MAGIC, MENTALITY, AND CITY LIFE
I. MAGIC AND PRIMITIVE MENTALITY
Few words of African origin have survived and found a permanent place in
the popular speech of the English West Indies. One of these is “obeah.”
Of this word, J. Graham Cruickshank, in a little pamphlet entitled
_Black Talk_ says:
_Obeah_—which is Negro witchcraft, and whose worst aspect was the
poisonous _idea_ put into the mind of the subject—has gone under to a
great extent. Extraordinary cases of it crop up now and again in the
newspapers. It is the most difficult of all anthropological data on
which to “draw” the old Negro. Burton gives an Old Calabar proverb:
“Ubio nkpo ono onya” (They plant Obeah for him) and adds this note:
“‘Ubio’ means any medicine or charm put in the ground to cause
sickness or death. It is manifestly the origin of the West Indian
‘obeah.’ We shall be the less surprised to hear that the word has
traveled so far when told by Clarkson, in his _History of the Slave
Trade_, that when the traffic was a legitimate branch of commerce as
many slaves were annually exported from Bonny and the Old Calabar
River as from all the rest of the West African Coast.”[63]
Obeah is Negro magic. The paper which follows was suggested by
observation on Negro magic during a recent visit to the English Islands
in the Caribbean.
During the past year two very important books have been published, in
English, dealing with the subject of magic. The first is a translation
of Lévy-Bruhl’s _La Mentalité Primitive_, and the other is Lynn
Thorndyke’s _A History of Magic and Experimental Science during the
First Thirteen Centuries of the Christian Era_.
In venturing to include two volumes so different in content and point of
view in the same general category, I have justified myself by adopting
Thorndyke’s broad definition, which includes under “magic” “all occult
arts and sciences, superstition and folklore.”
Lévy-Bruhl’s book is an attempt, from a wide survey of anthropological
literature, to define a mode of thought characteristic of primitive
peoples.
Thorndyke, on the other hand, is interested mainly, as the title of his
volume indicates, in the beginnings of empirical science. The points of
view are different, but the subject matter is the same, namely, magical
beliefs and practices, particularly in so far as they reflect and embody
a specific type of thought.
Lévy-Bruhl has collected, mainly from the writings of missionaries and
travelers, an imposing number of widely scattered observations. These
have been classified and interpreted in a way that is intended to
demonstrate that the mental life and habits of thought of primitive
peoples differ fundamentally from those of civilized man.
Thorndyke, on the other hand, has described the circumstances under
which, during the first thirteen centuries of our era, the forerunners
of modern science were gradually discarding magical practices in favor
of scientific experiment.
There is, of course, no historical connection between the culture of
Europe in the thirteenth century and that of present-day savages,
although the magical beliefs and practices of both are surprisingly
similar and in many cases identical, a fact which is intelligible enough
when we reflect that magic is a very ancient, widespread,
characteristically human phenomenon, and that science is a very recent,
exceptional, and possibly fortuitous manifestation of social life.
Lévy-Bruhl described the intelligence and habits of thought
characteristic of savage peoples as a type of mentality. The civilized
man has another and a different mentality. “Mentality,” used in this
way, is an expression the precise significance of which is not at once
clear. We use the expression “psychology” in a similar but somewhat
different way when we say, for example, that the rural and urban
populations “have a different ‘psychology,’” or that such and such a one
has the “psychology” of his class—meaning that a given individual or the
group will interpret an event or respond to a situation in a
characteristic manner. But “mentality,” as ordinarily used, seems to
refer to the form, rather than to the content, of thought. We frequently
speak of the type or grade of mentality of an individual, or of a group.
We would not, however, qualify the word “psychology” in any such way. We
would not, for example, speak of the grade or degree of the bourgeoisie,
or the proletarian “psychology.” The things are incommensurable and
“psychology,” in this sense, is a character but not a quantity.
The term “mentality,” however, as Lévy-Bruhl uses it, seems to include
both meanings. On the whole, however, “primitive mentality” is used here
to indicate the form in which primitive peoples are predisposed to frame
their thoughts. The ground pattern of primitive thought is, as
Lévy-Bruhl expresses it, “pre-logical.”
