illustration from a survey of special subdivisions of ancient culture.
Though the Palæolithic era certainly preceded the later Stone Age,
archæologists have hitherto failed to show the steps by which the later
could develop out of the earlier. This gap may, of course, be due merely
to our lack of knowledge. Yet when we take subdivisions of the
Palæolithic period, the same fact once more confronts us. There is no
orderly progression from Solutrean to Magdalenian times. The highly
developed flint technique of the former dwindles away in the latter and
its place is taken by what seems a spontaneous generation of bone and
ivory work, with a high development of realistic art.
In view of the evidence, it seems perfect nonsense to say that early
European civilization, by some law inherent in the very nature of
culture, developed in the way indicated by archæological finds. Southern
Scandinavia could not possibly have had a bronze age without alien
influence. In this case, discontinuity was the result of cultural
contact. It may be that the lack of definite direction observed
throughout the Stone Age may in part be due to similar causes, the
migrations and contact of different peoples, as Professor Sollas
suggests. But it is important to note that discontinuity is a necessary
feature of cultural progress. It does not matter whether we can
determine the particular point in the series at which the significant
trait was introduced. It does not matter whether, as I have suggested in
the discussion of racial features, the underlying _causes_ of the
phenomena proceed with perfect continuity. Somewhere in the observed
cultural _effects_ there is the momentous innovation that leads to a
definite break with the past. From a broad point of view, for example,
it is immaterial whether the doctrine of evolution clings to the name of
the younger or the elder Darwin, to Lamarck or St. Hilaire; the
essential thing is that somehow the idea originated, and that when it
had taken root it produced incalculable results in modern thought.
If culture, even when uninfluenced by foreign contact, progresses by
leaps and bounds, we should naturally like to ascertain the determinants
of such ‘mutations.’ In this respect, the discontinuity of indigenous
evolution differs somewhat from that connected with cultural
development due to diffusion. It was absolutely impossible that
Scandinavia should produce bronze in the absence of tin. But _a priori_
it is conceivable that an undisturbed culture might necessarily develop
by what biologists call ‘orthogenetic evolution’, _i.e._, in a definite
direction through definite stages. This is, indeed, what is commonly
known as the classical scheme of cultural evolution, of which men like
Morgan are the protagonists. Now, how do the observed facts square with
this theoretical possibility?
As Professor Boas and American ethnologists generally have
maintained,[10] many facts are quite inconsistent with the theory of
unilinear evolution. That theory can be tested very simply by comparing
the sequence of events in two or more areas in which independent
development has taken place. For example, has technology in Africa
followed the lines ascertained for ancient Europe? We know today that it
has not. Though unlike southern Scandinavia, the Dark Continent is not
lacking in copper deposits, the African Stone Age was not superseded by
a Copper Age, but directly by a period of Iron. Similarly, I have
already pointed out that the possession of the same domesticated animals
does not produce the same economic utilization of them while the Tungus
rides his reindeer, other Siberians harness their animals to a sledge;
the Chinaman will not milk his cattle, while the Zulu’s diet consists
largely of milk. That a particular innovation occurred at a given time
and place is, of course, no less the result of definite causes than any
other phenomenon of the universe. But often it seems to have been caused
by an accidental complex of conditions rather than in accordance with
some fixed principle.
For example, the invention of the wheel revolutionized methods of
transportation. Now, why did this idea develop in the Old World and
never take root among the American Indians? We are here face to face
with one of those ultimate data that must simply be accepted like the
physicist’s fact that water expands in freezing while other substances
contract. So far as we can see, the invention might have been made in
America as well as not; and for all we know it would never have been
made there until the end of time. This introduces a very important
consideration. A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique
phenomenon. In so far as this is true it must defy generalized
treatment, and the explanation of a cultural phenomenon will consist in
referring it back to the particular circumstances that preceded it. In
other words, the explanation will consist in a recital of its past
history; or, to put it negatively, it cannot involve the assumption of
an organic law of cultural evolution that would necessarily produce the
observed effect.
Facts already cited in other connections may be quoted again by way of
illustration. When a copper implement is fashioned not according to the
requirements of the material, but in direct imitation of preëxisting
stone patterns, we have an instance of cultural inertia: it is only the
past history of technology that renders the phenomena conceivable. So
the unwieldy Chukchee tent, which adheres to the style of a pre-nomadic
existence, is explained as soon as the past history of the tribe comes
to light.
Phenomena that persist in isolation from their original context are
technically known as ‘survivals’, and form one of the most interesting
chapters of ethnology. One or two additional examples will render their
nature still clearer. The boats of the Vikings were equipped for rowing
as well as for sailing. Why the superfluous appliances for rowing, which
were later dropped? As soon as we learn that the Norse boats were
originally rowboats and that sails were a later addition, the rowing
equipment is placed in its proper cultural setting and the problem is
solved. Another example may be offered from a different phase of life.
