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Title: Anthropology and modern life
Author: Franz Boas
Release date: November 5, 2025 [eBook #77181]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1928
Credits: Sean/IB@DP
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHROPOLOGY AND MODERN LIFE ***
ANTHROPOLOGY
_and Modern Life_
_By_
Franz Boas, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
NEW YORK
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY, INC
_Publishers_
Copyright, 1928
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAN REES PRESS
Contents {p. v}
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY? 11
Anthropology treats of man as a member of a social
group--Pure and applied anthropology.
II. THE PROBLEM OF RACE 18
Significance of the term “Race”--Overlapping of racial
types--Subjective existence of types--Racial heredity and
family lines--Inbred and heterogeneous types--Functional
differences between individuals of the same bodily
form--Environmental influences upon bodily form--Races
considered from an evolutionary viewpoint--Relation between
the size of the brain and intelligence--Man as a domesticated
form--Physiological and mental differences between
races--Difficulty of distinguishing between hereditary and
environmental conditions--Significance of intelligence
tests--Tests of American Negroes--Relative importance of
cultural experience and racial descent--Racial descent
disregarded by ethnologists.
III. THE INTERRELATION OF RACES 62
Race consciousness--Open and closed societies--Race a type
of closed society--Intermingling of races--Conditions under
which race antipathies break down.
IV. NATIONALISM 78
Confusion between the terms “Race” and “Nationality”--Mixed
descent of European nations--Language as basis of national
groupings--Culture and political organization as basis of
nationality--Fictitious groupings based on distant relation
of speech--Increase in size of political units--Early
development of tribal units--Decrease in feeling of
difference between tribal groups--The function of nationalism.
V. EUGENICS 102
Effects of selection--Effect of environment and
heredity--General degeneracy--Selection for development
of specific qualities--Social effects of eugenic
legislation--Elimination of the unfit--Dangers of eugenic
procedure.
VI. CRIMINOLOGY 120
Criminals as a class--Criminals as defectives--Social
conditions and crime--Relative importance of hereditary and
environmental factors.
VII. STABILITY OF CULTURE 131
Acceleration of cultural development--Periodicity of the
rate of change--Automatic habits--Relation between material
inventions and automatic habits--The relation between
language and thought--Actions are more stable than their
interpretations--Stability of patterns of thought--Negative
effect of automatism--Intolerance--Independence.
VIII. EDUCATION 164
Phenomena of growth and development--Influence of
heredity--Development of functions--Retardation and
acceleration--Comparison of sexes--Application of
generalized observations to the establishment of
educational standards--Racial characteristics--Cases in
which standards are applicable--Prediction of individual
development--Generalized standards are not applicable to
individuals--Cultural effects of education--Effect of
education upon mental freedom--Conflicts in educational
aims--Effect of education upon crises in the life of the
individual--The cultural outlook of classes--Cultural outlook
of educated class--Cultural outlook of the masses.
IX. MODERN CIVILIZATION AND PRIMITIVE CULTURE 198
Applicability of anthropology--Valuation of different
cultural aims--Objective study must be based on different
cultures--Anthropology an historic science--Prediction
of development of culture impossible--Primitive
cultures as historic growths--General social
laws--Progress in inventions and knowledge--Stability
of moral ideas--Progress in ethical behavior--Progress
in social organization--Leadership--Position of
woman--Marriage--Property--Is the direction of
cultural development predetermined?--Culture not
superorganic--Geographic and economic determinism.
REFERENCES 237
CHAPTER I {p. 11}
WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?
Anthropology is often considered a collection of curious facts,
telling about the peculiar appearance of exotic people and describing
their strange customs and beliefs. It is looked at as an entertaining
diversion, apparently without any bearing upon the conduct of life of
civilized communities.
This opinion is mistaken. More than that, I hope to demonstrate that a
clear understanding of the principles of anthropology illuminates the
social processes of our own times and may show us, if we are ready to
listen to its teachings, what to do and what to avoid.
To prove my thesis I must explain briefly what anthropologists are
trying to do.
It might appear that the domain of anthropology, of “the science of
man,” is preoccupied by a whole array of sciences. The anthropologist
who studies bodily form is confronted by the anatomist who has spent
centuries in researches on the gross form and minute structure of the
human body. The physiologist and the psychologist devote themselves to
inquiries into the functioning of body and {12} mind. Is there, then,
any justification for the anthropologist to claim that he can add to
our fund of knowledge?
There is a difference between the work of the anthropologist and
that of the anatomist, physiologist, and psychologist. They deal
primarily with the typical form and function of the human body and
mind. Minor differences such as appear in any series of individuals are
either disregarded or considered as peculiarities without particular
significance for the type, although sometimes suggestive of its rise
from lower forms. The interest centers always in the individual as a
type, and in the significance of his appearance and functions from a
morphological, physiological or psychological point of view.
To the anthropologist, on the contrary, the individual appears
important only as a member of a racial or a social group. The
distribution and range of differences between individuals, and the
characteristics as determined by the group to which each individual
belongs are the phenomena to be investigated. The distribution of
anatomical features, of physiological functions and of mental reactions
are the subject matter of anthropological studies.
It might be said that anthropology is not a single science, for
the anthropologist presupposes a knowledge of individual anatomy,
physiology and {13} psychology, and applies this knowledge to groups.
Every one of these sciences may be and is being studied from an
anthropological point of view.
The group, not the individual, is always the primary concern of the
anthropologist. We may investigate the distribution of size of body
as measured by weight or stature in a racial or social group. The
individual interests us only as a member of the group. We inquire
into determinant factors and the manner of their action in the group.
The relation between the composition of the social group and the
distribution of individual statures interests us. The physiologist
may study the effect of strenuous exercise upon the functions of the
heart. The anthropologist will investigate the interrelation between
social conditions that make for strenuous exercise in a group and
the physiological behavior of its members. The psychologist may
study the intellectual or emotional behavior of the individual. The
anthropologist will investigate the social or racial conditions that
determine the behavior as distributed in the group.
The individual develops and acts as a member of a racial or a social
group. His bodily form is determined by his ancestry and by the
conditions under which he lives. The functions of the body, while
controlled by bodily build, depend upon social conditions. If the
people live by choice or necessity on an exclusive meat diet, their
bodily {14} functions will differ from those of other groups of the
same build that live on a purely vegetable diet; or, conversely,
different racial groups that are nourished in the same way may show a
certain parallelism in physiological behavior. The mental reactions of
the Indians of the western plateaus, a people of simple culture, differ
from those of the ancient Mexicans, a people of the same race, but of
more complex organization.
The phenomena of anatomy, physiology and psychology are amenable
to an individual, non-anthropological treatment, because it seems
theoretically possible to isolate the individual and to formulate the
problems of the variation of form and function in such a way that
the social or racial factor is apparently excluded. This is quite
impossible in all basically social phenomena, such as economic life,
social organization of a group, religious ideas and art.
The psychologist may try to investigate the mental processes of
artistic creation. Although the processes may be fundamentally the same
everywhere, the very act of creation implies that we are not dealing
with the artist alone as a creator but also with his reaction to the
culture in which he lives and that of his fellows to the work he has
created.
The economist who tries to unravel economic processes _must_ operate
with the social group, not {15} with individuals. The same may be
said of the study of social organization. It is possible to treat
social organization from a purely formal point of view, to demonstrate
by careful analysis the fundamental concepts underlying it. For the
anthropologist this is the starting point for a consideration of the
dynamic effects of such organization as manifested in the life of the
individual and of the group.
The linguist may study the form of language, the “norm” of linguistic
expression at a given time and the mechanical processes that give
rise to phonetic changes; the psychological attitude expressed in
language; and the conditions that bring about changes of meaning. The
anthropologist is more deeply interested in the social aspect of the
linguistic phenomenon, in language as a means of communication and in
the interrelation between language and culture.
In short, when discussing the reactions of the individual to his
fellows we are compelled to concentrate our attention upon the society
in which he lives. In all these cases we cannot treat the individual
as an isolated unit. He must be studied in his social setting, and the
question is relevant whether generalizations are possible by which
a functional relation between generalized social data and the forms
and expression of individual life can be discovered; in other words,
whether any {16} generally valid laws exist that govern the life of
society.
A scientific inquiry of this type is concerned only with the
interrelations between the observed phenomena, in the same way as
physics and chemistry are interested in the forms of equilibrium and
movement of matter, as they appear to our senses. The question of the
usefulness of the knowledge gained is entirely irrelevant. The interest
of the physicist and chemist centers in the development of a complete
understanding of the intricacies of the outer world. A discovery has
value only from the point of view of shedding new light upon the
general problems of these sciences. The applicability of experience
to technical problems does not concern the physicist. What may be
of greatest value in our practical life does not need to be of any
interest to him, and what is of no value in our daily occupations may
be of fundamental value. The only valuation of discoveries that can
be admitted by pure science is their significance in the solution of
general abstract problems.
While this standpoint of pure science is applicable also to social
phenomena, it is easily recognized that these concern our own selves
much more immediately, for almost every anthropological problem touches
our most intimate life.
The course of development of a group of children {17} depends upon
their racial descent, the economic condition of their parents and their
general well-being. A knowledge of the interaction of these factors may
give us the power to control growth and to secure the best possible
conditions of life for the group. All vital and social statistics are
so intimately related to policies to be adopted or to be discarded that
it is not quite easy to see that the interest in our problems, when
considered from a purely scientific point of view, is not related to
the practical values that we ascribe to the results.
It is the object of the following pages to discuss problems of modern
life in the light of the results of anthropological studies carried on
from a purely analytical point of view.
For this purpose it will be necessary to gain clarity in regard to
two fundamental concepts: race and stability of culture. These will be
discussed in their proper places.
CHAPTER II {18}
THE PROBLEM OF RACE
In the present cultural conditions of mankind we observe, or
observed at least until very recent time, a cleavage of cultural
forms according to racial types. The contrast between European and
East Asiatic civilizations was striking, until the Japanese began to
introduce European patterns. Still greater appeared the contrasts
between Europeans, native Australians, African Negroes and American
Indians. It is, therefore, but natural that much thought has been given
to the problem of the interrelation between race and culture. Even
in Europe cultural differences between North Europeans and people of
the Mediterranean, between West and East Europeans are striking and
are correlated with differences in physical appearance. This explains
why numberless books and essays have been and are being written
based on the assumption that each race has its own mental character
determining its cultural or social behavior. In America particularly,
fears are being expressed of the effects of intermixture of races, of
a modification or deterioration of national {19} character on account
of the influx of new types into the population of our country, and
policies of controlling the growth of the population are being proposed
and laws based on these assumptions have been passed.
The differences of cultural outlook and of bodily appearance have given
rise to antagonisms that are rationalized as due to instinctive racial
antipathies.
There is little clarity in regard to the term “race.” When we speak
of racial characteristics we mean those traits that are determined by
heredity in each race and in which all members of the race participate.
Comparing Swedes and Negroes, lack of pigmentation of skin, eye
and hair are hereditary racial characteristics of the Swedes, deep
pigmentation of the Negro. The straight or wavy hair of the Swede, the
frizzly hair of the Negro, the narrowness and elevation of the nose
among the Swedes, its width and flatness among the Negroes, all these
are hereditary racial traits because practically all the Swedes and
Negroes participate in them.
In other respects it is not so easy to define racial traits.
Anatomists cannot with certainty differentiate between the brain of a
Swede and of a Negro. The brains of each group vary so much in form
that it is often difficult to say, if we have no other criteria,
whether a certain brain belongs to a Swede or to a Negro. {20}
The nearer two races are related the more traits they will have in
common. A knowledge of all the bodily traits of a particular individual
from Denmark does not enable us to identify him as a Dane. If he is
tall, blond, blue-eyed, long-headed and so on he might as well be a
Swede. We also find individuals of the same bodily form in Germany,
in France and we may even find them in Italy. Identification of an
individual as a member of a definite, local race is not possible.
Whenever these conditions prevail, we cannot speak of racial heredity.
In a strict sense racial heredity means that _all_ the members of the
race partake of certain traits,--such as the hair, pigmentation and
nose form of the Negro, as compared to the corresponding features
among the North European. All those forms that are peculiar to some
members of the race, not to all, are in no sense true hereditary racial
characteristics. The greater the number of individuals exhibiting
these traits the less is their racial significance. North Italians are
round-headed, Scandinavians long-headed. Still, so many different forms
are represented in either series, and other bodily forms are so much
alike that it would be impossible to claim that an individual selected
at random _must_ be a North Italian or a Scandinavian. Extreme forms in
which the local characteristics are most pronounced might be identified
with a fair degree of {21} probability, but intermediate forms might
belong to either group. The bodily traits of the two groups are not
racial characteristics in the strict sense of the term. Although it is
possible to describe the most common types of these groups by certain
metric and descriptive traits, not all the members of the groups
conform to them.
We are easily misled by general impressions. Most of the Swedes are
blond, blue-eyed, tall and long-headed. This causes us to formulate
in our minds the ideal of a Swede and we forget the variations that
occur in Scandinavia. If we talk of a Sicilian we think of a swarthy,
short person, with dark eyes and dark hair. Individuals differing from
this type are not in our mind when we think of a “typical” Sicilian.
The more uniform a people the more strongly are we impressed by the
“type.” Every country impresses us as inhabited by a certain type the
traits of which are determined by the most frequently occurring forms.
This, however, does not tell us anything in regard to its hereditary
composition and the range of its variations. The “type” is formed quite
subjectively on the basis of our everyday experience.