As distinguished from Europeans and from some other peoples somewhat
less sophisticated than ourselves, the primitive mind “manifests,” he
says, “a decided distaste for reasoning and for what logicians call the
discursive operations of thought. This distaste for rational thought
does not arise out of any radical incapacity or any inherent defect in
their understanding,” but is simply a method—one might almost say a
tradition—prevalent among savage and simple-minded people of
interpreting as wilful acts the incidents, accidents, and unsuspected
changes of the world about them.
What is this pre-logical form of thought which characterizes the
mentality of primitive people? Lévy-Bruhl describes it as
“participation.” The primitive mind does not know things as we do, in a
detached objective way. The uncivilized man enters, so to speak, into
the world about him and interprets plants, animals, the changing
seasons, and the weather in terms of his own impulses and conscious
purposes. It is not that he is lacking in observation, but he has no
mental patterns in which to think and describe the shifts and changes of
the external world, except those offered by the mutations of his own
inner life. His blunders of interpretation are due to what has been
described as the “pathetic fallacy,” the mistake of attributing to other
persons, in this case, to physical nature and to things alive and dead,
the sentiments and the motives which they inspire in him. As his
response to anything sudden and strange is more likely to be one of fear
than of any other emotion, he interprets the strange and unfamiliar as
menacing and malicious. To the civilized observer it seems as if the
savage lived in a world peopled with devils.
One difference between the savage and the civilized man is that the
savage is mainly concerned with incidents and accidents, the historical,
rather than scientific, aspects of life. He is so actively engaged in
warding off present evil and meeting his immediate needs that he has
neither time nor inclination to observe routine. It is the discovery and
explanation of this routine that enables natural science to predict
future consequences of present action and so enable us to prepare today
for the needs of tomorrow. It is the discovery and explanation, in terms
of cause and effect, of this routine that constitutes, in the sense in
which Lévy-Bruhl uses the term, rational thought.
What the author of primitive mentality means by “participation” is
familiar enough, though the expression itself is unusual as description
of a form of thought. Human beings may be said to know one another
immediately and intuitively by “participation.” Knowledge of this kind
is dependent, however, upon the ability of human beings to enter
imaginatively into one another’s minds and to interpret overt acts in
terms of intentions and purposes. What Lévy-Bruhl’s statement amounts
to, then, is that savage people think, as poets have always done, in
terms of wills rather than forces. The universe is a society of wilful
personalities, not an irrefragable chain of cause and effect. For the
savage, there are events, but neither hypotheses nor facts, since facts,
in the strict sense of the word, are results of criticism and reflection
and presuppose an amount of detachment that primitive man does not seem
to possess. Because he thinks of his world as will rather than force,
primitive man seeks to deal with it in terms of magic rather than of
mechanism.
II. MAGIC AS A FORM OF THOUGHT
Thorndyke’s _History of Magic_ is an account of the manner and
circumstances under which, within the period it covers, not all at once,
but gradually, first in one field of knowledge and practice, and then in
another—haltingly, painfully, and step by step—the transition from magic
to science was made.
Anthropologists have not always agreed as to the precise relation
between magic and science. Is magic to be regarded as an earlier and
more primitive form of science, or is it not? It is at least true that
science, as means of control of the external world, has always found
some form of magic in existence, and has always displaced it. But magic
is probably never _merely_ a tool or a technique which men use to
control and fashion the world after their desire. It is primarily a form
of emotional expression, a gesture, or dramatic performance. It has
something, also, of the character of a prayer or solemn formulation of a
wish, but always with the hope that in some—not quite intelligible—way
the formulation of the wish will bring its own fulfilment. Magic ceases
to interest us where the relation of the means to ends assumes the
definiteness and certainty of a scientific demonstration.
Farmers in some parts of the country still pray for rain—at least they
did so up to a few years ago. They will quit doing so, however, as soon
as someone invents a sure-fire device for making it.[64]
We still believe in magic in medicine and in politics—partly, I suspect,
because in those fields science has not been able to give us the
positive knowledge it has in other regions of our experience, and partly
because in the field of medicine and of politics our solemn formulations
of our wishes so frequently bring the results desired. In many cases the
method of social reformers in dealing with social evils is not unlike
the technique of Christian Science in dealing with bodily and spiritual
ailments; it consists mainly in solemnly and ceremonially asserting that
a given evil no longer exists. Society formulates its wish, consecrates
it—through the solemn referendum of a popular election, perhaps—and
writes it on the statute books. As far as the public is concerned, the
thing is then finished. Fortunately, this form of magic often works—but
unfortunately, it does not work so often as it used to.[65]
What has been said indicates that magic may be regarded as a form of
thought characteristic of, but not confined to, primitive—or what
Professor Ellsworth Faris has called preliterate—man. It suggests, also,
that primitive thought and primitive mentality are ordinarily associated
with a definite organization of life and experience, perhaps even a
definite economic organization of society. We all are disposed to think
in magical terms in those regions of our experience that have not been
rationalized, and where our control is uncertain and incomplete. The
stock exchange and the golf course, where success is uncertain and
fortuitous, all tend to breed their own superstition.
“Magic,” as Thorndyke says, “implies a mental state, and so may be
viewed from the standpoint of the history of thought.” But magic, if it
is a form of thought, is not science; neither is it art. The arts may be
said to begin with the lower animals. But in the art with which the
beaver constructs a dam and the bird builds a nest there is neither
magic nor science.
We can best understand magic and its relation to science if we recall
that thought is itself an interrupted act, “a delayed response” to use
the language of the behaviorists. There is the impulse to act, which is
interrupted by reflection, but eventually the impulse completes itself
in action. Magic has the character of thought in so far as it is an
impulse that is interrupted and so becomes conscious. But it is not
rational thought because it does not foresee and seek to define the
relation between the end it seeks and the means necessary to achieve
that end. Between ends and means there is always a hiatus in which there
is feeling but not clear intuition of how that end is to be achieved.
All human activities tend to assume the character of magic in so far as
they become purely traditional and conventional, defined in some sacred
formula piously transmitted. It is peculiarly characteristic of modern
life, however, that all our inherited forms of behavior tend to become
rationalized. It is characteristic of modern life that nothing is
accepted merely on authority, every tradition is subject to criticism.
It is only in very recent years that we have achieved scientific
agriculture and scientific cooking. On the other hand we have already
scientific advertising and scientific “cheering.” “Yelling” at ball
games, once so spontaneous, has now become an art, if not a duty.[66]
III. MENTALITY AND CITY LIFE
The reason the modern man is a more rational animal than his more
primitive ancestor is possibly because he lives in a city, where most of
the interests and values of life have been rationalized, reduced to
measurable units, and even made objects of barter and sale. In the
city—and particularly in great cities—the external conditions of
existence are so evidently contrived to meet man’s clearly recognized
needs that the least intellectual of peoples are inevitably led to think
in deterministic and mechanistic terms.
The embodiment of rational thought is the tool, the machine, in which
all the parts are manifestly designed to achieve a perfectly
intelligible end. The primitive man lives in a vastly different world,
where all the forces about him are mysterious and uncontrollable, and
where nature seems as wild, as romantic, and as unpredictable as his own
changing moods. The primitive man has almost no machinery, and
relatively few tools.
The mentality of the modern man, on the other hand, is based upon the
machine and upon the application of science to all the interests of
life—to education, to advertising, and, presently, perhaps, to politics.
The culture of the modern man is characteristically urban, as
distinguished from the folk culture, which rests on personal relations
and direct participation in the common life of the family, the tribe,
and the village community.
In fact, if we define them strictly, as Lévy-Bruhl seems to do, we may
say that reason and reflective thinking were born in the city. They
came, if not into existence, at least into vogue, in Athens, in the time
of Socrates and the Sophists. The Sophists were, in fact, a distinctly
urban phenomenon, and we owe to Socrates—who was one of them—the first
clear recognition of conceptional, as distinguished from perceptional,
knowledge. We owe to Plato, Socrates’ disciple, the definition of the
most fundamental tool of modern scientific thought, namely, the concept,
i.e., the Platonic idea.
Magic may be regarded, therefore, as an index, in a rough way, not
merely of the mentality, but of the general cultural level of races,
peoples, and classes. It is even possible that a more thoroughgoing
analysis of the mental processes involved in magic and rational thought
will permit us to measure the mentalities of social groups with as much
precision, at least, as we now measure and grade—with the aid of the
Binet-Simon tests—the intelligence of individuals. At least we should
know in this case what we were measuring, namely, the extent and degree
to which a given group or class had acquired the ability and the habit
of thinking in rational rather than magical terms.
With a more precise conception of the nature of magic and of the
mechanisms of pre-logical thinking, we shall, no doubt, be able not
merely to compare and perhaps measure with a certain degree of accuracy
and objectivity the mentality and cultural levels of different cultural
groups, but we shall be able also to describe the process by which races
and peoples make the transition from one cultural level to another. This
transition, which Thorndyke has described in his history of magic, is
everywhere in progress. These changes in a contemporary and living
society are open and accessible to investigation, now that history has
enabled us to see them, as they can never see them later, when they have
become history.
In a recent paper in the _American Journal of Sociology_, Professor U.
G. Weatherly has called attention to the advantages of the West Indies
as a sociological laboratory.
Islands are peculiarly interesting sociologically, provided, of course,
that they are inhabited. For one thing, they are physically defined. The
island community is, for this reason, invariably isolated,
geographically and socially, and because the means of communication are
known, the extent of isolation can be reduced to relatively measurable
terms.
This isolation tends to give to each separate island community an
individuality that one rarely finds elsewhere. Because islands are
geographically limited and isolated, the influence of climate and
physiographic characteristics, as well as of economic organization, in
defining cultural traits, can be estimated and assessed with greater
accuracy than elsewhere. Until one has visited some of the Lesser
Antilles, he is not likely to understand or appreciate Frederick A.
Ober’s rather drastic summary of their history—“Discovered by the
Spaniards, appropriated by the Dutch, Danish, or English, and finally
abandoned to the semi-barbarous blacks from Africa, this has been the
usual succession in the islands.”[67]
The rather bitter note of this statement probably reflects the tone of
the white planters, whose position in the islands has gradually declined
since the emancipation of the slaves.
It directs attention, however, to what is, from the point of view of the
student of human nature and of society, the most interesting and unique
feature of the islands, namely, the racial situation. As Professor
Weatherly has said, “Perhaps nowhere else is there a better opportunity
for securing definite evidence bearing on the opposing theories of race
and contact as factors in cultural growth.” Every island, in fact, is a
separate racial melting-pot in which the mingled cultures and races of
Europe, Africa, and Asia seem to be gradually, very gradually, simmering
down to a single cultural, and eventually, also, to a single racial,
blend.
IV. OBEAH: THE MAGIC OF THE BLACK MAN
Outside the Spanish Islands, Negroes are the dominant race in the West
Indies. In regions where they have not been replaced by Hindus, as they
have been in Trinidad and Demerara, British Guiana, they constitute 90
per cent of the population. They are, in fact, the only people who
regard themselves as natives. The Asiatics and the Europeans are, for
the most part, mere sojourners.
So far as the islands now have a native culture it is the culture of the
Negro folk. It is, at the same time, the most characteristic
manifestation of the mentality of the West Indian black man, so far as
he has preserved what Lévy-Bruhl describes as the mentality of primitive
man.
What is more interesting about obeah is that while as a practice and a
belief it is universal among the uneducated classes of the black
population in the islands, it is everywhere different, and everywhere in
process of change. Practices that were originally imported from Africa
tend to assimilate and fuse with related practices and traits of the
European and Hindu cultures wherever the Africans have come into contact
with them.
This is evident, in the first place, from the fact that the obeah man is
not always a Negro; he may be, and not infrequently is, a Hindu. In the
second place, the ritual of obeah may include anything from patent
medicine to Guinea pepper. Among the instruments of obeah in the
possession of the police of Trinidad recently were a stone image,
evidently of Hindu origin, and a book of magic ritual published in
Chicago, which pretended to be, and no doubt had been, translated
originally from the writings of Albertus Magnus, the great medieval
writer on magic. A book called _Le Petit Albert_ is said to be extremely
popular among obeah men in the French Islands.
The favorite decoctions in use among witch doctors consist of bones,
ashes, “grave dirt,” human nail parings—mixed, perhaps, with asafetida
or any other substance having a pungent odor. But in addition to these,
obeah men in the West Indies use the candles, the little shrines, or
“chapels,” as they call them, and various other portions of the ritual
of the Catholic church.
In January, 1917, a woman known as Valentine Sims, a native of St.
Lucia, was convicted, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, of obtaining money by
the assumption of supernatural powers. The testimony in the case showed
that, among other things, she attended the Roman Catholic church, and,
on pretense of receiving holy communion, took the altar bread
distributed to the worshipers during the communion, and used it in
practicing obeah.
All this suggests that obeah, as one finds it in the West Indies, is not
so much a tradition and a cultural inheritance as it is an innate
predisposition, like a sense of humor, or “the will to believe,” as
James describes it. Behind these practices, and supporting them, are all
sorts of fears and a general sense of insecurity in regard to the
physical and spiritual environment that more cultivated persons either
do not feel, or they find escape from in quite different practices.
This is clearly indicated in the letters found among the papers of obeah
adepts which have been confiscated from time to time by the police. From
these letters one gains an insight into the nature and extent of the
terrors, anxieties, and perils of the soul which trouble the dreams and
imaginations of the black man, whom we ordinarily think of as roaming,
cheerful, care-free, and unconcerned in a worried and troubled world.
The black man in the West Indies is greatly troubled about a great many
things. He has more than the usual number of obscure pains and aches,
which he worries about a great deal, and for which he, like most of us,
is in search of some sovereign remedy. He is disturbed about his
relations with his employer. Not that, like the workingman we know, he
talks or thinks about his rights and the rights of labor. He is not
class-conscious. Quite the contrary, he is constantly worried because he
is not in favor with his employer. If he is scolded or scowled at, he is
troubled. His first assumption, in such circumstances, is that some
fellow-employee in some dark way is influencing his employer against
him, and he seeks the obeah charm which will discover and circumvent his
enemy and win back his employer’s good will.
If he gets into a quarrel with the family next door, if his sweetheart
looks coldly upon him, if his wife deserts him, he inevitably assumes
that there are personal and magical influences at work, seeking to
undermine otherwise sweet and happy relations. Frequently he is right.
At any rate the obeah man exploits these suspicions, and that is the
reason strenuous efforts are being made in the British Islands to stamp
the superstition out.
Visiting the police courts in the English islands, one is profoundly
impressed by the patient efforts of most of the judges to discover and
apply the rules of law to the petty personal and neighborhood
difficulties that the natives are so fond of airing in the courts. One
gets the impression that the most difficult thing for the primitive mind
to conceive and administer for himself is justice. On the other hand,
the Negro, at least, knows and appreciates justice when he meets it.
That is probably one reason why he likes to take his troubles to court.
V. FASHIONS IN OBEAH
One gets the impression that there are fashions in obeah. Dominica, for
example, is noted for its use of love-philters; in Montserrat, obeah is
mainly a protection against evil spirits and a means of communication
with the dead; in Antigua, obeah is most generally a form of medicine.
Amulets, “guards,” as they are popularly called, intended to ward off
evil spirits or protect one against the ill-will of an evil-minded
neighbor are also popular. Nevis has a reputation for “black magic.”
The older generation of obeah men were supposed to have a knowledge of
vegetable poisons the effects of which cannot be detected on postmortem.
In Nevis the older tradition has apparently lingered longer than
elsewhere. At any rate, magical practices seem to have assumed a more
malignant form in Nevis than in some of the other islands.
In 1916 an old woman, Rose Eudelle, deaf and bedridden, was convicted of
practicing obeah. She seems to have been one of the few witch doctors
who believed sincerely in the efficacy of their own practices. She had a
great reputation, and boasted that she had killed one man and sent
another to the asylum. Curiously enough, she practiced obeah mainly
through correspondence, and when she was finally arrested, some fifty
letters from clients in various islands, one of them in New York City,
were discovered. There was great excitement in Nevis when she was
arrested. As she had solemnly threatened the colored police sergeant who
arrested her, the whole black population was confidently expecting that
some dramatic misfortune would overtake him. Here there seemed to be
something more nearly approaching primitive and African magic than in
any of the other thirty-eight cases of which I obtained some sort of
record.
Not only is the fashion in obeah different in the different islands, but
interest in magic, which is said to be declining everywhere, is less
modified in some islands than in others. In Barbados, though the
practices still persist, prosecutions for obeah have almost entirely
ceased. In the police station at Castries, St. Lucia, on the other hand,
there are still preserved the heart and hand of a Negro boy who was
killed some years ago to furnish an obeah man with the instruments of
magic to enable him to open the vaults of the local bank and rob it of
the treasure which was supposed to be amassed there.
The fact is, then, that the mentality of the black population of the
West Indies, as that of Africa, is changing under the influence of
contact with the white man’s culture, and particularly under the
influence of the very energetic prosecutions which not only have made
the profession less profitable, but by undermining faith in his
supernatural powers, have robbed the obeah man of the terror which he at
one time inspired.
Aside from the superficial changes in the original superstition and the
gradual decline of interest and belief in magic, it seems as if certain
more fundamental changes, reflected in these practices, were taking
place. First, the obeah man tends to become, on the one hand, a sort of
unlicensed physician, as in the case of Percival Duval, an obeah man who
maintained regular office hours, wrote prescriptions, and prescribed
medicines. Actually, Duval seems to have used a little less medicine and
a little more hocus pocus than the average medical practitioner in our
own country did a few years ago. But he was convicted, and upon appeal
to the higher court his conviction was confirmed. Another obeah man in
St. John’s, Antigua, was found to be dealing, along with the other
instruments of obeah, very largely in patent medicines and homely
household remedies. Among the instruments of obeah taken from his office
when it was raided were the following: (1) Exhibit labeled “ground bones
and ashes.” The sample consisted of a mixture of a calcium compound and
probably lime, wood-ashes, and incense. The incense content was 26.3 per
cent. (2) Exhibit labeled “ground glass and smith coal.” This sample
consisted of a coarse commercial oxygen mixture. (3) Yellow powder. This
consisted of a cheap, scented starch powder. (4) Supposed dog’s tongue.
This consisted entirely of vegetable matter composed principally of
starch cells. (5) Exhibit labeled “ashes and incense.” The sample
consisted of incense, wood-ashes, and charcoal, earth, and small
pebbles, with a small proportion of oxygen mixture. It contained 17.3
per cent of incense in lump and powdered form. (6) Exhibit “vial with
yellow liquid.” The sample consisted of ordinary commercial oil of
anise. (7) Vial with brownish liquid. The sample consisted of a solution
of iodine in potassium iodine of approximately 15 per cent strength.
The fact is, the obeah man in the West Indies is in a way to become a
quack doctor. This represents one direction in which change is taking
place.
On the other hand, there is a disposition of the obeah man to become a
sort of confessor and privy counselor in all the intimate and personal
affairs of the common people. The black people—and not only black, but
occasionally Portuguese, who are the traders in the smaller islands—go
to him with affairs of business and of the heart. They write him long
personal letters, and he sends them a magical prayer or incantation to
cure them of bodily ailments, to protect them from dangers of travel,
and to insure general good fortune. In an affair of the heart, the witch
doctor frequently prescribed a magic powder, sweetly scented, to
accompany and lend a delicate and stimulating fragrance to a love
letter. In principle, this aspect of the obeah man’s practice is like
Mr. Coué’s—“Every day, in every way, I am better and better”—only that
the uses of obeah are more specific. In any case, there is here a very
evident tendency of the practice to assume a form in which the ritual of
obeah is merely a device, like the prayers of primitive folk, for
magically re-enforcing the expression of a wish. So closely are the
magical practices of the obeah man connected—in the mind of the ordinary
black man—with religion that in one case, at any rate, he pretended to
cure a boy of insanity by making believe that he was operating as the
agent or proxy of the priest.
This, then, represents a second tendency to change in the practices of
magic by the black man. If obeah in some instances seems to be taking
the form of popular medicine, in others it tends to assume the form of a
pagan religious ceremony, adapting itself to the forms and the ritual of
the local church.
VI. THE PROBLEM STATED
In a recent volume, _Studies in Human Nature_, Mr. J. B. Baillie has
suggested that the disposition and the ability to think abstractly,
disinterestedly, and scientifically is not only a relatively recent
acquisition of the human race, but at the same time is a local
phenomenon.
This geographical limitation of science is indeed a remarkable fact,
the importance of which our familiarity with the scientific mood and
our insularity of mind constantly tend to obscure.... We should not
forget that millions of human beings have no interest in the
scientific mood at all, and seem by constitution to have no capacity
for it.... Some individuals among these nonscientific peoples may, and
do, assimilate the science of the West. But experience seems to show
that such acquisition is at best a mere accomplishment, and leaves the
racial structure and composition of their minds unaffected.... The
nonscientific peoples take up science as they put on Western clothes.