Among the Arapaho Indians there is a series of dance organizations
graded by age. Membership is acquired by age-mates at the same time,
each receiving the requisite ceremonial instructions from some older man
who passed through the dance in his day. These older men, who are paid
for their services by the candidates, may belong to any and all of the
higher organizations. Oddly enough, each group of dancers is assisted by
a number of ‘elder brothers’, all of whom rank them by _two_ grades in
the series of dancers. This feature is not at all clear from the Arapaho
data alone. When, however, we turn to the Hidatsa Indians, with whom
there is evidence this system of age-societies originated, we find that
here the youngest group of men does not buy instructions from a
miscellaneous assemblage of older men, but buys the dance outright from
the whole of the second grade; this group, in order to have the
privilege of performing a dance, must buy that of the third grade, and
so on. In all these purchases the selling group seeks to extort the
highest possible price while the buyers try to get off as cheaply as
possible and are aided by the second higher group, _i.e._, the group
just ranking the sellers. Here the sophomore-senior versus
freshman-junior relationship is perfectly intelligible; both the
freshman and the junior, to pursue the analogy, bear a natural economic
hostility against the sophomore, and vice versa. The Arapaho usage is
intelligible as a survival from this earlier Hidatsa condition.
Our own civilization is shot through with survivals, so that further
illustrations are unnecessary. They suggest, however, another aspect of
our general problem. Of course, in every culture different traits are
linked together without there being any essential bond between them. An
illustration of this type of association is that mentioned by Dr. Laufer
for Asiatic tribes, _viz._, that all nations which use milk for their
diet have epic poems, while those which abstain from milk have no epic
literature. This type of chance association, due to historical causes,
has been discussed by Dr. Wissler[11] and Professor Czekanowski.[12] But
survivals show that there may be an _organic_ relation between phenomena
that have become separated and are treated as distinct by the
descriptive ethnologist. In such cases, one trait is the determinant of
the other, possibly as the actually preceding cause, possibly as part of
the same phenomenon in the sense in which the side of a triangle is
correlated with an angle.
A pair of illustrations will elucidate the matter. Primitive terms of
relationship often reveal characteristic differences of connotation
from their nearest equivalents in European languages. On the other hand,
they are remarkably similar not only among many of the North American
Indians but also in many other regions of the globe, such as Australia,
Oceanica, Africa. The most striking peculiarity of this system of
nomenclature lies in the inclusiveness of certain terms. For example,
the word we translate as ‘father’ is applied indiscriminately to the
father, all his brothers, and some of his male cousins; while the word
for ‘mother’ is correspondingly used for the mother’s sisters and some
of their female cousins. On the other hand, paternal and maternal uncle
or aunt are rigidly distinguished by a difference in terminology. As
Morgan divined and Tylor clearly recognized, this system is connected
with the one-sided exogamous kin organization by which an individual is
reckoned as belonging to the exogamous social group of one, and only
one, of his parents. The terminology that appears so curious at first
blush then resolves itself very simply into the method of calling those
members of the tribe who belong to the father’s social group and
generation by the same term as the father, while the maternal uncles,
who must belong to another group because of the exogamous rule, are
distinguished from the father. In short, the terminology simply
expresses the existing social organization. In a world-wide survey of
the field Tylor found that the number of peoples who use the type of
nomenclature I have described and are divided into exogamous groups, is
about three times that to be expected on the doctrine of chances: in
other words, the two apparently distinct phenomena are causally
connected.[13] This interpretation has recently been forcibly advocated
by Dr. Rivers, and I have examined the North American data from this
point of view. It developed, as a matter of fact, that practically all
the tribes with exogamous ‘clans’, _i.e._, matrilineal kin groups, or
exogamous ‘gentes’, _i.e._, patrilineal kin groups, had a system of the
type described, while most of the tribes lacking such groups also lacked
the nomenclature in question. Accordingly, it follows that there is
certainly a functional relation between these phenomena, although it is
conceivable that both are functionally related to still other phenomena,
and that the really significant relationship remains to be determined.
As a linked illustration, the following phenomena may be presented.