Suppose a Swede, from a region in which blondness, blue eyes, tall
stature prevail in almost the whole population, should visit Scotland
and express his experiences naïvely. He would say that there are
many individuals of Swedish type, but {22} that besides this another
type inhabits the country, of dark complexion, dark hair and eyes,
but tall and long-headed. The population would seem to represent two
types, not that biologically the proof would have been given of race
mixture; it would merely be an expression due to earlier experiences.
The unfamiliar type stands out as something new and the inclination
prevails to consider the new type as racially distinct. Conversely, a
Scotchman who visits Sweden would be struck by the similarity between
most Swedes and the blond Scotch, and he would say that there is a very
large number of the blond Scotch with whom he is familiar, without
reaching the conclusion that his own type is mixed.
We speak of racial types in a similar way. When we see American
Indians we recognize some as looking like Asiatics, others like East
Europeans, still others are said to be of a Jewish cast. We classify
the variety of forms according to our previous experiences and we are
inclined to consider the divergent forms that are well established in
our consciousness as pure types, particularly if they appear as extreme
forms.
Thus the North European blond and the Armenian with his high nose and
his remarkably high head, which is flat behind, appear as pure types.
Biologically speaking, this is an unjustifiable assumption. Extreme
forms are not pure racial {23} types. We do not know how much their
descendants may vary among themselves and what their ancestry may have
been. Even if it were shown that the extreme types were of homogeneous
descent, this would not prove that the intermediate types might not be
equally homogeneous.
It is well to remember that heredity means the transmission of
anatomical and functional characteristics from ancestors to offspring.
What we call nowadays a race of man consists of groups of individuals
in which descent from common ancestors cannot be proved.
All we know is that the children of a given family represent the
hereditarily transmitted qualities of their ancestors. Such a group of
brothers and sisters is called a fraternity.
Not all the members of a fraternity are alike. They scatter around
a certain middle value. If the typical distribution of forms in all
the groups of brothers and sisters that constitute the race were
alike, then we could talk of racial heredity, for each fraternity
would represent the racial characteristics. We cannot speak of racial
heredity if the fraternities are different, so that the distribution
of forms in one family is different from that found in another one.
In this case the fraternities represent distinctive hereditary family
lines. Actually in all the known races the single family lines as
represented by fraternities show a considerable {24} amount of
variation which indicates that the hereditary characteristics of the
families are not the same, a result that may be expected whenever the
ancestors have distinct heritable characteristics. In addition to this
we may observe that a fraternity found in one race may be duplicated
by another one in another race; in other words, that the hereditary
characteristics found in one race may not belong to it exclusively, but
may belong also to other races.
This may be illustrated by an extreme case. If I wish to know “the
type” of the New Yorker, I may not pick out any one particular family
and claim that it is a good representative of the type. I might happen
to select a family of pure English descent; and I might happen to
strike an Irish, Italian, Jewish, German, Armenian or Negro family.
All these types are so different and, if inbred, continue their
types so consistently that none of them can possibly be taken as a
representative New Yorker. Conditions in France are similar. I cannot
select at random a French family and consider its members as typical of
France. They may be blond Northwest Europeans, darker Central Europeans
or of Mediterranean type. In New York as well as in France the family
lines are so diverse that there is no racial unity and no racial
heredity.
Matters are different in old, inbred communities. {25} If a number
of families have intermarried for centuries without appreciable
addition of foreign blood they will all be closely related and the same
ancestral traits will appear in all the families. Brothers and sisters
in any one family may be quite unlike among themselves, but all the
family lines will have considerable likeness. It is much more feasible
to obtain an impression of the general character of the population
by examining a single family than in the preceding cases, and a few
families would give us a good picture of the whole race. Conditions
of this type prevail among the landowners in small European villages.
They are found in the high nobility of Europe and also among some
isolated tribes. The Eskimos of North Greenland, for instance, have
been isolated for centuries. Their number can never have exceeded a
few hundred. There are no rigid rules proscribing marriages between
relatives, so that we may expect that unions were largely dictated by
chance. The ancestors of the tribe were presumably a small number of
Eskimos who happened to settle there and whose blood flows in the veins
of all the members of the present generation. The people all bear a
considerable likeness, but unfortunately we do not know in how far the
family lines are alike.
We have information of this kind from one of the isolated Tennessee
valleys in which people have intermarried among themselves for a
century. The {26} family lines in this community are very much alike.
In cases of this kind it does not matter whether the ancestry is
homogeneous or belongs to quite distinct races. As long as there
is continued inbreeding the family lines will become alike. The
differences of racial descent will rather appear in the differences
between brothers and sisters, some of whom will lean towards one of the
ancestral strains, others to the other. The distribution of different
racial forms in all the various families will be the more the same,
the longer the inbreeding without selection continues. We have a few
examples of this kind. The Bastaards of South Africa, largely an old
mixture of Dutch and Hottentot, and the Chippewa of eastern Canada,
descendants of French and Indians, are inbred communities. Accordingly,
the family lines among them are quite similar, while the brothers and
sisters in each family differ strongly among themselves.
In modern society, particularly in cities, conditions are not favorable
to inbreeding. The larger the area inhabited by a people, the denser
and the more mobile the population, the less are the families inbred
and the more may we expect very diverse types of family lines.
The truth of this statement may readily be demonstrated.
Notwithstanding the apparent homogeneity of the Swedish nation, there
are many {27} different family lines represented. Many are “typical”
blond Swedes, but in other families dark hair and brown eyes are
hereditary. The range of hereditary forms is considerable.
It has been stated before that many individuals of Swedish types may be
duplicated in neighboring countries. The same is true of family lines.
It would not be difficult to find in Denmark, Germany, Holland or
northern France families that might apparently just as well be Swedes;
or in Sweden families that might as well be French or German.
In these cases hereditary characteristics are not “racially”
determined, but belong to family lines that occur in many “racial”
groups. Just as soon as family lines of the same form are found in a
number of racial groups the term “racial heredity” loses its meaning.
We can speak solely of “heredity in family lines.” The term “racial
heredity” presupposes a homogeneity of lines of descent in each race,
and a degree of difference of lines of descent in different races, that
do not exist.
In short, if we wish to discuss racial traits we have to recognize
that a great diversity of these occurs in every race and that they are
inherited not racially, but in family lines. Characteristics of this
type do not belong to the race as a whole.
Another important problem confronts us. We have seen that our
concept of types is based on {28} subjective experience. On account
of the preponderance of “typical” Swedes we are inclined to consider
all those of different type as not belonging to the racial type, as
foreign admixtures. There is a somewhat distinct type in Sweden in
the old mining districts which were first worked by Walloons and it
is more than probable that the greater darkness of complexion in this
region is due to the influence of Walloon blood. We are very ready to
explain every deviation from a type in this way. In many cases this
is undoubtedly correct, for intermingling of distinct types of people
has been going on for thousands of years; but we do not know to what
extent a type may vary when no admixture of foreign blood has occurred.
The experience of animal breeders proves that even with intensive
inbreeding of pure stock there always remains a considerable amount
of variation between individuals. We have no evidence to show to what
extent variations of this kind might develop in a pure human race and
it is not probable that satisfactory evidence will ever be forthcoming,
because we have no pure races. The history of the whole world shows
us mankind constantly on the move; people from eastern Asia coming
to Europe; those of western and central Asia invading southern Asia;
North Europeans sweeping over Mediterranean countries; Central Africans
extending their territories over almost the {29} whole of South Africa;
people from Alaska spreading to northern Mexico or vice versa; South
Americans settling almost over the whole eastern part of the continent
here and there,--in short, from earliest times on we have a picture of
continued movements, and with it of mixtures of diverse people.
It may well be that the lack of clean-cut geographical and biological
lines between the races of man is entirely due to these circumstances.
The conditions are quite like those found in the animal world. Local
races of remote districts may readily be recognized, but in many cases
they are united by intermediate forms.
We have seen that on account of the lack of sharp distinctions between
neighboring populations it happens that apparently identical family
lines occur in both, and that an individual in one may resemble in
bodily form an individual in another. Notwithstanding their resemblance
it can be demonstrated that they are functionally not by any means
equivalent, for when we compare their children they will be found to
revert more or less to the type of the population to which the parents
belong. To give an example: the Bohemians have, on the average, round
heads, the Swedes long heads. Nevertheless it is possible to find among
both populations parents that have the same head forms. The selected
group among the {30} Swedes will naturally be more round-headed than
the average Swede, and the selected Bohemians will be more long-headed
than the average Bohemians. The children of the selected group of
Swedes are found to be more long-headed than their parents, those of
the selected group of Bohemians more short-headed than their parents.
The cause of this is not difficult to understand. If we pick out
short-headed individuals among the Swedes, short-headedness may be an
individual nonhereditary trait. Furthermore the general run of their
relatives will be similar to the long-headed Swedish type and since
the form of the offspring depends not only upon the parent, but also
upon the characteristics of his whole family line, at least of his four
grandparents, a reversion to the general population may be expected.
The same is true among the Bohemians.
We must conclude that individuals of the same bodily appearance,
if sprung from populations of distinct type, are functionally not
the same. For this reason it is quite unjustifiable to select from
a population a certain type and claim that it is identical with the
corresponding type of another population. Each individual must be
studied as a member of the group from which he has sprung. We may not
assume that the round-headed or brunette individuals in Denmark are
identical with the corresponding forms from Switzerland. Even {31} if
no anatomical differences between two series of such individuals are
discernible they represent genetically distinctive strains. Identity
can occur in exceptional individuals only.
If we were to select a group of tall, blond Sicilians, men and women,
who marry among themselves, we must expect that their offspring in
later generations will revert more or less to the Sicilian type, and,
conversely, if we select a group of brunette, brown-eyed Swedes, their
offspring will revert more or less to the blond, blue-eyed Swedish type.
We have spoken so far only of the hereditary conditions of stable
races. We imply by the term racial heredity that the composition of
succeeding generations is identical. When one generation dies, the
next one is assumed to represent the same type of population. This can
be true only if random matings occur in each generation. If in the
first generation there was a random selection of mates, due to chance
only, the same condition must prevail in the following generations.
Any preferential mating, any selective change in group mortality or
fertility, or brought about by migration, must modify the genetic
composition of the group.
For these reasons none of our modern populations is stable from
a hereditary point of view. The heterogeneous family lines in a
population {32} that has originated through migration will gradually
become more homogeneous, if the descendants continue to reside in the
same spot. In our cities and mixed farming communities, on account
of changes in selective mating, constant changes in the hereditary
composition are going on, even after immigration has ceased. Local
inbreeding produces local types; avoidance of marriages between
near relatives favors increasing likeness of all the family lines
constituting the population; favored or proscribed cousin marriages
which are customary among many tribes establish separate family types
and increase in this sense the heterogeneity of the population.
Another question presents itself. We have considered only the
hereditary stability of genetic lines. We must ask ourselves also
whether environmental conditions exert an influence over races.
It is quite obvious that the forms of lower organisms are subject
to environmental influences. Plants taken from low altitudes to
high mountains develop short stems; leaves of semi-aquatic plants
growing under water have a form differing from the subaërial leaves.
Cultivated plants transform their stamens into petals. Plants may be
dwarfed or stimulated in their growth by appropriate treatment. Each
plant is so organized that it develops a certain form under given
environmental conditions. Microörganisms differ so much in different
{33} environmental settings that it is often difficult to establish
their specific identity.
The question arises whether the same kind of variability occurs in
higher organisms. The general impression is that their forms are
determined by heredity, not by environment. The young of a greyhound
is a greyhound, that of a shorthorn a shorthorn; that of a Norway rat
a Norway rat. The child of a European is European in type, that of a
Chinaman of Mongolic type, that of an African Negro a Negro.
Nevertheless detailed study shows that the form and size of the
body are not entirely shaped by heredity. Records of the stature of
European men that date back to the middle of the past century show
that in almost all countries the average statures have increased by
more than an inch. It is true, this is not a satisfactory proof of an
actual change, because improvement in public health has changed the
composition of the populations, and although it is not likely that
this should be the cause of an increase in stature, it is conceivable.
A better proof is found in the change of stature among descendants of
Europeans who settle in America. In this case it has been shown that
in many nationalities the children are taller than their own parents,
presumably on account of more favorable conditions of life.
It has also been observed that the forms of the {34} body are
influenced by occupation. The hand of a person who has to do heavy
manual labor differs from that of a musician who develops the
independence of all the muscles of his hand. The proportions and form
of the limbs are influenced by habitual posture and use. The legs of
the oriental who squats flat on the ground are somewhat modified by
this habit.
Other modifications cannot be explained by better nutrition or by the
use of the muscles. Forms of the head and face are not quite stable,
but are in some way influenced by the environment in which the people
live, so that after a migration into a new environment the child will
not be quite like the parent.
All the observed changes are slight and do not modify the essential
character of the hereditary forms. Still they are not negligible. We do
not know how great the modifications may be that ultimately result from
such changes, nor have we any evidence that the changes would persist
if the people were taken back to their old environment. Although a
Negro will never become a European, it is not impossible that some
of the minor differences between European populations may be due to
environment rather than to heredity.
So far we have discussed solely the anatomical forms of races with
a view of gaining a clearer understanding of what we mean by the
term race. {35} It may be well to repeat the principal result of our
discussion.
We have found that the term “racial heredity” is strictly applicable
only when all the individuals of a race participate in certain
anatomical features. In each race taken as a whole the family lines
differ considerably in their hereditary traits. The distribution of
family lines is such that a considerable number of lines similar or
even identical in one or many respects occur in contiguous territories.
The vague impression of “types,” abstracted from our everyday
experience, does not prove that these are biologically distinct
races, and the inference that various populations are composed of
individuals belonging to various races is subjectively intelligible,
objectively unproved. It is particularly not admissible to identify
types apparently identical that occur in populations of different
composition. Each individual can be understood only as a member of his
group.
