of the other
branches of learning. It is a very important cultural problem whether
the natives of South America knew the bronze technique, _i.e._, whether
they consciously produced the observed alloy of copper and tin. But how
can the ethnologist solve this problem? Only by requisitioning the
services of the chemist.
Now very few would deny that services of the kind rendered by chemistry
can also be rendered to the study of culture by psychology. Indeed, most
people would at once admit that the relationship with psychology is _a
priori_ likely to be far more extensive and thorough-going. A few
concrete examples will illustrate how this relationship may be
conceived.
Among the quaint conceits with which primitive cultures abound is that
of attaching to particular numbers a peculiar character of sanctity.
“Everything in the universe,” a Crow Indian once told me, “goes by
fours.” As a matter of fact, most things in Crow religious life are
adjusted to this conception. An important ceremonial act is thrice
feigned so as to be actually performed at the fourth attempt; religious
processions halt four times; songs are sung in sets of four; in mythic
tales it is the fourth trial that carries an heroic feat to a successful
issue. Now this cultural fact very largely eludes psychological
interpretation. The first thing that strikes us is that this feature is
no peculiarity of the Crow, but is rather widely distributed among their
immediate neighbors and even remote Indian tribes, though jointly
occupying a continuous area. Since outside of this region other numbers
figure as mystic, we cannot regard the view of the sacredness of Four as
a general trait of human psychology but must assume that the concept was
borrowed by most of the tribes now holding it. A wider survey teaches us
that corresponding, though not identical, conceptions are very common.
_Seven_ figures in parts of Asia, _Three_ in European folklore, _Five_
in Oregon and northern Nevada, _Six_ among the Ainu of Yezo, _Nine_
among the Yakut, _Ten_ among the Pythagorean philosophers of ancient
Greece, very much as _Four_ does among the Crow. Now the fact that a
particular Crow Indian regards Four as a sacred number does not mean
that this is an individual peculiarity of his any more than the
Christian’s reaction to a cross is a proof of some psychological
idiosyncrasy. Individually the Crow Indian may be quite indifferent to
the number and yet he would view it as sacred because he has been taught
so to regard it. This is, of course, the vital difference between
ethnology and psychology which has already been emphasized.
Nevertheless, the association must at one time have been formed in an
individual mind, whether among the Crow or elsewhere, and the question
arises as to what such an association means. Francis Galton showed some
time ago that such associations of definite personal characteristics
with numbers occur by no means infrequently among Europeans. The
phenomenon we are dealing with is thus linked with a group of related
phenomena and in so far forth is explained.
There are ethnologists who would not admit that such an explanation has
anything to do with ethnology. They would contend that as soon as we
cease to investigate the group as such we are passing from ethnology,
the science of culture, to psychology, the science of individual minds.
This seems an unnecessarily narrow doctrinaire view. Knowledge, as
stated above, is not subdivided by hard-and-fast partitions. Interest
certainly does not stop at an arbitrary point in the investigation but
is centered on a comprehension of the _whole_ phenomenon. Where that
phenomenon is an alloy of tin and copper, a decision as to its nature
is naturally left to chemistry; it seems not unreasonable that where it
is a type of association we should turn for enlightenment to psychology.
Another field supplies an additional illustration. One of the important
subjects for ethnographic study is artistic form. The ethnologist notes
in a purely descriptive way the decorative patterns employed by various
tribes, the fact that curvilinear motives are prominent among the Maori
of New Zealand while the rawhide bags of Plains Indians are covered with
angular paintings. Here, once more, it is clear that many of the
problems that arise are purely cultural. There are, nevertheless,
psychological elements involved that may be misunderstood without
psychological knowledge. Let us assume, _e.g._, that a certain tribe is
artistically characterized by a fondness for squares. What does this
predilection signify? It is a psychological commonplace that through an
optical illusion we exaggerate the height as compared with the width of
a rectangle; accordingly, the geometrical square does not coincide with
the psychological square. This simple piece of information enables us to
understand _what_ we are actually dealing with in the case of a square
pattern. At the same time it sharpens our observation regarding such
patterns. It is quite conceivable that in one place tribal taste should
prefer the actual square while elsewhere the psychological square
occupies the seat of honor. This would be a purely ethnographic fact,
yet its discovery might be considerably expedited by some knowledge of
experimental aesthetics.
Let us turn from mystic numbers and decorative designs to another aspect
of primitive life. The Turkish tribes of western Siberia have a form of
religion based on the belief that certain individuals enjoy the
hereditary privilege of acting as intermediaries between their ancestral
spirits and the people at large. With the aid of his sacred drum the
shaman, as such an intermediary is technically called, is able to summon
the supernatural beings, cure the sick, foretell the future, separate
his own soul from his body and send it to the upper realms of light or
the nether regions of darkness. Now, although a particular individual
inherits the shaman’s office from his father, he receives no formal
instruction nor does he make any active preparation for his mission. His
call comes in the form of a sudden paroxysm. He is seized with a feeling
of languor and a fit of violent convulsions, with abnormal yawning, and
a powerful pressure on the chest, which causes him to utter
inarticulate screams. He begins to shiver with cold, rolls his eyes,
suddenly leaps up and madly circles about until he falls down covered
with perspiration and writhing in epileptic spasms on the ground. His
members are devoid of sensation, his hands grasp without discrimination
red-hot iron, knives, pins; he swallows such objects without suffering
the slightest injury, and again ejects them from his mouth. Finally, the
prospective seer seizes a shaman’s drum and assumes the shaman’s office.
Disobedience to the spirit’s call would spell disaster, madness and
death amidst the most horrible tortures.[2]
The naïve reaction to this narrative on the part of common sense in the
familiar form of common ignorance will probably be that the European
traveler who is our authority is a very gullible individual if he
believed his native informant’s statements. How can an individual be
seized with such a spasm as that described? How is it possible for him
to become devoid of sensation? Nevertheless, nothing is more certain
than that the account given is substantially correct. It is simply a
particular form of nervous affliction very common throughout Siberia and
attested by dozens of trustworthy eyewitnesses.[3] This Arctic hysteria,
as it has been misnamed (for there is nothing distinctively Arctic
about it), manifests itself principally in two ways. Either the
individual falls victim to an indiscriminate mania for mimicking the
acts of others; or he is seized with the sort of paroxysm described for
the Turkish shaman. Nothing is clearer than that in neither case is
there usually conscious deception. Sometimes the imitation mania
subjects the sufferer to ridicule and pain, as when an old woman in
imitation of a Cossack, seized a salmon with her teeth, ran up a hill
and down again, unable to prevent herself from plunging into the water,
though normally she was barely able to walk. Similarly, the numerous
hysterical individuals of the other type who do not become inspired
shamans cannot possibly derive any benefit from their fits.
Abnormal psychology here steps in and teaches us that such trances are
involuntary and not the result of fraud, that they occur in our own
civilization and are accompanied with extraordinary lack of sensibility
to pain, in short, psychiatry classifies the observed phenomena and
tells us what we are really dealing with. It prevents a misconception
alike of the shaman’s activities and of the attitude of his people
towards him.
When, however, abnormal psychology has so far enlightened us, it has by
no means exhausted even the purely subjective aspect of the case. How
does the prospective shaman seized with his fit know about the
shamanistic drum that forms a necessary accessory of his office? How
does he know what mode of activity is expected from him? These are _not_
things which he can get directly from his trance for we shall hardly
accept the aboriginal theory that he is inspired by the ancestral
spirits. He can derive his knowledge, however informally, only as the
member of a group holding certain definite views as to the shamanistic
office. The cultural phenomenon, then, even on its psychological side,
comprises a very appreciable _plus_ over and above the facts that
psychology can explain, and these additional data accordingly require
treatment by another science.
My conclusions as to the relation of psychology to culture are,
accordingly, the following: The cultural facts, even in their subjective
aspect, are not merged in psychological facts. They must not, indeed,
contravene psychological principles, but the same applies to all other
principles of the universe; culture cannot construct houses contrary to
the laws of gravitation nor produce bread out of stones. But the
principles of psychology are as incapable of accounting for the
phenomena of culture as is gravitation to account for architectural
styles. Over and above the interpretations given by psychology, there is
an irreducible residuum of huge magnitude that calls for special
treatment and by its very existence vindicates the _raison d’être_ of
ethnology. We need not eschew any help given by scientific psychology
for the comprehension of specifically psychological components of
cultural phenomena; but as no one dreams of saying that these phenomena
are reduced to chemical principles when chemistry furnishes us with an
analysis of Peruvian bronze implements, so no one can dare assert that
they are reduced to psychological principles when we call upon
psychology to elucidate specific features of cultural complexes. The
‘capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’
constitute a distinct aspect of reality that must be the field of a
distinct science autonomous with reference to psychology.
II. CULTURE AND RACE
If culture is a complex of socially acquired traits, it might appear
that race could not possibly have any influence on culture, since by
racial characteristics we understand those which are innate by virtue of
ancestry. This, however, by no means follows. In order that certain
traits be acquired, a certain type of organic basis is an absolute
prerequisite; a chimpanzee or a bat is not able to acquire human culture
through social environment. From an evolutionary point of view it
appears, therefore, very plausible at first blush that within the human
species, likewise, differences in organization should be correlated with
the observed cultural manifestations of varying degree and complexity.
There was, undoubtedly, some stage in human evolution where the organic
basis for culture had not yet been acquired. Can the several races be
regarded as transitional forms, each possessed of certain capabilities
determining and limiting its cultural achievement? This question can be
viewed in two ways. Comparative psychology may give us direct
information as to qualitative and quantitative racial differences that
would affect cultural activity. Or, we may infer such differences as
the only possible causes for the observed cultural differences. Both
modes of approach are helpful for a comprehension of the problem.
Until recent years the psychological evaluation of primitive tribes
rested largely on the offhand judgments of travelers and missionaries.
With the advent of more exact psychological laboratory methods, these
have been, in some measure, applied by competent investigators to
aboriginal populations. Unfortunately, the results hitherto secured are
somewhat meager. There are technical difficulties, among them the
necessity of examining fairly large numbers of individuals in order to
get a good sample of the population. Worse still, laboratory methods are
most effective in regard to what may be called the lower mental
operations, which partake almost more of a physiological than of a
strictly psychological character. Clearly enough, what we should be most
desirous of knowing is how primitive compares with civilized man in
logical thought and imagination. But these are precisely the things not
readily tested, and here the additional technical difficulty comes in
that they can hardly be examined at all without a far more intimate
knowledge of the native languages than the investigator is likely to
command. Nevertheless, something has been done and I will attempt to
present as briefly as possible the essential results, following
Thorndike’s convenient summary.[1]
Although some observers have attributed unusual acuity of sense
perception to the more primitive peoples of the globe, the
investigations of Rivers, Woodworth, and others in the main establish
the psychic unity of mankind in this regard. For example, though the
Kalmuk are renowned for their vision, only one or two of the individuals
tested exceeded the European record, and while Bruner found Indians and
Filipino inferior in hearing a watch tick or a click transmitted by
telephone, the fairness of these tests for natives unused to such
stimuli has been reasonably challenged. In their reaction-time tests,
widely different groups were very similar. In the tapping test,
measuring the rate at which the brain can at will discharge a series of
impulses to the same muscle, marked differences were also lacking; but
when accuracy as well as rapidity were examined, the Filipino seemed
decidedly superior to the whites. Optical illusions were shared by all
races tested, which indicates, as Woodworth points out, that simple
sorts of judgments as well as sensory processes are common to the
generality of mankind. Woodworth subjected his subjects to an
intelligence test, demanding that blocks of different shapes be fitted
into a board with holes to match the blocks. In speed the average
differences between whites, Indians, Eskimo, Ainu, Filipino, and
Singhalese are small and there is considerable overlapping. On the other
hand, the Igorrote and Philippine Negrito, as well as a group of
supposed Pygmies from the Congo, proved remarkably deficient. “This
crumb,” concludes our investigator, “is about all the testing
psychologist has yet to offer on the question of racial differences in
intelligence.”
It may well be, as Thorndike suggests, that if higher functions were
studied, more striking differences would be revealed. But up to date we
can simply say that experimental psychological methods have revealed no
far-reaching differences in the mental processes of the several races.
Even the Igorrote and Negrito deficiency may be due, Woodworth suggests,
to their habits of life rather than to their native endowment.