Among the Crow of Montana, the Hopi of Arizona, and some Melanesian
tribes, the same term is applied to a father’s sister and to a father’s
sister’s daughter; indeed, among the Crow and the Hopi the term is
extended to all the female descendants through females of the father’s
sister _ad infinitum_. Such a usage is at once intelligible from the
tendency to call females of the father’s group belonging to his and
younger generations by a single term, regardless of generation, _if_
descent is reckoned through the mother, for in that case, and that case
only, will the individuals in question belong to the same group. And the
fact is that in each of the cases mentioned, group affiliation is traced
through the mother, while I know of not a single instance in which
paternal descent coexists with the nomenclatorial disregard of
generations in the form described.
My instances show, then, that cultural traits may be functionally
related, and this fact renders possible a parallelism, however limited,
of cultural development in different parts of the globe. The field of
culture, then, is not a region of complete lawlessness. Like causes
produce like effects here as elsewhere, though the complex conditions
with which we are grappling require unusual caution in definitely
correlating phenomena. It is true that American ethnologists have shown
that in several instances like phenomena can be traced to diverse
causes; that, in short, unlike antecedents converge to the same point.
However, at the risk of being anathematized as a person of utterly
unhistorical mentality, I must register my belief that this point has
been overdone and that the continued insistence on it by Americanists is
itself an illustration of cultural inertia. Indeed, the vast majority of
so-called convergencies are not genuine, but false analogies due to our
throwing together diverse facts from ignorance of their true nature,
just as an untutored mind will class bats with birds, or whales with
fish. When, however, rather full knowledge reveals not superficial
resemblance but absolute identity of cultural features, it would be
miraculous, indeed, to assume that such equivalence somehow was shaped
by different determinants. When a Zulu of South Africa, an Australian,
and a Crow Indian all share the mother-in-law taboo imposing mutual
avoidance on the wife’s mother and the daughter’s husband, with exactly
the same psychological correlate, it is, to my mind, rash to decree
without attempt to produce evidence that this custom must, in each case,
have developed from entirely distinct motives. To be sure, this
particular usage has not yet, in my opinion, been satisfactorily
accounted for. Nevertheless, in contradistinction to some of my
colleagues and to the position I myself once shared, I now believe that
it is pusillanimous to shirk the real problem involved, and that in so
far as any explanation admits the problem, any explanation is preferable
to the flaunting of fine phrases about the unique character of cultural
phenomena. When, however, we ask what sort of explanation could be
given, we find that it is by necessity a _cultural_ explanation. Tylor,
_e.g._, thinks that the custom is correlated with the social rule that
the husband takes up his abode with the wife’s relatives and that the
taboo merely marks the difference between him and the rest of the
family. We have here clearly one cultural phenomenon as the determinant
of another.
It is not so difficult as might at first appear to harmonize the
principle that a cultural phenomenon is explicable only by a unique
combination of antecedent circumstances with the principle that like
phenomena are the product of like antecedents. The essential point is
that in either case we have past history as the determinant. It is not
necessary that certain things should happen; but if they do happen, then
there is at least a considerable likelihood that certain other things
will also happen. Diversity occurs where the particular thing of
importance, say the wheel, has been discovered or conceived in one
region but not in another. Parallelism tends to occur when the same
significant phenomenon is shared by distinct cultures. It remains true
that in culture history we are generally wise after the event. _A
priori_, who would not expect that milking must follow from the
domestication of cattle?
When we find that a type of kinship terminology is determined by exogamy
or matrilineal descent, we have, indeed, given a cultural explanation of
a cultural fact; but for the ultimate problems how exogamy or maternal
descent came about, we may be unable to give a solution. Very often we
cannot ascertain an anterior or correlated cultural fact for another
cultural fact, but can merely group it with others of the same kind. Of
this order are many of the parallels that figure so prominently in
ethnological literature. For example, that primitive man everywhere
believes in the animation of nature seems an irreducible datum which we
can, indeed, paraphrase and turn hither and thither for clearer scrutiny
but can hardly reduce to simpler terms. All we can do is to merge any
particular example of such animism in the general class after the
fashion of all scientific interpretation. That certain tendencies of all
but universal occurrence are characteristic of culture, no fair observer
can deny, and it is the manifest business of ethnology to ascertain all
such regularities so that as many cultural phenomena as possible may
fall into their appropriate categories. Only those who would derive each
and every trait similar in different communities of human beings from a
single geographical source can ignore such general characteristics of
culture, which may, in a sense, be regarded as determinants of specific
cultural data or rather, as the principles of which these are particular
manifestations.
Recently I completed an investigation of Plains Indian societies begun
on the most rigorous of historical principles, with a distinct bias in
favor of the unique character of cultural data. But after smiting hip
and thigh the assumption that the North American societies were akin to
analogous institutions in Africa and elsewhere, I came face to face with
the fact that, after all, among the Plains Indians, as among other
tribes, the tendency of age-mates to flock together had formed social
organizations and thus acted as a cultural determinant.