These considerations seem necessary, because they clear up the
vagueness of the term “race” as usually applied. When we speak of
heredity we are ordinarily concerned with family lines, not with races.
The hereditary qualities of families constituting the most homogeneous
population differ very much among themselves and there is very little,
if anything, that these family lines have in common and they are not
sharply set off from {36} neighboring populations that may give a quite
distinctive impression.
The relation of racial types may be looked at in another way. It may
be granted that in closely related types the identification of an
individual as a member of each type cannot be made with any degree
of certainty. Nevertheless the distribution of individuals and of
family lines in the various races differs. When we select among the
Europeans a group with large brains, their frequency will be relatively
high, while among the Negroes the frequency of occurrence of the
corresponding group will be low. If, for instance, there are 50 per
cent of an European population who have a brain weight of more than,
let us say, 1500 grams, there may be only 20 per cent of Negroes of the
same class. Therefore 30 per cent of the large-brained Europeans cannot
be matched by any corresponding group of Negroes.
It is justifiable to compare races from this point of view, as long as
we avoid an application of our results to individuals.
On general biological grounds it is important to know whether any one
of the human races is, in regard to form or function, further removed
from the ancestral animal form than another, whether the races can be
arranged in an ascending series. Although we do not know the ancestral
form with any degree of certainty, some of its characteristics {37}
can be inferred by a comparison of the anatomical forms of man and
of the apes. Single traits can be brought into ascending series in
which the racial forms differ more and more from animal forms, but the
arrangement is a different one for each independent trait.
The ancestral form had a flat nose. Bushmen, Negroes and Australians
have flat, broad noses. Mongoloids, Europeans and particularly
Armenians have narrow, prominent noses. They are in this sense farthest
removed from the animal forms.
Apes have narrow lips. The lips of the Whites are thin, those of
many Mongoloid types are fuller. The Negroes have the thickest, most
excessively “human” lips.
The hair coat of apes is moderately strong. Among human races the
Australians, Europeans and a few scattered tribes among other races
have the amplest body hair; Mongols have the least.
Similar remarks may be made in regard to the forms of the foot, of the
spinal column, of the proportions of the limbs. The order of the degree
to which human races differ from animals is not the same in regard to
these traits.
Particular stress has been laid on the size of the brain, which also
differs in various races. Setting aside the pygmy Bushmen and other
very small races, the negroid races have smaller brains than the
Mongoloids, and these in general smaller ones {38} than the Europeans,
although some Mongoloid types, like the Eskimo, exceed in size of the
brain many European groups.
The brain in each race is very variable in size and the “overlapping”
of individuals in the races is marked. It is not possible to identify
an individual as a Negro or White according to the size and form of the
brain, but serially the Negro brain is less extremely human than that
of the White.
We are apt to identify the size of the brain with its functioning.
This is true to a limited extent only. Among the higher mammals the
proportionate size of the brain is larger in animals that have greater
intelligence; but size alone is not an adequate criterion. Complexity
of structure is much more important than mere size. Some birds have
brains much larger proportionately than those of the higher mammals
without evidencing superior intelligence.
The size of the brain is measured by its weight which does not depend
upon the nerve cells and fibers alone, but includes a large amount
of material that is not directly relevant for the functioning of the
central nervous system.
Superior intelligence in man is in a way related to size of the
brain. Microcephalic individuals whose brains remain considerably
under normal size are mentally defective, but an individual {39} with
an exceptionally large brain is not necessarily a genius. There are
many causes that affect the size of the brain. The larger the body,
the larger the brain. Therefore well-nourished people who have a
larger bulk of body than those poorly nourished have larger brains,
not because their brains are structurally more highly developed, but
because the larger bulk is a characteristic feature of the entire
bodily form. Eminent people belong generally to the better nourished
class and the cause of the greater brain is, therefore, uncertain.
The variation in the size of the brain of eminent men is also very
considerable, some falling way beneath the norm.
The real problem to be solved is the relation between the structure of
the brain and its function. The correlation between gross structure in
the races of man and function is so slight that no safe inferences may
be drawn on the basis of the slight differences between races which are
of such character that up to this time the racial identification of a
brain is impossible, except in so far as elongated and rounded heads,
high and low heads and similar gross forms may be distinguished which
do not seem to have any relation to minute structure or function. At
least it has never been proved to exist and it does not seem likely
that there is any kind of intimate relation.
The differences between races are so small that {40} they lie within
the narrow range in the limits of which all forms may function equally
well. We cannot say that the ratio of inadequate brains and nervous
systems, that function noticeably worse than the norm, is the same in
every race, nor that those of rare excellence are equally frequent. It
is not improbable that such differences may exist in the same way as we
find different ranges of adjustability in other organs.
Without further proof the serial arrangement in brain size cannot be
identified with a higher racial intelligence.
If the anatomical structure of the brain is a doubtful indication of
mental excellence, this is still more the case with differences in
other parts of the body. So far as we can judge the form of the foot
and the slight development of the calves of the Negro; the prominence
of his teeth and the size of his lips; the heaviness of the face of the
Mongol; or the difference in degree of pigmentation of the races have
no relation to mentality. At least every attempt to prove such relation
has failed.
In any attempt to place the human races in an evolutionary series we
must also remember that modern races are not wild but domesticated
forms. In regard to nutrition and artificial protection the mode of
life of man is like that of domesticated animals. The artificial
modification of food by {41} the use of fire and the invention of tools
were the steps that brought about the self-domestication of man. Both
belong to a very early period, to a time before the last extensive
glaciation of Europe. Man must be considered the oldest domesticated
form. The most characteristic features of human races bear evidence
of this. The loss of pigmentation in the blond, blue-eyed races; the
blackness of the hair of the Negro are traits that do not occur in
any wild mammal form. Exceptions are the blackness of the hair coat
of the black panther, of the black bear and of the subterranean mole.
The frizzliness of the Negro hair and the curliness of the hair of
other races, the long hair of the head do not occur in wild mammals.
The permanence rather than periodicity of the sexual functions and
of the female breast; the anomalies of sexual behavior are also
characteristics of domesticated animals. The kind of domestication of
man is like that of the animals raised by primitive tribes that do not
breed certain strains by selection. Nevertheless, forms differing from
the wild forms develop in their herds.
Some of the traits of man that might be considered as indicating a
lower evolutionary stage may as well be due to domestication. Reduction
or unusual lengthening of the face occur. The excessive reduction of
the face in some White types and the elongation of the mouth parts
of the {42} Negro may be due to this cause. It may be a secondary
development from an intermediate form. The brain of domesticated forms
is generally smaller than that of wild forms. In exceptional cases it
may be larger. Pygmy forms and giants develop in domestication. In
short, the “primitive traits” of races are not necessarily indications
of an early arrest. They may be later acquisitions stabilized in
domestication.
All this, however, has little to do with the biologically determined
mentality of races, which is often assumed to be the basis of social
behavior. Mental behavior is closely related to the physiological
functioning of the body and the problem may be formulated as an
investigation of the functioning of the body, in the widest sense of
the term “functioning.”
We have seen that the description of the anatomical traits of a
race in general terms involves a faulty generalization based on the
impression made by the majority of individuals. This is no less true
in regard to the functions, and particularly the mental functions,
of a population. Our characterization of the mentality of a people
is merely a conceptionalization of those traits that are found in a
large number of individuals and that are, for this reason, impressive.
In another population other traits impress themselves upon the mind
and are conceptionalized. This does not {43} prove that, if in a
third population both types are found, it is mixed in its functional
behavior. The objective value of generalizations of this type is not
self-evident, because they are merely the result of the subjective
construction of types, the wide variability of which is disregarded.
Actually the functions exhibited by a whole race can be defined as
hereditary even less than its anatomical traits, because individually
and in family lines the variations are so great that not all the
members of the race react alike.
When the body has completed its growth its features remain the same for
a considerable length of time,--until the changes due to old age set
in. It does not matter at what time we examine the body, the results
will always be nearly the same. Fluctuations of weight, of the amount
of fat, of muscle do occur, but these are comparatively slight, and
under normal conditions of health, nutrition and exercise insignificant
until senility sets in.
It is different with the functions of the body. The heart beat depends
upon transient conditions. In sleep it is slow; in waking, during
meals, during exercise more rapid. The range of the number of heart
beats for the individual is very wide. The condition of our digestive
tract depends upon the amount and kind of food present; our eyes act
differently in intense light and in darkness. The {44} variation in
the functions of an individual is considerable. Furthermore, the
individuals constituting a population do not all function in the
same way. Variability, which in regard to anatomical traits has only
one source, namely, the differences between individuals, has in
physiological functions an added source, the different behavior of
the individual at different times. It is, therefore, not surprising
that functionally the individuals composing a population exhibit a
considerable variability.
The average values expressing the functioning of various races living
under the same conditions are not the same, but the differences are not
great as compared to the variations that occur in each racial group.
Investigations of the functioning of the same sense organs of various
races, such as Whites, Indians, Filipinos and people of New Guinea,
indicate that their sensitiveness is very much the same. The popular
belief in an unusual keenness of eyesight or hearing of primitive
people is not corroborated by careful observations. The impression is
due to the training of their power of observation which is directed to
phenomena with which we are not familiar. Differences have been found
in the basal metabolism of Mongols and Whites and there are probably
differences in the functioning of the digestive tract and of the skin
between Whites and Negroes. Much remains to {45} be done in the study
of physiological functions of different races before we can determine
the quantitative differences between them.
The variability of many functions is well known. We referred before
to the heart beat. Let us imagine an individual who lives in New York
and leads a sedentary life without bodily exercise. Transport this
person to the high plateaus of the Bolivian Andes where he has to do
physical work. He will find difficulties for a while, but, if he is
healthy, he will finally become adjusted to the new conditions. His
normal heart beat, however, will have changed. His lungs also will act
differently in the rarefied air. It is the same individual who in the
new environment will exhibit a quantitatively different functioning of
the body.
We pointed out before that environmental conditions cause in general
but slight modifications of anatomical form. Their effect upon most
functions of the body is intense, as is the case in lower organisms
which are in bodily form subject to important modifications brought
about by the environment. The functions of the organs are adjustable to
different requirements. Every organ has--to use Dr. Meltzer’s term--a
margin of safety. Within limits it can function normally according
to environmental requirements. Even a partly disabled organ can be
sufficient for the needs {46} of the body. Inadequacy develops only
when these limits are exceeded. There are certain conditions that
are most favorable, but the loss of adequacy is very slight when the
conditions change within the margins of safety.
In most cases of the kind here referred to the environmental influence
acts upon different individuals in the same direction. If we bring two
organically different individuals into the same environment they may,
therefore, become alike in their functional responses and we may gain
the impression of a functional likeness of distinct anatomical forms
that is due to environment, not to their internal structure. Only in
those cases in which the environment acts with different intensity or
perhaps even in different directions upon the organism may we expect
increased unlikeness under the same environmental conditions. When, for
instance, for one individual the margin of safety is so narrow that the
environmental conditions are excessive, for another one so wide that
adequate adjustment is possible, the former will become sick, while the
other will remain healthy.
What is true of the physiological functioning of the body is still
more true of mental reactions. A simple example may illustrate this.
When we are asked to react to a stimulus, for instance by tapping in
response to a signal given by a bell, we {47} can establish a certain
basal or minimum time interval between signal and tapping which is
found when we are rested and concentrate our attention upon the signal.
As soon as we are tired and when our attention is distracted the time
increases. We may even become so much absorbed in other matters that
the signal will go unnoticed. Environmental conditions determine the
reaction time. The basal time for two individuals may differ quite
considerably, still under varying environmental conditions they will
react in the same way. If the conditions of life compel the one to
concentrate his attention while the other has never been required to
do so, they may react in the same way, although structurally they
represent different types.
In more complex mental and social phenomena this adjustment of
different types to a common standard is of frequent occurrence. The
pronunciation of individuals in a small community is so uniform that
an expert ear can identify the home of a person by his articulation.
Anatomically the forms of the mouth, inner nose and larynx of all the
individuals participating in this pronunciation vary considerably.
The mouth may be large or small, the tongue thin or thick, the palate
arched or flat. There are differences in the pitch of the voice and in
timbre. Still the dialect will be the same for all. The articulation
does not depend to {48} any considerable extent upon the form of the
mouth, but upon its use.
In all our everyday habits imitation of habits of the society to which
we belong exerts its influence over the functioning of our minds and
bodies and a degree of uniformity of thought and action is brought
about among individuals who differ considerably in structure.
It would not be justifiable to claim that bodily form has no relation
whatever to physiological or mental functioning. I do not believe
that Watson is right when he claims that the whole mental activities
of man are due to his individual experiences and that what is called
character or ability is due to outer conditions, not to organic
structure. It seems to me that this goes counter to the observation
of mental activities in the animal world as well as among men. The
mental activities of a family of idiots will not, even under the most
favorable conditions, equal those of a highly intelligent family,
and what is true in this extreme case must be true also when the
differences are less pronounced. Although it is never possible to
eliminate environmental influences that bring about similarity or
dissimilarity, it seems unreasonable to assume that in the mental
domain organically determined sameness of all individuals should
exist while in all other traits we do find differences; but we must
admit that the organic {49} differences are liable to be overlaid and
overshadowed by environmental influences.
Under these conditions it is well-nigh impossible to determine
with certainty the hereditary traits in mental behavior. In a
well-integrated society we find people of most diverse descent who all
react so much in the same way that it is impossible to tell from their
reactions alone to what race they belong. Individual differences and
those belonging to family lines occur in such a society, but among
healthy individuals these are so slightly correlated to bodily form
that an identification of an individual on the basis of his functions
as belonging to a family or race of definite hereditary functional
qualities is also impossible.