Since exact methods tell us nothing of those higher operations we are
most eager to know about, it might be deemed advisable to fall back on
general estimates by the most competent observers. Unfortunately, the
personal equation enters here to an extent that completely nullifies
the value of individual judgments. Travelers in foreign lands are likely
to make quite unusual demands on the capacities of the natives with
whose aid they are working, and in this way too frequently arrive at an
unfair conclusion as to their mental characteristics. In a corresponding
test Europeans might do little better. It is, at all events, remarkable
that unbiased observers who are fairly sympathetic and remain in long
contact with a primitive people usually entertain a rather favorable
opinion of their powers. Thus, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied,
expresses the view that, whether other varieties of mankind differ or
not, the American aborigines are not inferior to the whites,[2] and
corresponding estimates have been made of other races. Still, these are
merely personal opinions and we must turn to our second method for
possibly more objective, if indirect, evidence on the subject. Are,
then, cultural differences necessarily the result of racial differences?
In thus investigating the relations between race and civilization we may
fruitfully employ the method of variation. Making the racial factor a
constant, we may inquire whether culture, too, is thereby made a
constant, and whether a change in racial propinquity is correlated with
a proportionate change of culture. On the other hand, we may start with
culture as a constant and inquire whether each form or grade of culture
is the concomitant of definite racial characteristics and whether a
change in culture is accompanied by a corresponding change of race.
To begin with the latter method, which may be briefly disposed of:
Taking our own type of culture, as represented in western Europe and
North America, we find that it is shared by at least one people of quite
distinct stock, the Japanese, who have already made important
contributions to the general civilization of the world in such lines as
biology and scientific medicine. An obvious objection is that the
Japanese are not the originators of our cultural foundation but have
borrowed it ready-made (as they once borrowed that of China), and merely
added a few additional stones to the superstructure. This fact cannot,
of course, be questioned, but as soon as we investigate historically the
origin of our own modern civilization we find that it, too, is largely
the product of numerous cultural streams, some of which may be
definitely traced to distinct races or sub-races. Our immediate
indebtedness to Rome and Greece has been drilled into us with such
fulsomely exaggerated emphasis in our schooldays that the less said
about it the better for a fair estimate of general culture history. That
the Greeks were merely the continuators and inheritors of an earlier
Oriental culture, must be considered an established fact. Our economic
life, based as it is on the agricultural employment of certain cereals
with the aid of certain domesticated animals, is derived from Asia; so
is the technologically invaluable wheel.[3] The domestication of the
horse certainly originated in inner Asia; modern astronomy rests on that
of the Babylonians, Hindu, and Egyptians; the invention of glass is an
Egyptian contribution; spectacles come from India;[4] paper, to mention
only one other significant element of our civilization, was borrowed
from China. What is right for the goose, is right for the gander; and if
the Japanese deserve no credit for having appropriated our culture, we
must also carefully eliminate from that culture all elements not
demonstrably due to the creative genius of our race before laying claim
to the residue as our distinctive product. As Thorndike, among others,
has pointed out,[5] the races have not remained in splendid isolation,
but any particular one has obtained most of its civilization from
without, and “of ten equally gifted races in perfect intercourse each
will originate only one-tenth of what it gets.” This, to be sure,
represents an ideal condition, and we have no right to assume
gratuitously that the peoples in contact are all equally gifted; but it
is worth noting that momentous ideas may be conceived by what we are
used to regard as inferior races. Thus, the Maya of Central America
conceived the notion of the zero figure, which remained unknown to
Europeans until they borrowed it from India; and eminent ethnologists
suggest that the discovery of the iron technique is due to the Negroes.
In short, the possessors of a culture are not necessarily its
originators; often they are demonstrably borrowers of specific elements
of the greatest significance. The same culture may thus become the
property of distinct races, as is rapidly becoming the case in modern
times. Owing to the very extensive occurrence of diffusion the question
what a particular people or race has originated becomes extremely
complicated; while it is an established fact that important additions to
human civilization have been made by diverse stocks.
It may not be out of place to point out that not only the more tangible
elements of culture, but very much subtler ingredients than those
hitherto mentioned are shared by distinct groups of mankind. Thus,
common to ourselves and the Chinese, though strikingly lacking among
the Hindu, who, nevertheless, are racially nearer to us, is a marked
sense for historical perspective. Common to the ancient Romans, the
modern Germans, and the modern Japanese, is the talent for rationalistic
organization of administrative affairs. We cannot assume under the
circumstances that the Japanese are organically nearer to the Germans
than to other Asiatics. These instances seem the more valuable because
here borrowing is excluded. The racial factor may in some way be
involved; it is conceivable that only with a certain minimum of organic
equipment could a particular cultural trait be developed or even
assimilated. But obviously the same cultural traits may be coupled with
different racial characteristics.
But what results from making race a constant? That no essential organic
change has taken place in the human race during the historic period is
universally admitted without question by biologists, physical
anthropologists, and brain specialists. Accordingly, when we concentrate
our attention on a definite people and follow their fortunes during
historic times, we are dealing with a genuine constant from the racial
point of view. It requires no very great acquaintance with history to
note startling cultural diversity correlated with this stability of
organic endowment.
The culture of the Mongol proper about the beginning of the thirteenth
century was that of an essentially primitive people, sharing the
shamanistic beliefs of their general habitat and ignorant of writing.
Suddenly we find them attaining an extraordinary political importance,
dominating Asia and menacing Europe, conversant successively with
several forms of script, practising the art of printing, and becoming
ardent exponents of Buddhism. Today they appear fallen from their high
estate, devoid of political power, and with their semi-sedentary nomad
life again give the impression of primitiveness, though tempered with
evidences of a higher civilization.[6] These changes are not only
manifestly independent of the racial factor, but can in part be directly
traced to other causes. Buddhism, of course, was derived ultimately from
India. Under Jenghis Khan both Chinese characters and an alphabet
derived from the Syrian, which had been spread through central Asia by
Nestorian missionaries, came into use; while another system of writing
was based on that of Tibet, and the art of printing was learned from the
Chinese.[7] The political predominance of the Mongols was due to a few
powerful personalities; and economic factors seem to have been at least
potent agents in the degenerative process of Mongol civilization. In
short, we have a group of determinants that are not even remotely
connected with hereditary racial traits.
Somewhat similar results appear from a consideration of Manchu history.
The Manchu were originally an insignificant and rude tribe of the
Tungusic family in eastern Siberia. Through contact with the Mongols
they became a literary people. They subjected China in 1644, and adopted
the Chinese speech and mode of thinking to such an extent that their
language is no longer spoken and almost every vestige of their former
lore is irretrievably lost.[8]
An equally striking illustration is furnished by the Arabs. Here, too,
we have a people of crude civilization suddenly emerging from an
unimportant position in the world’s affairs to blossom forth not only as
a military and political, but a cultural power as well, deriving from
Persia and Babylonia the impulse to philological and historical studies,
from Byzantium the technique of naval warfare, the art of
paper-manufacture from the Chinese, Euclid from the Syrian outposts of
Greek culture, and from India the decimal notation.[9] We find further
that they were not passive assimilators, but original elaborators and
active transmitters of the received elements, to whom European science
is under a lasting debt of gratitude and whose art constitutes at least
a highly creditable and individual achievement.
The conclusion suggested by these examples is very strongly corroborated
by an examination of our own race. We need not enter into the subtleties
of sub-racial classifications for the present purpose, but will simply
regard the European race in relation to European culture generally. It
is clear that all those startling technological advantages that most
sharply divide us from other peoples are a mushroom growth little over a
century old. In the first half of the nineteenth century matches were
unknown and the processes of fire-making were not superior to those of
many primitive tribes. The steam-engine and the industrial revolution
are of very little greater antiquity, not to speak of electrical
contrivances and applied chemistry. The difference between ourselves and
our forefathers is at first blush so tremendous that _a priori_ it would
seem to be explainable only by very great mental differences, yet
nothing is more certain than that their innate mentality was exactly the
same. The cultural difference becomes more and more glaring as we
proceed backwards, say, to the period antedating the art of printing. A
portion of our Middle Ages compares rather unfavorably with
contemporaneous Arabian or Chinese civilization. “If we go back to the
fifteenth century,” says Professor Giles, “we shall find that the
standard of civilization, as the term is usually understood, was still
much higher in China than in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous
Venetian traveler of the thirteenth century, who actually lived
twenty-four years in China, and served as an official under Kublai Khan,
has left it on record that the magnificence of Chinese cities, and the
splendor of the Chinese court, outrivaled anything he had ever seen or
heard of.”[10]
Certainly the racial factor, which is a constant, cannot account for the
amazing changes in culture which we encounter in passing from one period
of our era to another. If we are interested in explaining these cultural
phenomena, we must cast about for some other determinants.