Beyond such interpretative principles for special phases of
civilization, there are still broader generalizations of cultural
phenomena. One has been repeatedly alluded to under the caption of
cultural inertia, or survival--the irrational persistence of a feature
when the context in which it had a place has vanished. But culture is
not merely a passive phenomenon but a dynamic one as well. This is
strikingly illustrated in the assimilation of an alien cultural
stimulus. As I have already pointed out, it is not sufficient to bring
two cultures into contact in order to have a perfect cultural
interpenetration. The element of selection enters in a significant way.
Not everything that is offered by a foreign culture is borrowed. The
Japanese have accepted our technology but not our religion and
etiquette. Moreover, what is accepted may undergo a very considerable
change. While the whole range of phenomena is extremely wide and cannot
be dismissed with a few words, it appears fairly clear that generally
the preëxisting culture at once seizes upon a foreign element and models
it in accordance with the _native_ pattern. Thus, the Crow Indians, who
had had a pair of rival organizations, borrowed a society from the
Hidatsa where such rivalry did not exist. Straightway, the Crow imposed
on the new society their own conception, and it became the competitor of
another of their organizations. Similarly the Pawnee have a highly
developed star cult. Their folklore is in many regards similar to that
of other Plains tribes, from which some tales have undoubtedly been
borrowed. Yet in the borrowing these stories became changed and the
same episodes which elsewhere relate to human heroes now receive an
astral setting. The preëxisting cultural pattern synthetizes the new
element with its own preconceptions.
Another tendency that is highly characteristic of all cultures is the
rationalistic explanation of what reason never gave rise to. This is
shown very clearly in the justification of existing cultural features or
of opinions acquired as a member of a particular society. Hegel’s notion
that whatever exists is rational and Pope’s ‘whatever is, is right’ have
their parallels in primitive legend and the literature of religious and
political partisanship. In the special form of justification employed we
find again the determining influence of the surrounding cultural
atmosphere. Among the Plains Indians almost everything is explained as
the result of supernatural revelation; if a warrior has escaped injury
in battle it is because he wore a feather bestowed on him in a vision;
if he acquires a large herd of horses it is in fulfilment of a
spiritistic communication during the fast of adolescence. In a community
where explanations of this type hold sway, we are not surprised to find
that the origin of rites, too, is almost uniformly traced to a vision
and that even the most trivial alteration in ceremonial garb is not
claimed as an original invention but ascribed to supernatural
promptings. Thus, the existing culture acts doubly as the determinant of
the explanation offered for a particular cultural phenomenon. It evokes
the search for its own _raison d’être_; and the type of interpretation
called forth conforms to the explanatory pattern characteristic of the
culture involved.
Culture thus appears as a closed system. We may not be able to explain
all cultural phenomena or at least not beyond a certain point; but
inasmuch as we _can_ explain them at all, explanation must remain on the
cultural plane.
What are the determinants of culture? We have found that cultural traits
may be transmitted from without and in so far forth are determined by
the culture of an alien people. The extraordinary extent to which such
diffusion has taken place proves that the actual development of a given
culture does not conform to innate laws necessarily leading to definite
results, such hypothetical laws being overridden by contact with foreign
peoples. But even where a culture is of relatively indigenous growth
comparison with other cultures suggests that one step does not
necessarily lead to another, that an invention like the wheel or the
domestication of an animal occurs in one place and does not occur in
another. To the extent of such diversity we must abandon the quest for
general formulæ of cultural evolution and recognize as the determinant
of a phenomenon the unique course of its past history. However, there is
not merely discontinuity and diversity but also stability and agreement
in the sphere of culture. The discrete steps that mark culture history
may not determine one another, but each may involve as a necessary or at
least probable consequence other phenomena which in many instances are
simply new aspects of the same phenomenon, and in so far forth one
cultural element as isolated in description is the determinant or
correlate of another. As for those phenomena which we are obliged to
accept as realities without the possibility of further analysis, we can,
at least, classify a great number of them and merge particular instances
in a group of similar facts. Finally, there are dominant characteristics
of culture, like cultural inertia or the secondary rationalization of
habits acquired irrationally by the members of a group, which serve as
broad interpretative principles in the history of civilization.
In short, as in other sciences, so in ethnology there are ultimate,
irreducible facts, special functional relations, and principles of wider
scope that guide us through the chaotic maze of detail. And as the
engineer calls on the physicist for a knowledge of mechanical laws, so
the social builder of the future who should seek to refashion the
culture of his time and add to its cultural values will seek guidance
from ethnology, the science of culture, which in Tylor’s judgment is
‘essentially a reformer’s science.’
V. TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP