Part 14

In both mythology and art the tendency to give rationalistic explanations for the peculiar associations that have developed may be observed in those cases in which styles of art or myths are borrowed. The fact that decorative art among primitive people is almost everywhere symbolic does not preclude the possibility of designs, and even of the whole style, of one region, being borrowed from the people of another region. This has been the case, for instance, among the tribes of our Northwestern Plains, who have borrowed much of their art from their more southern neighbors; but they have not adopted at the same time its symbolical interpretations, but invented interpretations of their own. I imagine that this is the outcome of a mental process which set in when the designs were found pleasing, and, according to the general character of primitive thought, a symbolic interpretation was expected. This was then secondarily invented in accordance with the ideas current among the tribe.

The same observation may be made in primitive mythology. The same kind of tales are current over enormous areas, but the mythological use to which they are put is locally quite different. Thus an ordinary adventure relating to the exploits of some animal may sometimes be made use of to explain some of its peculiar characteristics. At other times it may be made use of to explain certain customs, or even the origin of certain constellations in the sky. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the tale as such is older than its mythological significance. The characteristic feature of the development of the nature myth is, first, that the tale has associated itself with attempts to explain cosmic conditions (this has been referred to before); and, secondly, that when primitive man became conscious of the cosmic problem, he ransacked the entire field of his knowledge until he happened to find something that could be fitted to the problem in question, giving an explanation satisfactory to his mind. While the classification of concepts, the types of association, and the resistance to change of automatic acts, developed unconsciously, many of the secondary explanations are due to conscious reasoning.

I will give still another example of a form of association characteristic of primitive society. In modern society, social organization, including the grouping of families, is essentially based on blood-relationship and on the social functions performed by each individual. Except in so far as the Church concerns itself with birth, marriage, and death, there is no connection between social organization and religious belief. These conditions are quite different in primitive society, where we find an inextricable association of ideas and customs relating to society and to religion. As in art form tends to associate itself with ideas entirely foreign to it, so the social unit tends to associate itself with various impressions of nature, particularly with the divisions of the animal world. This form of association seems to me the fundamental trait of totemism as found among many American tribes, as well as in Australia, Melanesia, and in Africa. I have described before its characteristic trait, which consists in a peculiar connection that is believed to exist between a certain class of objects, generally animals, and a certain social group. Further analysis shows very clearly that one of the underlying ideas of totemism is the existence of definite groups of man that are not allowed to intermarry, and that the limitations of these groups are determined by considerations of blood-relationship. The religious ideas found in totemism refer to the personal relation of man to certain classes of supernatural powers, and the typical trait of totemism is the association of certain kinds of supernatural power with certain social groups. This granted, the establishment of association with the supernatural world becomes at least intelligible. That such feelings are not by any means improbable, or even rare, is sufficiently shown by the exclusiveness of the European high nobility, or by the national emotions in their pronounced form. It is not at all difficult to understand how an overbearing enthusiasm of self-appreciation of a community may become a powerful emotion or a passion, which, on account of the lack of rational explanation of the world, will tend to associate the members of the community with all that is good and powerful. Psychologically, therefore, we may compare totemism with those familiar forms of society in which certain social classes claim privileges by the grace of God, or where the patron saint of a community favors its members with his protection. It will be recognized that we have here again a type of association in primitive society which has completely changed with the development of civilization.

However these associations may have been brought about, there is no doubt that they do exist, and that, psychologically considered, they are of the same character as those previously discussed, and that the rationalizing mind of man soon lost the historic thread, and reinterpreted the established customs in conformity with the general trend of thought of his culture. We are therefore justified in concluding that these customs must also be studied by the pragmatic method, because their present associations are not likely to be original, but rather secondary.