One may change one’s clothes, but there is no changing the skin. The
fact is that the scientific mood arises from a peculiar attitude of
the mind to the world found amongst certain peoples of the globe; and
without this attitude science will always appear a curiosity or an
irrelevance.[68]
The author assumes that the disposition to think rationally and to
cultivate abstract and scientific thought is a racial attribute. Perhaps
a more accurate statement of the matter would take account of the fact
that even within the comparatively limited area where science is in
vogue, there are large numbers of people who still—even while using the
language of science—think in the more elementary forms of folk-thought.
This seems to be true wherever large masses of the population are still
illiterate, or where, for any reason, even when able to read, they
habitually think in terms of the spoken language, rather than in the
language of the printed page. Literacy itself is very largely a product
of modern city life. Books and reading which used to be, and to a
certain extent are yet, a luxury in the country, become a necessity in
the city.
The Negroes migrating in such large numbers from the West Indies to the
United States are bringing with them habits of thought which have
largely disappeared among the Negro population native to this country.
The obeah men of the West Indies have many clients in the United States,
and a recent issue of the _New York Age_ announced that the Negro
quarter around 135th Street, New York, was overrun with fortune tellers
and witch doctors, many or most of them from the West Indies.
Within a few years, however, most of these superstitions will have
disappeared, or at any rate will have assumed those more conventional
forms with which we are familiar and have learned to tolerate. This is
certainly true of the city population.
Great changes are taking place, with the introduction of modern methods
of education, in our own insular possessions. Mr. Axel Holst, of the
National Bank of the Danish West Indies, who has been a close and
assiduous student of Negro folklore in the Virgin Islands, says that the
effect of the American system of education will within a few years
totally change the mental habits of the natives of St. Thomas. Since the
younger generation have begun to read books, they are not so interested
as they were in the Nansi stories, which correspond to the Bre’r Rabbit
stories of the States. Since the introduction of American rule,
newspapers have come into vogue, and the young men have taken to
political discussion.
The changes in the “mentality” of the Negro population are, Mr. Holst
says, going on visibly, and at a surprising rate. These changes, if they
are actually taking place, should be made the subject of further
investigation. Such study should enable us to determine, among other
things, more precisely than we have been able to determine hitherto, the
rôle which cultural contacts, social heritages, and racial temperament
play in the whole cultural process.
It is evident that we are not to assume, as otherwise we might, that
there is no area of the experience in which primitive or preliterate
people think realistically and rationally. On the other hand, in
contrasting primitive mentality with that of civilized man, we need not
assume—except for the sake of the contrast—that the thinking of
civilized man is always and everywhere either rational or scientific. As
a matter of fact, there are still wide areas of our experience that have
not as yet been fully rationalized, notably the fields of medicine and
religion. In medicine, at least—if we are to believe a recent medical
critic of what, in imitation of Lévy-Bruhl, we might call “medical
mentality”—the majority of practitioners still think of diseases as
morbid entities instead of convenient labels for groups of symptoms.
The following paragraph from a recent writer states the matter from the
point of view of a critic of “medical mentality.”
It is not to be thought that any educated medical man indeed believes
“a disease” to be a material thing, although the phraseology in
current use lends colour to such supposition. Nevertheless, in
hospital jargon, “diseases” are “morbid entities,” and medical
students fondly believe that these “entities” somehow exist in _rebus
Naturae_ and were discovered by their teachers, much as was America by
Columbus.... In fact, for these gentlemen “diseases” are Platonic
realities; universals _ante rem_. This unavowed belief, which might be
condoned were it frankly admitted, is an inheritance from Galen, and
carries with it the corollary that our notions concerning this, that,
or the other “diseases” are either absolutely right or absolutely
wrong, and are not merely matters of mental convenience.
But if the practitioners think of diseases in pre-logical terms what can
we expect of the layman, whose medical education has been largely
confined to the reading of patent medical advertisements? What has been
said suggests a problem which may be perhaps stated in this way: How far
is the existence of magic and magical mode of thought a measure of the
mentality of a racial or cultural group in which it is found to persist?
How far is what Ballie calls “the scientific mood” an effect of the
urban environment?
ROBERT E. PARK