It is perhaps venturesome to discuss at the present moment the origin of these types of association; yet it may be admissible to dwell on a few of the most generalized facts which seem to characterize primitive culture as compared to civilization. From our point of view, the striking features of primitive culture are the great number of associations of entirely heterogeneous groups of phenomena, such as natural phenomena and individual emotion, social groupings and religious concepts, decorative art and symbolic interpretation. These tend to disappear with the approach to our present civilization, although a careful analysis reveals the persistence of many, and the tendency of each automatic action to establish its own associations according to the mental relations in which it regularly occurs. One of the great changes that has taken place may perhaps best be expressed by saying that in primitive culture the impressions of the outer world are associated intimately with subjective impressions, which they call forth regularly, but which are determined largely by the social surroundings of the individual. Gradually it is recognized that these connections are more uncertain than others that remain the same for all mankind, and in all forms of social surroundings; and thus sets in the gradual elimination of one subjective association after another, which culminates in the scientific method of the present day. We may express this also by saying that when we have our attention directed to a certain concept which has a whole fringe of incident concepts related to it, we at once associate it with that group which is represented by the category of causality. When the same concept appears in the mind of primitive man, it associates itself with those concepts related to it by emotional states.

If this is true, then the associations of the primitive mind are heterogeneous, and ours homogeneous and consistent only from our own point of view. To the mind of primitive man, only his own associations can be rational. Ours must appear to him just as heterogeneous as his to us, because the bond between the phenomena of the world, as it appears after the elimination of their emotional associations, which is being established with increasing knowledge, does not exist for _him_, while we can no longer feel the subjective associations that govern his mind.

This peculiarity of association is also another expression of the conservatism of primitive culture and the changeability of many features of our civilization. We tried to show that the resistance to change is largely due to emotional sources, and that in primitive culture emotional associations are the prevailing type: hence resistance against the new. In our civilization, on the other hand, many actions are performed merely as means to a rational end. They do not enter sufficiently deeply into our minds to establish connections which would give them emotional values: hence our readiness to change. We recognize, however, that we cannot remodel, without serious emotional resistance, any of the fundamental lines of thought and action which are determined by our early education, and which form the subconscious basis of all our activities. This is evinced by the attitude of civilized communities towards religion, politics, art, and the fundamental concepts of science.

In the average individual among primitive tribes, reasoning cannot overcome this emotional resistance, and it therefore requires a destruction of the existing emotional associations by more powerful means to bring about a change. This may be effected by some event which stirs up the mind of the people to its depths, or by economic and political changes against which resistance is impossible. In civilization there is a constant readiness to modify those activities that have no emotional value. This is true not only of activities designed to meet practical ends, but also of others that have lost their associations, and that have become subject to fashion. There remain, however, others which are retained with great tenacity, and which hold their own against reasoning, because their strength lies in their emotional values. The history of the progress of science yields example after example of the power of resistance belonging to old ideas, even after increasing knowledge of the world has undermined the ground on which they were erected. Their overthrow is not brought about until a new generation has arisen, to whom the old is no longer dear and near.

Besides this, there are a thousand activities and modes of thought that constitute our daily life,—of which we are not conscious at all until we come into contact with other types of life, or until we are prevented from acting according to our custom,—that cannot in any way be claimed to be more reasonable than others, and to which, nevertheless, we cling. These, it would seem, are hardly less numerous in civilized than in primitive culture, because they constitute the whole series of well-established habits according to which the necessary actions of ordinary every-day life are performed, and which are learned less by instruction than by imitation.

We may also express these conclusions in another form. While in the logical processes of the mind we find a decided tendency, with the development of civilization, to eliminate traditional elements, no such marked decrease in the force of traditional elements can be found in our activities. These are controlled by custom almost as much among ourselves as they are among primitive man. We have seen why this must be the case. The mental processes which enter into the development of judgments are based largely upon associations with previous judgments. This process of association is the same among primitive men as among civilized men, and the difference consists largely in the modification of the traditional material with which our new perceptions amalgamate. In the case of activities, the conditions are somewhat different. Here tradition manifests itself in an action performed by the individual. The more frequently this action is repeated, the more firmly it will become established, and the less will be the conscious equivalent accompanying the action; so that customary actions which are of very frequent repetition become entirely unconscious. Hand in hand with this decrease of consciousness goes an increase in the emotional value of the omission of such activities, and still more of the performance of actions contrary to custom. A greater will-power is required to inhibit an action which has become well established; and combined with this effort of the will-power are feelings of intense displeasure.

Thus an important change from primitive culture to civilization seems to consist in the gradual elimination of what might be called the social associations of sense-impressions and of activities, for which intellectual associations are gradually substituted. This process is accompanied by a loss of conservatism, which, however, does not extend over the field of habitual activities that do not come into consciousness, and only to a slight extent over those generalizations which are the foundation of all knowledge imparted in the course of education.

Footnote 8:

Some Australian tribes are divided into four exogamic groups. The laws of exogamy demand that a member of the first group must marry a member of the second group, and a member of the third group one of the fourth group. CUNOW explains these customs by showing that when custom provides that a man in a tribe that is divided into two exogamic units, and in which only members of the same generation are allowed to intermarry, conditions like those found in Australia will naturally develop, if each group has a name, and one set of names are used for the first, third, fifth, generations, and another set of names for the second, fourth, sixth, generations, etc. If we should designate the two tribal divisions by the letters A and B, the generations by 1 and 2, the names of the four divisions would be A1, A2, B1, B2; and in marriages in which is placed first the sex that determines the group to which the offspring belongs, we find that—

A1 must marry B1, and his children are A2 B1 " " A1, " " " " B2 A2 " " B2, " " " " A1 B2 " " A2, " " " " B1

IX. SUMMARY

I MAY now be allowed to pass once more briefly over the whole ground that we have covered. First of all, we tried to understand the reasons for our belief in the existence of gifted races and of others less favorably endowed, and found that it was based essentially on the assumption that higher achievement is necessarily associated with higher mental faculty, and that therefore the features of those races that in our judgment have accomplished most are characteristics of mental superiority. We subjected these assumptions to a critical study, and discovered little evidence to support them. So many other causes were found to influence the progress of civilization, accelerating or retarding it, and similar processes were active in so many different races, that, on the whole, hereditary traits, more particularly hereditary higher gifts, were at best a possible, but not a necessary, element determining the degree of advancement of a race.

The second part of the fundamental assumption seemed even less likely. Hardly any evidence could be adduced to show that the anatomical characteristics of the races possessing the highest civilization were phylogenetically more advanced than those on lower grades of culture. The various races differ in this respect; the specifically human characteristics being most highly developed, some in one race, some in another. Furthermore, it appeared that a direct relation between physical habitus and mental endowment does not exist.

After thus clearing away the racial prejudice, the most formidable obstacle to a clear understanding of our problem, we turned to an investigation of the question whether human types are stable, more particularly whether environment may change the anatomical structure of man, and thus of his mental make-up, and to the correlated question, what man owes to heredity. In treating the general question of the stability of human types, we described some rudimentary organs and some peculiar anatomical traits which prove a phylogenetic development of man, traces of which were found in all races. The influence of environment was demonstrated in all those cases in which changes in the rate of growth affected the final form of the body; and we saw particularly that early arrest of development does not necessarily mean unfavorable development, because in many cases the rapidity and short period of development seemed favorable elements. We saw that other changes in human types may be brought about by selection, and that environment itself seems to have a direct effect upon bodily form, as was proved by the changes of type due to the transfer from a rural environment to city life, and to the immigration of various nationalities from Europe to America. We saw, however, that there is no evidence at present to prove that these changes exceed certain definite limits. Special attention was directed to those features of the bodily form that characterize man as a domesticated animal, and which are due to the peculiarities of human nutrition, and which facilitate crossing of distinct types. The mentality of man appeared also to be influenced by the degree of his domestication.

Turning to the influence of heredity, we recognized that by it are determined all the most fundamental features of each race and type of man, and that often the individual reverts to the traits of the one or the other of his parents, or of his remote ancestors, in such manner that one trait may belong to one ancestor, another to another. This tendency seemed to explain the development of local types, and we recognized the importance of the breaking of old fines of heredity, in cases of intermarriages of branches of the same race that had long been separated. By analogy we concluded that possibly, or probably, similar tendencies may exist in the mental life of man.

After we had thus gained an insight into the physical characteristics of the races and social groups of man, we took up a consideration of his mental life. The mental traits common to all mankind are those which appear by contrasting man with animals; and we pointed out briefly that articulate language, the use of implements, and the power of reasoning, belong to all members of the human species as opposed to the higher animals. Before we entered into the comparison of the mental life of primitive man and of civilized man, we had to clear away a number of misconceptions caused by the current descriptions of the life of primitive man. We saw that the oft-repeated claim that he has no power to inhibit impulses, no power of attention, no originality of thought, no power of clear reasoning, could not be maintained; and that all these faculties are common to primitive man and to civilized man, although they are excited on different occasions. This led us to a brief consideration of the question whether the hereditary mental faculty was improved by civilization, an opinion that did not seem plausible to us.

The study of the problem of the relation of racial descent to cultural advancement required a determination of the question in how far these are correlated. We endeavored to gain an insight into this problem by following out the relations between human types, languages, and cultures. A general lack of correlation appeared, which led us to infer that the present types of man are older than the present linguistic families, and that each type developed a number of languages. Since these must be considered the product of the mental activities of each type, uninfluenced or almost uninfluenced by other types, we tried to discover whether one language could be shown to be superior to others, and whether some languages made higher forms of thought impossible. The results of this inquiry were quite analogous to those obtained in our inquiry into the physical characteristics of man, and showed similar traits in all languages, and also that languages were moulded by thought, not thought by languages.

There still seemed to be a possibility of proving the backwardness of certain tribes, if it could be shown that members of certain races were all on early levels of culture, while those of other races had independently reached later stages of development. This would presuppose that the general course of cultural development is the same everywhere, and that types of culture can be ascribed to definite stages of development. The theory of such general parallelism of the history of human culture is based on the similarity of cultural traits in all parts of the world. Our analysis showed that the similarities were more apparent than real, that they often developed by convergent development from distinct sources, and that not all stages have been present in all types of cultures. Thus all attempts to correlate racial types and cultural stages failed us, and we concluded that cultural stage is essentially a phenomenon dependent upon historical causes, regardless of race.

Finally we attempted to describe the mental characteristics of primitive man, regardless of his racial affiliations. We pointed out the differences in principles of classification of experience found on different social stages, and the differences in logical conclusions reached by primitive and civilized man owing to the difference in the character of knowledge accumulated by preceding generations. We then followed out the emotional associations of habitual activities, and the tendency to invent for them rationalistic explanations. We found them quite common in primitive life, and noticed the great variety of ideas and activities that were thus brought into contact so as to produce a number of peculiar concepts and activities. Other peculiar associations are not due to strong emotional causes, but to all of them is common the tendency of taking on rationalistic explanations of varied character. The change from primitive to civilized society includes a lessening of the number of the emotional associations, and an improvement of the traditional material that enters into our habitual mental operations.

X. RACE PROBLEMS IN THE UNITED STATES

WE will now turn to the question what these results of our inquiry teach us in regard to the problems that confront our modern civilization, particularly our nation. The development of the American nation through the amalgamation of diverse European nationalities, the presence of the Negro, Indian, and Chinese, and the whole ever-increasing heterogeneity of the component elements of our people, involve a number of problems to the solution of which our inquiries contribute important data.

Our previous considerations make clear the hypothetical character of many of the generally accepted assumptions, and indicate that not all of the questions involved can be answered at the present time with scientific accuracy. It is disappointing that we have to take this critical attitude, because the political question of dealing with all these groups of people is of great and immediate importance. However, it should be solved on the basis of scientific knowledge, not according to emotional clamor. Under present conditions, we seem to be called upon to formulate definite answers to questions that require the most painstaking and unbiassed investigation; and the more urgent the demand for final conclusions, the more needed is a critical examination of the phenomena and of the available methods of solution.