In this case, even more than in that of anatomical form, the range of
variation of hereditary lines constituting a “race” is so wide that
the same types of lines may be found in different races. While so
far as anatomical form is concerned Negroes and Whites have racially
hereditary traits, this is not true of function. The mental life of
each of the individuals constituting these races is so varied that from
its expression alone an individual cannot be assigned to the one or
the other. It is true that in regard to a few races, like the Bushmen
of South Africa, we have no evidence in regard to this point, and
we may suspend judgment, although {50} I do not anticipate that any
fundamental differences will be found.
So far as our experience goes we may safely say that in any given
race the differences between family lines are much greater than the
differences between races. It may happen that members of one family
line, extreme in form and function, are quite different from those of a
family line of the opposite extreme, although both belong to the same
race; while it may be very difficult to find individuals or family
lines in one racial type that may not be duplicated in a neighboring
type.
The assumption of fundamental, hereditary mental characteristics of
races is often based on an analogy with the mental traits of races of
domesticated animals. Certainly the mentality of the poodle dog is
quite different from that of the bulldog, or that of a race horse from
that of a dray horse.
This analogy is not well founded, because the races of domesticated
animals are comparable to family lines, not to human races. They are
developed by carefully controlled inbreeding. Their family lines are
uniform, those of man diverse. They are parallel to the family lines
that occur in all human races, which, however, do not become stabilized
on account of the lack of rigid inbreeding. In this respect human races
must be compared {51} to wild animals, not to selected, domesticated
breeds.
All these considerations are apparently contradicted by the results of
so-called intelligence tests which are intended to determine innate
intellectuality. Actually these tests show considerable differences not
only between individuals but also between racial and social groups.
The test is an expression of mental function. Like other functions the
responses to mental tests show overlapping of individuals belonging
to different groups and ordinarily it is not possible to assign an
individual to his proper group according to his response.
The test itself shows only that a task set to a person can be
performed by him more or less satisfactorily. That the result is
solely or primarily a result of organically determined intelligence
is an assumption that has to be proved. Defective individuals cannot
perform certain acts required in the tests. Within narrower limits of
performance we must ask in how far the structure of the organism, in
how far outer, environmental conditions may determine the result of the
test. Since all functions are strongly influenced by environment it is
likely that here also environmental influences may prevail and obscure
the structurally determined part of the reaction.
Let us illustrate this by an example. One of the {52} simplest tests
consists in the task of fitting blocks of various forms into holes
of corresponding forms. There are primitive people who devote much
time to decorative work in which fitting of forms plays an important
part. It may be appliqué work, mosaic, or stencil work. Others have
no experience whatever in the use of forms. We have no observations
on these people, but it seems more than likely that those who are
accustomed to handling varied forms and to recognize them, will
respond to the test with much greater ease than those who have no such
experience.
Dr. Klineberg has investigated the reactions to simple tests of various
races living under very different conditions. He found that all
races investigated by him respond under city conditions quickly and
inaccurately, that the same races in remote country districts react
slowly and more accurately. The hurry and pressure for efficiency of
city life result in a different attitude that has nothing to do with
innate intelligence, but is an effect of a cultural condition.
An experiment made in Germany, but based on entirely different sets
of tests, has had a similar result. Children belonging to different
types of schools were tested. The social groups attending elementary
schools and higher schools of various types differ in their cultural
attitudes. It is unlikely that they belong by descent to different
{53} racial groups. On the contrary, the population as a whole is
uniform. The responses in various schools were quite different. There
is no particular reason why we should assume a difference in organic
structure between the groups and it seems more likely that we are
dealing with the effects of cultural differentiation.
In all tests based on language the effect of the linguistic experience
of the subject plays an important part. Our whole sense experience is
classified according to linguistic principles and our thought is deeply
influenced by the classification of our experience. Often the scope of
a concept expressed by a word determines the current of our thought
and the categories which the grammatical form of the language compels
us to express keep certain types of modality or connection before our
minds. When language compels me to differentiate sharply between elder
and younger brother, between father’s brother and mother’s brother,
directions of thought that our vaguer terms permit will be excluded.
When the terms for son and brother’s son are not distinguished the
flow of thought may run in currents unexpected to us who differentiate
clearly between these terms. When a language states clearly in
every case the forms of objects, as round, long or flat; or the
instrumentality with which an action is done, as with the hand, with a
knife, with a point; or the source of {54} knowledge of a statement, as
observed, known by evidence or by hearsay, these forms may establish
lines of association. Comparison of reactions of individuals that speak
fundamentally distinct languages may, therefore, express the influence
of language upon the current of thought, not any innate difference in
the form of thought.
All these considerations cause us to doubt whether it is possible
to differentiate between environmental and organic determination of
responses, as soon as the environment of two individuals is different.
It is exceedingly difficult to secure an identical environment even
in our own culture. Every home, every street, every family group and
school has its own character which is difficult to evaluate. In large
masses of individuals we may assume a somewhat equal environmental
setting for a group in similar economic and social position, and
it is justifiable to assume in this case that the variability of
environmental influence is much restricted and that organically
determined differences between individuals appear more clearly.
Just as soon as we compare different social groups the relative
uniformity of social background disappears and, if we are dealing with
populations of the same descent, there is a strong probability that
differences in the type of responses are primarily due to the effect of
environment {55} rather than to organic differences between the groups.
The responses to tests may be based on recognition of sensory
impressions, on motor experience, such as the results of complex
movements; or on the use of acquired knowledge. All of these contain
experience. A city boy who has been brought up by reading, familiar
with the conveniences of city life, accustomed to the rush of traffic
and the watchfulness demanded on the streets has a general setting
entirely different from that of a boy brought up on a lonely farm, who
has had no contact with the machinery of modern city life. His sense
experience, motor habits and the currents of his thoughts differ from
those of the city boy.
Certainly in none of the tests that have ever been applied is
individual experience eliminated and I doubt that it can be done.
We must remember how we acquire the manner of acting and thinking.
From our earliest days we imitate the behavior of our environment and
our behavior in later years is determined by what we learn as infants
and children. The responses to any stimulus depend upon these early
habits. Individually it may be influenced by organic, hereditary
conditions. In the large mass of a population these vary. In a
homogeneous social group the experience gained in childhood is fairly
uniform, {56} so that its influence will be more marked than that of
organic structure.
The dilemma of the investigator appears clearly in the results of
mental tests taken on Negroes of Louisiana and Chicago. During the
World War the enlisted men belonging to the two groups were tested and
showed quite distinct responses. There is no very great difference in
the pigmentation of the two groups. Both are largely mulattoes. The
Northern Negroes passed the tests much more successfully than those
from the South. Chicago Negroes are accustomed to city surroundings.
They work with Whites and are accustomed to a certain degree of
equality, owing to similarity of occupation and constant contact. All
these are lacking among the Louisiana rural Negroes. It is gratuitous
to claim that a more energetic and intelligent group of Negroes has
migrated to the city and that the weak and unintelligent stay behind,
and to disregard the effect of social environment. We know that the
environment is distinct and that human behavior is strikingly modified
by it. We do not know that selection plays an important part in the
migration of the Southern Negro to Northern cities. It is quite
arbitrary to ascribe the difference in mental behavior solely to the
latter, doubtful cause and to disregard the former entirely. Those who
claim that there is an {57} organic difference must prove it by showing
the differences between the two groups before their migration.
Even if it were true that selection accounts for the differences in
the responses to tests among these two groups, it would not have any
bearing upon the problem of racial characteristics, for we should
have here merely a selection of better endowed individuals or family
lines, all belonging to the same race, a condition similar to the often
quoted, but never proved, result of the emigration from New England
to the West. The question would still remain, whether there is any
difference in racial composition in the two groups. So far as we know
the amount of Negro and White blood in the two groups is about the same.
Other tests intended to investigate differences between the mental
reactions of Negroes, Mulattoes and Whites due to the racial
composition of the groups are not convincing, because due caution
has not been taken to insure an equal social background. The study
of mental achievement of a socially uniform group undertaken by Dr.
Herskovits does not show any relation between the intensity of negroid
features and mental attainment. Up to this time none of the mental
tests gives us any insight into significant racial differences that
might not be adequately explained by the effect of social experience.
Even Dr. Woodworth’s observation {58} on the Filipino pygmies are not
convincing, because the cultural background of the groups tested is
unknown.
A critical examination of all studies of this type in which differences
between racial groups in regard to mental reactions are demonstrated,
leaves us in doubt whether the determining factor is cultural
experience or racial descent. We must emphasize again that differences
between selected groups of the same descent, such as between poor
orphan children, often of defective parentage, and of normal children;
and those between unselected groups of individuals representing various
races are phenomena quite distinct in character. In the former case
the results of tests may express differences in family lines. Similar
peculiarities might be found, although with much greater difficulty,
when comparing small inbred communities, for inbred communities are
liable to differ in social behavior. For large racial groups acceptable
proof of marked mental differences due to organic, not social, causes
has never been given.
Students of ethnology have always been so much impressed by the
general similarity of fundamental traits of human culture that they
have never found it necessary to take into account the racial descent
of a people when discussing its culture. This is true of all schools of
modern ethnology. Edward B. Tylor and Herbert Spencer in their studies
of {59} the evolution of culture, Adolf Bastian in his insistence on
the sameness of the fundamental forms of thought among all races,
Friedrich Ratzel, who followed the historical dissemination of cultural
forms,--they all have carried on their work without any regard to race.
The general experience of ethnology indicates that whatever differences
there may be between the great races are insignificant when considered
in their effect upon cultural life.
It does not matter from which point of view we consider culture, its
forms are not dependent upon race. In economic life and in regard
to the extent of their inventions the Eskimos, the Bushmen and the
Australians may well be compared. The position of the Magdalenian race,
which lived at the end of the ice age, is quite similar to that of
the Eskimo. On the other hand, the complexities of inventions and of
economic life of the Negroes of the Sudan, of the ancient Pueblos, of
our early European ancestors who used stone tools, and of the early
Chinese are comparable.
In the study of material culture we are constantly compelled to
compare similar inventions used by people of the most diverse descent.
Devices for throwing spears from Australia and America; armor from the
Pacific Islands and America; games of Africa and Asia; blowguns of
Malaysia {60} and South America; decorative designs from almost every
continent; musical instruments from Asia, the Pacific islands and
America; head rests from Africa and Melanesia; the beginning of the
art of writing in America and in the Old World; the use of the zero in
America, Asia and Europe; the use of bronze, of methods of firemaking,
from all parts of the world cannot be studied on the basis of their
distribution by races, but only by their geographical and historical
distribution, or as independent achievements, without any reference to
the bodily forms of the races using these inventions.
Other aspects of cultural life are perhaps still more impressive,
because they characterize the general cultural life more deeply than
inventions: the use of standards of value in Africa, America, Asia,
Europe and on the islands of the Pacific Ocean; analogous types of
family organization, such as small families, or extended sibs with
maternal or paternal succession; totemic ideas; avoidance of close
relatives; the exclusion of women from sacred ceremonials; the
formation of age societies; all these are found in fundamentally
similar forms among all races. In their study we are compelled to
disregard the racial position of the people we study, for similarities
and dissimilarities have no relation whatever to racial types.
It does not matter how the similar traits in {61} diverse races may
have originated, by diffusion or independent origin. They convince us
of the independence of race and culture because their distribution does
not follow racial lines.
CHAPTER III {62}
THE INTERRELATION OF RACES
We have seen that from a purely biological point of view the concept
of race unity breaks down. The multitude of genealogical lines, the
diversity of individual and family types contained in each race is
so great that no race can be considered as a unit. Furthermore,
similarities between neighboring races and, in regard to function, even
between distant races are so great that individuals cannot be assigned
with certainty to one group or another.
Nevertheless, race consciousness exists and we have to investigate its
source. It is customary to speak of an instinctive race consciousness.
Even Romain Rolland says of it, “Ce vieux levain d’antipathie
instinctive, qui couve au fond des cœurs de tous les hommes du Nord
pour les hommes du Midi.”
The feeling between Whites and Negroes in our country is decidedly
of this character. There is an immediate feeling of contrast that
is expressed {63} in the popular conviction of the superiority of
the White race. Very generally the feeling extends even to cases in
which the Negro admixture is very slight and in which there is no
certainty of the racial position of the individual. Proof of this are
the numerous divorce suits based on alleged Negro descent. In this
case the popular belief in the possible reversion of the offspring to
a pure Negro type may be a determinant. This consideration does not
enter in law suits instituted to set aside adoption of children on
account of their racial descent; or in the difficulties experienced by
child-placing agencies which endeavor to find homes for children of
suspected Negro descent,--no matter how little this may be expressed in
their outer appearance.
It is necessary to make clear to ourselves what we mean when we speak
of instinctive race consciousness.
We have to inquire whether race consciousness and race antipathies are
truly instinctive or whether they are established by habits developed
in childhood.
The fundamental characteristic of race consciousness and race
antipathy is the feeling that we belong to a definite racial group.
The results which we have reached in regard to the lack of clarity of
the concept of race induces us to inquire whether these feelings are
universal and whether {64} other types of groups develop analogous
feelings of contrast.
Race consciousness differs considerably in intensity. In the United
States, taken as a whole, the feeling of aloofness between White and
Negro is strongest. On the Pacific coast it is locally almost equalled
by the feeling of the Whites against Asiatics. I have been told by
those familiar with conditions in Humboldt County, California, that the
White settlers will readily eat with Negroes, but not with Indians. In
general, feeling of aversion to the Indian is rather slight. There is
even a marked tendency of individuals with admixture of Indian blood to
be proud of their ancestry.
Race feeling between Whites, Negroes, and Indians in Brazil seems to
be quite different from what it is among ourselves. On the coast there
is a large Negro population. The admixture of Indian is also quite
marked. The discrimination between these three races is very much less
than it is among ourselves, and the social obstacles for race mixture
or for social advancement are not marked. Similar conditions prevail on
the island of Santo Domingo between Spaniards and Negroes. Perhaps it
would be too much to claim that in these cases race consciousness is
nonexistent; it is certainly much less pronounced than among ourselves.
{65}
If it is true that race antipathy among different groups of mankind
takes distinctive forms and expresses itself with varying intensity, we
may doubt whether we are dealing with an instinctive phenomenon.
It will be found advantageous to investigate similar phenomena in the
animal world. We know the peculiar antipathies between certain animals,
such as dog and cat, horse and camel. These are organically determined,
although they may be individually overcome. They might be considered
analogous to the feeling between races if we had the same instinctive
hostility or fear between individuals of different human races;
but this has never been observed. On the contrary, under favorable
conditions the reaction seems to be one of friendly curiosity.
Conditions analogous to those found in racial groups occur in animal
societies. Gregarious animals live either in open or in closed
societies. Open societies are those in which any outside individual may
join a herd. They are found among mammals and birds, but particularly
among fishes, insects, and other lower animals. A swarm of mosquitoes,
a shoal of fish keep together but do not exclude newcomers of the same
species, sometimes even of other species. Herds of ruminants are often
organized under leaders but may not exclude newcomers. The behavior
of animals {66} that occupy a definite area as their feeding ground
is quite different. They treat every newcomer as an enemy and while
he may succeed in gaining admission after a number of combats, the
first endeavor of the herd is to drive away or to kill the intruder.
Many herds of monkeys are said to behave in this way. Penguins on
their breeding places will drive away stray visitors, while admitting
their neighbors. The best known example is that of the Pariah dogs of
Oriental towns. The dogs of one street will not admit one from another
street and the stranger is killed by them if he does not beat a hasty
retreat. The most perfect forms of closed societies are found in the
insect states. Ants of the same hill recognize one another by the scent
of the hill and attack every strange ant. Even insects of another
species, if only they participate in the scent of the particular hill,
are welcomed. Sameness of species does not decide the attitude towards
the individual. Participation in the most characteristic trait of the
individual hill is the feature by which membership in the group is
determined.
The groups do not need to be related by descent. They may be thrown
together by accident. Nevertheless, according to the habits of the
species, they will form a closed society.
In primitive human society every tribe forms a {67} closed society. It
behaves like the Oriental Pariah dogs.
In the early days of mankind our earth was thinly settled. Small groups
of human beings were scattered here and there; the members of each
horde were one in speech, one in customs, one in superstitious beliefs.
In their habitat they roamed from place to place, following the game
that furnished their subsistence, or digging roots and picking the
fruits of trees and bushes to allay the pangs of hunger. They were
held together by the strong bands of habit. The gain of one member of
the horde was the gain of the whole group, the loss and harm done to
one was loss and harm to the whole community. No one had fundamental
interests at stake that were not also the interests of his fellows.
Beyond the limits of the hunting grounds lived other groups, different
in speech, different in customs, perhaps even different in appearance,
whose very existence was a source of danger. They preyed upon the
game, they threatened inroads upon the harvest of roots and fruits.
They acted in a different manner; their reasoning and feeling were
unintelligible; they had no part in the interests of the horde. Thus
they stood opposed to it as beings of another kind, with whom there
could be no community of interest. To harm them, if {68} possible to
annihilate them, was a self-evident act of self-preservation.
Thus the most primitive form of society presents to us the picture of
continuous strife. The hand of each member of one horde was raised
against each member of all other hordes. Always on the alert to protect
himself and his kindred, man considered it an act of high merit to kill
the stranger.
The tendency to form closed societies is not by any means confined to
primitive tribes. It exists to a marked extent in our own civilization.
Until quite recent times, and in many cases even now, the old nobility
formed a closed society. The Patricians and Plebeians, Greeks and
Barbarians, the gangs of our streets, Mohametans and Infidels,--and our
own modern nations are in this sense closed societies that cannot exist
without antagonisms.
The principles that hold societies together vary enormously, but common
to all of them is the feeling of antagonism against other parallel
groups.
The racial grouping differs in one respect from the societies here
enumerated. While the position of an individual as a member of one of
the socially determined groups is not evident, it is apparent when the
grouping is made according to bodily appearance. If the belief should
prevail, as it {69} once did, that all red-haired individuals have an
undesirable character, they would at once be socially segregated and
no red-haired person could escape from his class. The Negro who may at
once be recognized by his bodily build is automatically placed in his
class and not one of them can escape from the effect of being excluded
from a closed group.
When individuals are to be herded together in a closed group the
dominant group may proscribe for them a distinguishing symbol,--like
the garb of the Medieval Jews or the stripes of the convict,--so
that each individual who may otherwise have no distinguishing
characteristic, may at once be assigned to his group and treated
accordingly.
The assignment to a closed group may also be effected by a classifying
name, like the term Dago for Italians which is intended to evoke
the thought of all the supposed characteristics that are without
reflection ascribed to all the members of the nation. Perhaps one of
the most striking illustrations of this tendency in the present life
of the United States is the assignment of anyone with a Jewish name
to an undesirable group whose members are, according to the fancy of
the owner, not allowed to dwell in certain buildings, not admitted
in hotels or clubs and are in other ways discriminated against
by the unthinking, who can see {70} in the individual solely the
representative of a class.
We have seen that from a biological point of view there is no reason
for drawing a clean-cut line between races, because the lines of
descent in each are physiologically and psychologically diverse, and
because functionally similar lines occur in all races.
The formation of the racial groups in our midst must be understood on
a social basis. In a community comprising two distinct types which
are socially clearly separated, the social grouping is reënforced
by the outer appearance of the individuals and each is at once and
automatically assigned to his own group. In other communities,--as
among Mohametans or in Brazil,--where the social and racial groupings
do not coincide, the result is different. The socially coherent groups
are racially not uniform. Hence the assignment of an individual to a
racial group does not develop as easily, the less so the more equal the
groups in their social composition.
If an instinctive race antipathy existed it would find expression in
sexual aversion. The free intermingling of slave owners with their
female slaves and the resulting striking decrease in the number
of full-blood Negroes is ample proof of the absence of any sexual
antipathy. The rarity of the reverse intermixture, that of male Negroes
and {71} female Whites, can be fully understood on the basis of social
conditions. In view of the behavior of the male White and of the
forms of mixture in other societies it does not seem likely that it
is reducible to sexual antipathy. The white master sought his colored
mates who had little power to resist him. The colored slave was in an
entirely different position towards his mistress and to other white
women.
The intermingling of Indian and White throws an interesting light upon
this subject. Owing to other reasons the early intermingling between
the two races was also between White males and Indian females. It
was caused not by the relation of master and slave woman but by the
absence of white women. The general development has been such that
Mestizo women--that is, those of Indian-White descent--are liable
to marry Whites. Their descendants gradually pass out of the Indian
population unless economic privileges, such as the right to hold
valuable lands belonging to the Indians, serve as an attraction to the
Indian community. The men, on the other hand, are more liable to marry
Indian or Mestizo women and remain in the tribe. The male descendants
of Mestizo women who no longer belong to a segregated group marry
freely among the Whites, while the male descendants of Mestizo men are
ordinarily not in the same position. {72}
There is no doubt that the strangeness of a foreign racial type plays
an important rôle in these relations. The ideal of beauty of a person
who is growing up in an exclusively White society is different from
that of a Negro who lives in a Negro society and the sharper the
social division between the groups, the later in life intimate social
contacts occur, the greater also may be the separation created by the
differences of ideals of form.
Here again the question arises whether these influences would act in
the same way if the groups were socially not separated. We can find
an answer to this question solely by a consideration of conditions in
countries in which there is no pronounced race feeling. It would seem
that there the attractiveness of forms has a much wider range, and is
not determined by pigmentation and other racial traits alone. Aversion
is not expressed on racial lines but on the ground of the repulsiveness
of other features. Preferences and aversions differ individually.
Unfortunately these conditions cannot be proven by actual numerical
observations that would be convincing. All we can give are the results
of general observations. These are, however, so striking that their
validity seems well established.
Since the abolition of slavery the intermingling of Negroes and
Whites has taken a curious course. {73} Legitimate and illegitimate
mating between Whites and Negroes has undoubtedly decreased and we
find essentially marriages among Negroes and Mulattoes. Dr. Melville
J. Herskovits has collected statistics on this subject. He found that,
on the average, dark individuals will marry those of dark, though
slightly lighter complexion, light ones those of light, though slightly
darker complexion. This indicates that there is a decided preference in
the mating of those of similar color,--an expression of the transfer
of our own race feeling to the colored people who live among us and
participate in our culture. But, furthermore, the darker man marries
on the average a lighter woman. Since there is no difference in the
pigmentation of the two sexes this indicates a preference on the part
of the men,--another manifestation of the adoption of our valuations by
the Negroes.
The effect of this selective process, if it continues for many
generations, will be the passing of many of the lightest men out of the
Negro community. Either they die as bachelors or they are merged in
the general population. For the remainder it must inevitably lead to a
darkening of the whole colored population, for the daughters of each
generation, whose fathers are dark and whose mothers are light, will be
darker than their {74} mothers. When they again become mothers, their
children will be still darker, provided the same conditions continue.
Thus there will come to be a constantly increasing intensity of Negro
characteristics and a sharper contrast between the two principal races
of the country.
During the time of slavery the condition was the reverse. On account
of the numerous unions between White fathers and Negro mothers the new
generation was lighter than their mothers. A constant lightening of the
Negro population resulted and hence a lessening of the racial contrast
without any modification of the descendants of white females.
An evenly mixed population can result only if the number of matings
between males of one race and females of the other is equal to that of
matings in the opposite direction. Otherwise the racial type of the
group descended in the female line will be unstable.
When social divisions follow racial lines, as they do among ourselves,
the degree of difference between racial forms is an important element
in establishing racial groupings and in accentuating racial conflicts.
From this point of view the present tendency is most undesirable.
Under prevailing circumstances complete freedom of matrimonial union
between the two races {75} cannot be expected. The causes that operate
against the unions of colored men and white women are almost as potent
as in the days of slavery. Looking forward towards a lessening of
the intensity of race feeling an increase of unions of white men and
colored women would be desirable. The present policy of many of the
Southern States tends to accentuate the lack of homogeneity of our
nation.
I have tried to show in the preceding pages that the biological
arguments that have been brought forward against race crossing are not
convincing. Equally good reasons can be given in favor of crossings
of the best elements of various races, and for closely related groups
these arguments seem incontrovertible.
If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and
emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be represented.
The mere fact that a person is a healthy European, or a blond European
would not be proof that he would belong to this élite. Nobody has ever
given proof that the mixed descendants of such a select group would be
inferior.
If a selection of immigrants is to be made it should never be made
by a rough racial classification, but by a careful examination of the
individual and of his family history. {76}
No matter how weak the case for racial purity may be, we cannot hope
easily to overcome its appeal. The individual is always ready to
subordinate himself under the group to which he belongs. He expresses
his feeling of solidarity by an idealization of his group and by an
emotional desire for its perpetuation. As long as the social groups are
racial groups we shall also encounter the desire for racial purity.
When considerable racial differences are encountered in the same social
group, they are disregarded unless there are introduced artificial
ideals of bodily form that tend to establish new social divisions. This
is occurring in some social groups in Europe and America who idealize
the blond, blue-eyed type.
It follows that the “instinctive” race antipathy can be broken down, if
we succeed in creating among young children social groups that are not
divided according to the principle of race and which have principles
of cohesion that weld the group into a whole. It will not be easy to
establish such groups under the pressure of present popular feeling.
Nevertheless, cultural coöperation cannot be reached without it.
Those who fear miscegenation, which I, personally, do not consider
as in any way dangerous,--not for the White race or for the Negro, or
for {77} mankind--may console themselves with their belief in a race
consciousness, which would manifest itself in selective mating. Then
matters would remain as they are.
CHAPTER IV {78}
NATIONALISM
There are two kinds of nationalism, one of nations, the other of
nationalities. The two terms “nation” and “nationality” do not
coincide. A nation is in most cases a nationality that is unified in
political and economic organization; although there are also nations
that embrace several nationalities, like Czecho-Slovakia and Poland.
A nationality is a group of people alike in speech, culture and in
most cases representing no fundamental racial contrasts. A nationality
may be divided and constitute several nations, like the Spaniards of
Central America, or the Italians before the unification of Italy; or
they may be included in several nations, like the Germans in Germany,
Austria, France, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia and Italy.
There is, therefore, a nationalism of nations which feel and act as
a unit regardless of the component nationalities; and a nationalism
of nationalities which strive for unity in political and economic
organization.
There is a curious vagueness in the use of the {79} terms “race”
and “nation.” In the terminology of the U. S. Immigration Commission
English, French, German, and Russian are designated as races. In common
parlance also national groups are identified with racial strains.
The blonde represent the Teutons; the short and dark, Spaniards or
Italians; the heavy built brunette, the Slavs.
On account of the peculiar position of the blond type, it has been
preëminently identified with the so-called Aryan race. As is well
known, most of the languages of Europe are derived from one ancient
form of speech,--the parental Aryan language. Slavic, Teutonic, and
Romance languages are the most important modern divisions of this
group in Europe, to which Greek, Celtic, Lithuanian, and Albanian also
belong. Among European languages, only Finnish and its relatives on the
Baltic; Magyar, Turkish, and Basque, do not belong to this extended
group. Aryan languages are spoken by people of the most diverse racial
types; nevertheless there are scientists who try to identify the blond
North European with the ancient, pure Aryan, and who claim for the race
preëminent hereditary gifts, because the people who at present and in
our concept are the leaders of the world speak Aryan languages.
Scientific proof of these contentions cannot be given. They are rather
fancies of North European dreamers, based on the complaisant love of
{80} the achievements of the blondes. No one has ever proved that all
the Aryans of the earliest times were blondes, or that people speaking
other languages may not have been blonde, too; and nobody would be
able to show that the great achievements of mankind were due to blond
thinkers. On the contrary, the people to whom we are indebted for the
basic advance of civilization belong to the dark-complexioned human
types of the Orient, and not to our blond ancestors.
How deep and emotional a hold this idea has in the minds of some
scientists appears when some investigators try to prove that all the
achievements of Greece and Italy are due to the blond immigrants who
reached these countries before the beginning of the historic era, or
that Christ cannot have been a Jew by descent, but must have been an
Aryan. The presence of a blond element in these countries does not
prove that the cultural achievements were due to it. We might say with
equal justice that the rise of North European civilization did not
begin until South and Central European blood became intermingled with
that of the North European.
The idea of the great blond Aryan, the leader of mankind, is the
result of self-admiration that emotional thinkers have tried to sustain
by imaginative reasoning. It has no foundation in observed fact. {81}
This, however, does not decrease the emotional value of the fiction
that has taken hold of the mind wherever the Teutonic, German, or
Anglo-Saxon type,--however it may be called,--prevails, or where the
Italian “race” glories in its past greatness and virtue.
All over Europe people believe in their racial purity and in the
possession of qualities that make them superior to all others; while
it is assumed that the mixed, “mongrel” races are doomed to permanent
inferiority; and where there is undeniable mixture the ideal type is
admonished to see to it that it is not swamped by so-called inferior
types and that it preserve its purity.
This notion prevails among ourselves with equal force, for we are
haunted by fear of the ominous influx of “inferior” races from eastern
Europe, of the mongrelization of the American people by intermixture
between the Northwest European and other European types.
Inferior by heredity? No. Socially different? Yes, on account of the
environment in which they have lived, and therefore different from
ourselves, and not easily subject to change provided they are allowed
to cluster together indefinitely.
Scientific investigation does not countenance the assumption that in
any one part of Europe a people of pure descent or of a pure racial
type is found, {82} and careful inquiry has failed completely to reveal
any inferiority of mixed European types.
In our thoughts the local racial types of Europe have been identified
with modern nations, and thus the supposed hereditary characteristics
of the races have been confused with national characteristics. An
identification of racial type, of language, and of nationality has been
made, that has gained an exceedingly strong hold on our imagination.
In vain sober scientific thought has remonstrated against this
identification; the idea is too firmly rooted. Even if it is true that
the blond type is found at present preëminently among Teutonic people,
it is not confined to them alone. Among the Finns, Poles, French, North
Italians, not to speak of the North African Berbers and the Kurds of
western Asia, there are individuals of this type. The heavy-set, darker
East European type is common to many of the Slavic peoples of eastern
Europe, to the Germans of Austria and southern Germany, to the North
Italians, and to the French of the Alps and of central France. The
Mediterranean type is spread widely over Spain, Italy, Greece, and the
coast of Asia Minor, without regard to national boundaries. Other local
types may be readily distinguished, if we take into consideration other
differences in form. These are also confined to definite territories.
In western Europe, types are on the whole distributed {83} in strata
that follow one another from north to south,--in the north the blond,
in the center a darker, short-headed type, in the south the slightly
built Mediterranean.
National boundaries in central Europe, on the other hand, run north and
south: and so we find many individuals in northern France, Belgium,
Holland, Germany and northwestern Russia similar in type and descent;
many of the central French, South Germans, Swiss, North Italians,
Austrians, Servians and central Russians, belonging to similar
varieties of man; and also persons in southern France, closely related
to the types of the eastern and western Mediterranean area.
The relation of German and Slav is instructive. During the period of
Teutonic migrations, in the first few centuries of our era, the Slavs
settled in the region from which Teutonic tribes had moved away. They
occupied the whole of what is now eastern Germany, but the population
seems to have been sparse. In the Middle Ages, with the growth of the
German Empire, a slow backward movement set in. Germans settled as
colonists in Slavic territory, and by degrees German speech prevailed
over the Slavic and a population of mixed descent developed. In Germany
survivals of the gradual process may be found in a remote locality
where Slavic speech still persists.
As by contact with the more advanced Germans {84} the cultural and
economic conditions of the Slavs improved and their numbers and their
wealth increased, their resistance to Germanization became greater
and greater,--earliest among the Czechs and Poles, later in the other
Slavic groups. Later on, through a similar process, a mixed population
of Poles, Lithuanians and Russians originated farther to the east.
This process has led to the present distribution of languages, which
expresses a fossilization of German colonization in the east, and
illustrates in a most striking way the penetration of peoples. Poland
and part of Russia, Slavonic and Magyar territories are interspersed
with small German settlements, which are the more sparse and scattered
the farther east they are located, the more continuous the nearer they
lie to Germany,--at least until the recent systematic persecution of
Germans in Poland.
With the increased economic and cultural strength of the Slav, the
German lost his ability to impose his mode of life upon him, and with
it his power to assimilate the numerically stronger people in its own
home. But by blood all these people, no matter what their speech, are
the same.
A process analogous to the medieval Germanization of Slavic tribes may
at present be observed in Mexico, where Indian speech and culture give
way to the Spanish. Each town forms a center {85} of Spanish speech
which, owing to the economic and cultural strength of the town, spreads
over the surrounding country.
The French Huguenots who escaped from religious persecution and settled
in Germany have been completely assimilated, although the French
school in which their children were educated is still in existence
as a French gymnasium. Alsatians who migrated to Paris have become
French in language and spirit; Germans have been absorbed by Russians;
the Swedish nobility counts in their number many descendants of the
nobility of foreign countries. An analysis of the descent of the
population of every part of Europe proves that intermingling has been
going on for long periods.
The movements of tribes in prehistoric times and during antiquity also
illustrate the ways in which different strains became mixed: the Doric
migration into Greece, the movements of the Kelts into Spain, Italy
and eastward as far as Asia Minor; the Teutonic migrations which swept
through Europe from the Black Sea into Italy, France, Spain and on
into Africa; the invasion of the Balkan Peninsula by Slavs, and their
extension over eastern Russia and into Siberia; Phœnician, Greek and
Roman colonization; the roving Normans; the expansion of the Arabs; the
Crusades, are a few of the important events that have contributed {86}
to the intermingling of the European population.
In every single nationality of Europe the various elements of
the continental population are represented. Nationality has only
the slightest relation to racial descent. The so-called “racial”
antipathies are feelings that have grown up on another basis and have
been given a fictitious racial interpretation.
This claim may seem to be contradicted by the readiness with which
we recognize individuals, according to their outer appearance, as
members of certain nationalities. These identifications, which are
far from certain, are based only in part on the essential elements
of the form of the body, such as hair and eye color, face form and
stature. We are led much more by the mannerisms of wearing hair and
beard, and by the characteristic expressions and motions of the body,
which are determined not so much by hereditary causes as by habit. The
latter are more impressive than the former; and among the nations of
Europe no fundamental traits of the body occur that belong to one to
the exclusion of the others. It is a common experience that Americans
of European descent, French, Italian or German, are recognized as
Americans, notwithstanding their pure descent and solely on account of
their appearance and habits.
It is clear that the term _race_, as commonly used, {87} is only a
disguise of _nationality_ which has little to do with racial descent;
and that the interracial relations are based on national enmities or
friendships, not on racial antipathies or sympathies.
If community of racial descent is not the basis of nationality, is it
community of language?
When we glance at the national aspirations that have characterized a
large part of the nineteenth century, community of language might seem
to be the background of national life. It touches the most sympathetic
chords in our hearts. Italians worked for the overthrow of the small
local and great foreign interests that were opposed to the national
unity of all Italian-speaking people. German patriots strove and will
strive for the federation of the German-speaking people in one empire.
The struggles in the Balkans are largely due to a desire for national
independence according to the limits of speech. The Poles have for more
than a century longed for a reëstablishment of their state which is to
embrace all those of Polish tongue.
It is, however, not very long that the bonds of language have been
felt so intensely. Language establishes a basis of mutual understanding
on which a community of interests may arise. The pleasure of hearing
one’s own tongue spoken in a foreign country creates at once between
its speakers a feeling of comradeship that is quite real, {88} and
strong in proportion to the smallness of the number of speakers of the
idiom. The necessity of easy communication between the members of one
nation has also led generally to the endeavor to make one language
the ruling language throughout the whole state. When there is a great
difference of languages, as in the former Austria-Hungary, the national
unity is liable to be feeble.
Unity of language is more an idealized concept than a real bond.
Notwithstanding unity of language severe internal conflicts may arise
that overshadow the feeling for national unity. Civil wars that may
lead to the breaking up of nations may arise and the feeling for
national unity may be severely restricted by division into classes, as
in medieval Europe; or in the Greek cities; or by divisions on racial
lines, as between Negroes and Whites in the United States. Politically
Negroes and Whites are members of the same nation, and a similar kind
of nationalism pervades both groups. Still, among many citizens of our
country the claim that Negroes and Whites have the same nationality
might provoke lively protests.
Unity of language is more an ideal than a real bond; not only that
divergence of dialects makes communication difficult, but community of
thought among the members of different social classes is also so slight
that no communication of deeper thought and feeling is possible. The
Provençale {89} and the North French, the Bavarian and the Westphalian
peasant, the Sicilian and the Florentine are hopelessly divided, owing
to differences of language. Unity is found in the educated groups that
share the same language and the same emotional reactions. In many ways
the educated Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians,
Spaniards, and Russians have more in common than each has with the
uneducated classes of his own nation.
Unity of language does not comprise the whole of nationalism, for no
less ardent is the patriotism of trilingual Switzerland. Even here in
America we see that the bond of tongue is not the only one. Else we
should feel that there is no reason for a division between Canada and
the United States, and that the political ties between western Canada
and French Quebec must be artificial.
Neither the bonds of blood nor those of language alone make a nation.
It is rather the community of emotional life that rises from our
everyday habits, from the forms of thoughts, feelings, and actions,
which constitute the medium in which every individual can unfold freely
his activities.
An interesting phase of national life is developing in Russia.
While the policy of the Czarist government consisted in the forcible
suppression of all non-Russian speech, even of local dialects, the
Soviet Republic has adopted the policy of protecting {90} the right of
every group to their own language, trusting in the bond of a great,
radical economic experiment to unite all the people.
Language and nation are so often identified, because we feel that among
a people that uses the same language every one can find the widest
field for unrestricted activity.
Added to this is the consciousness that political unity gives increased
power which makes it possible to emphasize the interests of the citizen
as opposed to those of the foreigner.
These feelings combine to create the feeling for the existence of a
national unity. Nevertheless it is perfectly clear that there is no
individual, nor any group of individuals, that represents the national
ideal. It is rather an abstraction based on the current forms of
thought, feeling, and action,--an abstraction of high emotional value,
enhanced by the consciousness of political power.
It is well to bear in mind that nationality is not necessarily based
on unity of speech; for when the same type of cultural ideals prevails
in a polyglottal area, in which each group is too weak to give to the
individual a free field of action, this can be attained only by the
development of a union of the independent groups.
For the full development of his faculties, the individual needs
the widest possible field in which to live and act according to his
modes of thought {91} and inner feeling. Since, in most cases, the
opportunity is given among a group that possesses unity of speech, we
feel full sympathy with the intense desire to throw down the artificial
barriers of small political units. This process has characterized the
development of modern nations.
When, however, these limits are overstepped, and a fictitious racial
or alleged national unit is set up that has no existence in actual
conditions, the free unfolding of the mind, for which we are striving,
is liable to become an excuse for ambitious lust for power. When
France dreamed of a union of all Latin people in a Pan-Latin union
under her leadership, the legitimate limits of natural development
were lost sight of for the sake of national ambition. When Russia
promoted a Pan-Slavistic propaganda among the diverse peoples, solely
on the ground that the Slavs are linguistically related, and assumed a
fictitious common culture and racial origin, the actual usefulness of
the nationalistic idea was lost sight of, and it was made the cover for
the desire of imperialistic expansion.
There is no doubt that the idea of nationality has been a creative
force, making possible the fuller development of powers by widening
the field of individual activity, and by setting definite ideals to
large coöperating masses; but we feel with Fichte and Mazzini that the
political power of a nation {92} is important only when the national
unit is the carrier of ideals that are of value to mankind.
Together with the positive, creative side of nationalism there has
developed everywhere an aggressive intolerance of foreign forms of
thought that can be satisfied only by the strongest emphasis laid upon
the value and interest of one national unit against all others.
On a larger scale the conditions are repeated now that less than a
century ago prevented the ready formation of modern nations. The
narrow-minded local interests of cities and other small political
units resisted unification or federation on account of the supposed
conflicts between their interests and ideals and those of other
units of comparable size. Governmental organization strengthened
the tendency to isolation, and the unavoidable, ever-present desire
of self-preservation of the existing order stood in the way of
amalgamation. It was only after long years of agitation and of bloody
struggle that the larger idea prevailed.
Those of us who recognize in the realization of national ideals a
definite advance that has benefited mankind cannot fail to see that the
task before us at the present time is a repetition of the process of
nationalization on a larger scale; not with a view to leveling down all
local differences, {93} but with the avowed purpose of making them all
subserve the same end.
The federation of nations is the next necessary step in the evolution
of mankind.
It is the expansion of the fundamental idea underlying the organization
of the United States of Switzerland, and of Germany. The weakness of
the League of Nations and of the modern peace movements lies in this,
that they are not sufficiently clear and radical in their demands, for
their logical aim cannot be arbitration of disagreement, or formal
outlawing of war. It must be the recognition of common aims of all the
nations.
Such federation of nations is not an Utopian idea, any more than
nationalism was a century ago. In fact, the whole development of
mankind shows that this condition is destined to come.
Fundamentally, the nation must be considered a closed society like
those previously discussed. The differentiation between citizen and
alien is not so intense as in the closed primitive horde, but it exists.
It would be instructive to follow in detail the development of modern
nations from tribal units that considered every alien an enemy who must
be slain, but we can only imagine the course of the gradual changes
that have taken place.
Human inventions improved. The herd of hunters and food-gatherers
learned the art of better {94} providing for their needs. They
stored up food and thus provided for the future. With the greater
regularity of the food supply and a decreased frequency of periods of
starvation the number of members of the community increased. Weaker
hordes, which still followed the older methods of hunting and food
gathering, were exterminated or, profiting by the experience of their
neighbors, acquired new arts and also increased in numbers. Thus the
groups that felt a solidarity among themselves became larger and by
the extermination of small, isolated hordes, that remained in more
primitive conditions, the total number of groups that stood opposed to
one another became gradually less.
It is impossible to trace with any degree of certainty the steps
by which the homogeneous groups became diversified and lost their
unity, or by which the opposing groups came into closer contact. We
may imagine that the widows and daughters of the slain, who became a
welcome prey of the victors, established in time kindlier relations
between their new masters and their kin; we may imagine that the
economic advantages of peacefully acquiring the coveted property
of neighbors rather than taking it by main force added their share
to establishing kindlier relations; we may attribute an important
influence to the weakening of old bonds of unity due to the gradual
dispersion {95} of the increasing number of members of the community.
No matter how the next steps in political development happened, we see
that, with increasing economic complexity, the hostility between the
groups becomes less. If it was right before to slay every one outside
of the small horde, we find now tribes that have a limited community
of interests, that under normal conditions live at peace, although
enmities may spring up at slight provocation. The group that lives
normally at peace has much increased in size, and, while the feeling of
solidarity may have decreased, its scope has become immensely wider.
A few examples of these conditions among the primitive members of
mankind will illustrate the course of events. The Bushmen of South
Africa are a people that is being exterminated, because everybody’s
hand is raised against them, and theirs against everybody. Between the
people of more advanced type of culture that surround them their small
bands are being annihilated. They feel themselves a group different
from the rest of the world, and for them there is no place in the life
of their neighbors. So a bitter war has been waged against them for
centuries and is on the point of ending with their extinction. Similar
conditions prevail in parts of South America where the hunting Indian
is outlawed like the wild South African. {96}
Not so in more advanced types of society. Notwithstanding the cruel
wars between the natives of our northern continent, there had been
laid the germs of larger political units among which peace normally
reigned. The fierce Iroquois created a desert around themselves, but in
their midst developed a large industrious community. The Zulu of South
Africa, the terror of the country, formed a unit infinitely larger than
any of those that existed before in that region.
This process of enlargement of political units and the reduction of
the number of those that were naturally at war with one another began
in the earliest times, and has continued without interruption, almost
always in the same direction. Even though hostilities have broken out
frequently between parts of what had come to be a large political unit,
the tendency for unification has in the long run been more powerful
than that of disintegration. We see the powers at work in antiquity,
when the urban states of Greece and of Italy were gradually welded into
larger wholes; we see it again at work after the breaking up of ancient
society in the development of new states from the fragments of the old
ones; and later on in the disappearance of the small feudal states.
In the nations of our days in which law rules supreme we find the
greatest numbers of people united in political units that the world has
seen. {97} In these war is excluded, because all members are subject
to the same law, and excessive strains in the community, that lead to
internal bloodshed, have decreased in frequency, although perhaps not
in violence, as long as the whole masses of the people in a nation
enjoy somewhat equal advantages.
From this point of view the breaking up of the old empire of
Austria-Hungary must be regretted. Notwithstanding the stupid
resistance of the governing class to the development of a confederation
rather than of a centralized empire, the force of circumstances
was operating in this direction. Hungary had attained a status of
independence and the recognition of the rights of the South-Slavs was
coming. How much better would the peacemakers have served humanity
if they had created a confederacy of language groups of equal rights
rather than a number of rival nations each of which is bent only upon
the attainment of its own selfish ends!
Thus the history of mankind shows us the spectacle of the grouping of
man in units of ever-increasing size that live together in peace, and
that are ready to go to war only with other groups outside of their own
limits. Notwithstanding all temporary revolutions and the shattering
of larger units for the time being, the progress in the direction of
unification has been so regular and so {98} marked that we must needs
conclude that the tendencies which have swayed this development in the
past will govern our history in the future. The concept of thoroughly
integrated nations of the size to which we are now accustomed would
have been just as inconceivable in earlier times of the history of
mankind as appears now the concept of unity of interests of all the
peoples of the world, or at least of all those who share the same
type of civilization and are subject to the same economic conditions.
The historical development shows, however, that such a feeling of
opposition of one group towards another is solely an expression
of existing conditions, and does not by any means indicate their
permanence.
The forces that have kept political units apart are manifold, but none
of them has resisted the attacks of changing culture. In modern times
the abhorrence of members of a strange horde which sprang from the idea
that they are specifically different is on the point of vanishing. We
still find it in the so-called race instincts of the Whites, as opposed
to the Negro and Asiatic, and in the anti-Semitic movement, but in most
of these cases rather as an element of internal strife than as one that
leads to war. It is still active in the wars of extermination that are
waged against primitive tribes, but these are nearly at an end, owing
to the approaching extinction of the weakest tribes. {99}
In course of time differences in customs and beliefs, differences in
form of government and social structure, devotion to feudal lords or
ruling dynasties, opposing economic interests, diversity of language,
have been causes that separated distinct communities and impelled them
to take hostile attitudes towards one another.
Thus it appears that it is not any rational cause that forms opposing
groups, but solely the emotional appeal of an idea that holds together
the members of each group and exalts their feeling of solidarity and
greatness to such an extent that compromises with other groups become
impossible. In this mental attitude we may readily recognize the
survival of the feeling of specific differences between the hordes,
transferred in part from the feeling of physical differences to that of
mental differences. The modern enthusiasm for race superiority must be
understood in this light. It is the old feeling of specific differences
between social groups in a new guise.
Progress has been slow and halting in the direction of expanding the
political units from hordes to tribes, from tribes to small states,
confederations, and nations. The concept of the foreigner as a
specifically distinct being has been so modified that we are beginning
to see in him a member of mankind.
Enlargement of circles of association, and {100} equalization of
rights of distinct local communities have been so consistently the
_general_ tendency of human development that we may look forward
confidently to their consummation.
It is obvious that the standards of ethical conduct must be quite
distinct between those who have grasped this ideal and those who still
believe in the preservation of the isolated nationality in opposition
to all others.
Once we recognize this truth we are brought clearly face to face
with those forces that will ultimately abolish warfare as well as
legislative conflicts between nations; that will put an end not only to
the wholesale slaughter of those representing distinct ideals, but also
prevent the passage of laws that favor the members of one nation at the
expense of all other members of mankind.
In order to form a fair judgment of the motives of action of the
leaders of nations at the present time we should bear in mind that in
all countries the standards of national ethics, as cultivated by means
of national education, are opposed to this wider view. Devotion to the
nation is taught as the paramount duty and is instilled into the minds
of the young in such a form that with it grows up and is perpetuated
the feeling of rivalry and of hostility against all other nations.
Conditions in modern states are intelligible only when we remember
that by education patriotism is {101} surrounded by a halo of sanctity
and that national self-preservation is considered the first duty.
Often the demands of national and international duty are hopelessly at
variance.
The interests of mankind are, therefore, ill served if we try to
instill into the minds of the young a passionate desire for national
power; if we teach the preponderance of national interest over human
interest, aggressive nationalism rather than national idealism,
expansion rather than inner development, admiration of warlike, heroic
deeds rather than of the object for which they are performed.
CHAPTER V {102}
EUGENICS
The possibility of raising the standards of human physique and
mentality by judicious means has been preached for years by the
apostles of eugenics, and has taken hold of the public mind to such an
extent that eugenic measures have found a place on the statute books
of a number of states, and that the public conscience disapproves of
marriages that are thought bound to produce unhealthy offspring.
The thought that it may be possible by these means to eliminate
suffering and to strive for higher ideals is a beautiful one, and makes
a strong appeal to those who have at heart the advance of humanity.
Our experiences in stock and plant breeding have shown that it is
feasible, by appropriate selection, to change a breed in almost any
direction that we may choose: in size, form, color. Even physiological
functions may be modified. Fertility may be increased, speed of
movement improved, the sensitiveness of sense organs modified, and
mental traits may be turned in special directions. {103} It is,
therefore, more than probable that similar results might be obtained in
man by careful mating of appropriately selected individuals,--provided
that man allowed himself to be selected in the same manner as we
select animals. We have also the right to assume that, by preventing
the propagation of mentally or physically inferior strains, the gross
average standing of a population may be raised.
Although these methods sound attractive, there are serious
limitations to their applicability. Eugenic selection can affect only
hereditary features. If an individual possesses a desirable quality
the development of which is wholly due to environmental causes, and
that will not be repeated in the descendants, its selection will
have no influence upon the following generations. It is, therefore,
of fundamental importance to know what is hereditary and what not.
Features, and color of eyes, hair and skin, are more or less rigidly
hereditary; in other words, in these respects children resemble
organically their parents, no matter in what environment they may
have been brought up. In other cases, however, the determining
influence of heredity is not so clear. We know that stature depends
upon hereditary causes, but that it is also greatly influenced by
environmental conditions prevailing during the period of growth.
Rapidity of development is no less influenced by these two causes, and
in general the more subject an anatomical {104} or physiological trait
to the influence of environment the less definitely can we speak of a
controlling influence of heredity, and the less are we justified in
claiming that nature, not nurture, is the deciding element.
It would seem, therefore, that the first duty of the eugenist should be
to determine empirically and without bias what features are hereditary
and what not.
Unfortunately this has not been the method pursued; but the battle cry
of the eugenists, “Nature not nurture,” has been raised to the rank of
a dogma, and the environmental conditions that make and unmake man,
physically and mentally, have been relegated to the background.
It is easy to see that in many cases environmental causes may convey
the erroneous impression of hereditary phenomena. Poor people develop
slowly and remain short of stature as compared to wealthy people. We
find, therefore, in a poor area, apparently a low hereditary stature,
that, however, would change if the economic life of the people were
changed. We find proportions of the body determined by occupations, and
apparently transmitted from father to son, provided both father and son
follow the same occupation. The more far-reaching the environmental
influences are that act upon successive generations the more readily
will a false impression of heredity be given. {105}
Here we reach a parting of the ways of the biological eugenist and
the student of human society. Most modern biologists are so entirely
dominated by the notion that function depends upon form that they seek
for an anatomical basis for all differences of function. The stress
laid upon the relation between anatomical form or constitution and
pathological conditions of the most varied character are an expression
of this tendency. Whenever the anatomical and pathological conditions
are actually physiologically interdependent such relations are found.
In other cases, as for instance, in the relation of anatomical form and
mental disturbances the relation may be quite remote. This is still
more the case when a relation between social phenomena and bodily
form is sought. Many biologists are inclined to assume that higher
civilization is due to a higher type; that better social health depends
solely upon a better hereditary stock; that national characteristics
are determined by the bodily forms represented in the nation.
The anthropologist is convinced that many different anatomical forms
can be adapted to the same social functions; and he ascribes greater
weight to these and believes that in many cases differences of form
may be due to adaptations to different functions. He believes that
different types of man may reach the same civilization, that better
health {106} may be produced by better bringing up of any of the
existing types of man.
The anatomical differences to which the biologist reduces social
phenomena are hereditary; the environmental causes which the
anthropologist sees reflected in human form are individually acquired,
and not transmitted by heredity.
In view of what has been said before it will suffice to point out a
very few examples.
Sameness of language is acquired under the same linguistic environment
by members of the most diverse human types; the same kinds of foods are
selected from among the products of nature by people belonging to the
same cultural area; similarity of movements is required in industrial
pursuits; the habits of sedentary or nomadic life do not depend upon
race but upon occupation. All of these are distributed without any
reference to physical type, and give ample evidence of the lack of
relation between social habits and racial position.
The serious demand must be made that eugenists cease to look at the
forms, functions, and activities of man from the dogmatic point of
view according to which each feature is assumed to be hereditary, but
that they begin to examine them from a more critical point of view,
requiring that in each and every case the hereditary character of a
trait must be established before it can be assumed to exist. {107}
The question at issue is well illustrated by the extended statistics
of cacogenics, of the histories of defective families. Setting aside
for a moment cases of hereditary pathological conditions, we find that
alcoholism and criminality are particularly ascribed to hereditary
causes. When we study the family histories in question, we can see
often, that, if the individuals had been protected by favorable home
surroundings and by possession of adequate means of support against
the abuse of alcohol or other drugs as well as against criminality,
many of them would have been no more likely to fall victims to their
alleged hereditary tendencies, than many a weakling who is brought up
under favorable circumstances. If they had resisted the temptations of
their environment they would have been entitled to be classed as moral
heroes. The scales applied to the criminal family and to the well-to-do
are clearly quite distinct; and, so far as heredity is concerned,
not much more follows from the collected data of social deficiences
than would follow from the fact that in an agricultural community the
occupation of farmers descends from father to son.
Whether or not constitutional debility based on hereditary causes
may also be proved in these cases is a question by itself that
deserves attention. It remains to be proved in how far it exists,
and furthermore it cannot be assumed without proof {108} that the
elimination of the descendants of delinquents would free us of all
those who possess equal constitutional debility. Of these matters more
anon.
It is an observed fact that the most diverse types of man may adapt
themselves to the same forms of life and, unless the contrary can
be proved, we must assume that all complex activities are socially
determined, not hereditary; that a change in social conditions will
change the whole character of social activities without influencing in
the least the hereditary characteristics of the group of individuals
concerned. Therefore, when the attempt is made to prove that defects
or points of excellence are hereditary, it is essential that all
possibility of a purely environmentally or socially determined
repetition of ancestral traits be excluded.
If this rigidity of proof is insisted on it will appear that many of
the data on which the theory of eugenics is based are unsatisfactory,
and that much greater care must be exerted than finds favor with the
enthusiastic adherents of eugenic theories.
All this does not contradict the hereditary transmission of individual
physical and mental characteristics, or the possibility of segregating,
by proper selection from among the large series of varying individual
forms that occur among all types of people, strains that have admirable
{109} qualities, and of suppressing others that are not so favored.
It is claimed that the practical application has become a necessity
because among all civilized nations there is a decided tendency to
general degeneration. I do not believe that this assertion has been
adequately proved. In modern society the conditions of life have become
markedly varied as compared with those of former periods. While some
groups live under most favorable conditions, that require active use
of body and mind; others live in abject poverty, and their activities
have more than ever before been degraded to those of machines. At
the same time, human activities are much more varied than formerly.
It is, therefore, quite intelligible that the functional activities
of each nation must show an increased degree of differentiation, a
higher degree of variability. The general average of the mental and
physical types of the people may remain the same, still there will
be a larger number now than formerly who fall below a certain given
low standard, while there will also be more who exceed a given high
standard. The number of defectives can be counted by statistics of poor
relief, delinquency and insanity, but there is no way of determining
the increase of those individuals who are raised above the norm of a
higher standard. Therefore they escape our notice. It may very well
be that the number of {110} defectives increases, without, however,
influencing the value of a population as a whole, because it is merely
an expression of an increased degree of variability.
Furthermore, arbitrarily selected, absolute standards do not retain
their significance. Even if no change in the absolute standard should
be made, the degree of physical and mental energy required under modern
conditions to keep one’s self above a certain minimum of achievement is
higher than formerly. This is due to the greater complexity of our life
and to the increasing number of competing individuals. When the general
level of achievement is raised, greater capacity is required to attain
a high degree of prominence than was needed in earlier periods of our
history. A mentally defective person may be able to hold his own in a
simple farming community and unable to do so in city life. The claim
that we have to contend against national degeneracy must, therefore, be
better substantiated than it is now.
This problem is further complicated by the advances of public hygiene,
which have lowered infant mortality, and have changed the composition
of the population, in so far as many who would have succumbed to
deleterious conditions in early years enter into the adult population
and have an influence upon the general distribution of vitality. {111}
There is still another important aspect of eugenics that should make
us pause before we accept this new ambitious theory as a panacea for
human ills. The radical eugenist treats the problem of procreation from
a purely rationalistic point of view, and assumes that the ideal of
human development lies in the complete rationalization of human life.
As a matter of fact, the conclusions to be drawn from the study of the
customs and habits of mankind show that such an ideal is unattainable,
and more particularly that the emotions clustering about procreation
belong to those that are most deeply seated, and that are ineradicable.
Here again the anthropologist and the biologist are at odds. The
natural sciences do not recognize in their scheme a valuation of the
phenomena of nature, nor do they count emotions as moving forces; they
endeavor to reduce all happenings to the actions of physical causes.
Reason alone reigns in their domain. Therefore the scientist likes to
look at mental life from the same rational standpoint, and sees as the
goal of human development an era of reason, as opposed to the former
periods of unhealthy fantastic emotion.
The anthropologist, on the other hand, cannot acknowledge such a
complete domination of emotion by reason. He rather sees the steady
advance of the rational knowledge of mankind, which is a source of
satisfaction to him no less than to the {112} biologist; but he sees
also that mankind does not put this knowledge to purely reasonable use,
but that its actions are swayed by emotions no less now than in former
times, although in many respects, unless the passions are excited,
the increase of knowledge limits the extreme forms of unreasonable
emotional activities. Religion and political life, and our everyday
habits, present endless proofs of the fact that our actions are the
results of emotional preferences, that conform in a general way to
our rational knowledge, but which are not determined by reason; that
we rather try to justify our choice of action by reason than have our
actions dictated by reason.
It is, therefore, exceedingly unlikely that a rational control of one
of the strongest passions of man could ever succeed. If even in matters
of minor importance evasion of the law is of common occurrence, this
would be infinitely more common in questions that touch our inner life
so deeply. The repugnance against eugenic legislation is based on this
feeling.
It cannot be doubted that the enforcement of eugenic legislation
would have a far-reaching effect upon social life, and that it would
tend to raise the standard of certain selected hereditary strains.
It is, however, an open question what would happen to the selected
strains owing to the changed social ideals; and it is inexcusable to
refuse to consider {113} those fundamental changes that would certainly
be connected with eugenic practice, and to confine ourselves to the
biological effect that may be wrought, for in the great mass of a
healthy population the biological mechanism alone does not control
social activities. They are rather subject to social stimuli.
Although we are ignorant of the results of a rigid application of
eugenics, a few of its results may be foretold with great certainty.
The eugenist who tries to do more than to eliminate the unfit will
first of all be called upon to answer the question what strains are the
best to cultivate. If it is a question of breeding chickens or Indian
corn, we know what we want. We desire many eggs of heavy weight, or a
large yield of good corn. But what do we want in man? Is it physical
excellence, mental ability, creative power, or artistic genius? We
must select certain ideals that we want to raise. Considering then the
fundamental differences in ideals of distinct types of civilization,
have we a right to give to our modern ideals the stamp of finality,
and suppress what does not fit into our life? There is little doubt
that we, at the present time, give much less weight to beauty than to
logic. Shall we then try to raise a generation of logical thinkers,
suppress those whose emotional life is vigorous, and try to bring it
about that reason shall reign supreme, and that human {114} activities
shall be performed with clocklike precision? The precise cultural forms
that would develop cannot be foretold, because they are culturally, not
biologically, determined; but there is little doubt that within certain
limits the intensity of emotional life,--regardless of its form,--and
the vigor of logical thought,--regardless of its content,--could be
increased or decreased by organic selection. Such a deliberate choice
of qualities which would modify the character of nations implies an
overestimation of the standards that we have reached, which to my
mind appears intolerable. Personally the logical thinker may be most
congenial to me, nevertheless I respect the sacred ideal of the dreamer
who lives in a world of musical tones, and whose creative power is to
me a marvel that surpasses understanding.
Without a selection of standards, eugenic practice is impossible; but
if we read the history of mankind aright, we ought to hesitate before
we try to set our standards for all time to come, for they are only one
phase in the development of mankind.
This consideration applies only to our right to apply creative eugenic
principles, not to the question whether practical results by eugenic
selection can be attained. I have pointed out before how much in this
respect is still hypothetical, or at least {115} of doubtful value,
because the social factors outweigh the biological ones.
At the present time the idea of creating the best human types by
selective mating is hardly a practical one. It dwells only as a
desirable ideal in the minds of some enthusiasts.
The immediate application of eugenics is rather concerned in
eliminating strains that are a burden to the nation or to themselves,
and in raising the standard of humanity by the suppression of the
progeny of the defective classes. I am doubtful whether eugenics
alone will have material results in this direction, for, in view
of the fundamental influence of environmental causes, that I set
forth before, it is perfectly safe to say that no amount of eugenic
selection will overcome those social conditions that have raised a
poverty and disease-stricken proletariat,--which will be reborn from
even the best stock, so long as the social conditions persist that
remorselessly push human beings into helpless and hopeless misery. The
effect would probably be to push new groups of individuals into the
deadly environment where they would take the place of the eliminated
defectives. Whether they would breed new generations of defectives may
be an open question. The continued presence of defectives would be a
certainty. Eugenics alone cannot solve the problem. It requires much
more an amelioration of the social conditions of the poor {116} which
would also raise many of the apparently defective to higher levels.
The present state of our knowledge of heredity permits us to say that
certain pathological conditions are hereditary and that apparently
healthy parents who belong to defective strains are very likely to have
among their descendants defective individuals. We may even predict for
a number of such cases how many among the descendants will be normal
and how many defective. The eugenist must decide whether he wants to
suppress all the normal individuals in these families in order to
avoid the development of the defectives, or whether he is willing to
carry the defectives along, perhaps as a burden to society, to their
relatives and in many cases even to themselves, for the sake of the
healthy children of such families. This question cannot be decided from
a scientific point of view. The answer depends upon ethical and social
standards. Many defective families have produced individuals who have
given us the greatest treasures our civilization possesses. Eugenists
might have prevented Beethoven’s father from having children. Would
they willingly take the responsibility of having mankind deprived of
the genius of Beethoven?
Another aspect of the problem is of much more vital importance to
mankind. The object of eugenics is to raise a better race and to do
away {117} with increasing suffering by eliminating those who are by
heredity destined to suffer and to cause suffering. The humanitarian
idea of the conquest of suffering, and the ideal of raising human
efficiency to heights never before reached, make eugenics particularly
attractive.
I believe that the human mind and body are so constituted that the
attainment of these ends would lead to the destruction of society.
The wish for the elimination of unnecessary suffering is divided by a
narrow margin from the wish for the elimination of all suffering.
While, humanely speaking, this may be a beautiful ideal, it is
unattainable. The performance of the labors of mankind and the conflict
of duties will always be accompanied by suffering that must be borne,
and that men must be willing to bear. Many of the works of sublime
beauty are the precious fruit of mental agony; and we should be poor,
indeed, if the willingness of man to suffer should disappear. However,
if we cultivate this ideal, then that which was discomfort yesterday
will be suffering to-day, and the elimination of discomforts will lead
to an effeminacy that must be disastrous to the race.
This effect is further emphasized by the increasing demands for
self-perfection. The more complex our civilization and the more
extended our technical skill and our knowledge, the more energy
{118} is demanded for reaching the highest efficiency, and the less
is it admissible that the working capacity of the individual should
be diminished by suffering. We are clearly drifting towards that
danger-line where the individual will no longer bear discomfort or pain
for the sake of the continuance of the race, and where our emotional
life is so strongly repressed by the desire for self-perfection,--or
by self-indulgence,--that the coming generation is sacrificed to the
selfishness of the living. The phenomenon that characterized the end of
antiquity, when no children were born to take the place of the passing
generations, is being repeated in our times and in ever widening
circles; and the more vigorously the eugenic ideals of the elimination
of suffering and of self-development are held up the sooner shall we
drift towards the destruction of the race.
Eugenics should, therefore, not be allowed to deceive us into the
belief that we should try to raise a race of supermen, nor that it
should be our aim to eliminate all suffering and pain. The attempt to
suppress those defective classes whose deficiencies can be proved by
rigid methods to be due to hereditary causes, and to prevent unions
that will unavoidably lead to the birth of disease-stricken progeny, is
the proper field of eugenics. How much can be and should be attempted
in this field depends upon the results of careful studies of {119} the
laws of heredity. Eugenics is not a panacea that will cure human ills;
it is rather a dangerous sword that may turn its edge against those who
rely on its strength.
CHAPTER VI {120}
CRIMINOLOGY
A whole science has developed based on the assumption of the existence
of a biologically determined criminal type and upon the hereditary
transmission of criminality. The Italian school of criminologists led
by C. Lombroso has endeavored to define the type of the criminal and
the physical characteristics of criminals addicted to various types
of crimes. A number of stigmata have been established which, it was
believed, characterized a person as a criminal. If this theory could
be proved the treatment of criminals would have been much simplified,
for it would have been possible to select all criminals before the
commission of a crime and to protect society against them.
Unfortunately these extreme hopes have not been fulfilled. Our previous
considerations make it plausible that they could not be fulfilled,
because the interrelation between gross bodily form and mentality is
not by any means close.
All that has been proved is that many criminals are defective,
not only mentally but also physically. {121} It is, therefore, not
surprising that anomalies that accompany various types of defectiveness
should be found among them with greater frequency than among the
socially normal; but it does not follow that the presence of any one of
the stigmata described by the Italian school would prove that a person
is a born criminal.
In many of the cases a careful statistical study has shown that
the alleged stigmata, such as absence of the lobe of the ear and
irregularities in the position of the teeth, are more frequent in local
noncriminal groups than among the criminals, so that for this reason
they cannot be considered as significant. Neither is there any clear
physiological relation between the alleged stigmata and social or even
physical defects.
A most careful examination of the criminal population has been made
by C. Goring. His general results are worth quoting. He says: “For
statistical evidence, one assertion can be dogmatically made: It is,
that the criminal is differentiated by inferior stature, by defective
intelligence and, to some extent, by his antisocial proclivities; but
that, apart from these broad differences, there are no physical, mental
or moral characteristics peculiar to the inmates of English prisons.
The truths that have been overlooked are that these deviations,
described as significant of criminality, are inevitable concomitants
of inferior {122} stature and defective intelligence: both of which
are the differentia of the types of persons who are selected for
imprisonment.”
The conditions are the same as those previously described. As it is
impossible to assign an individual according to his bodily form to a
racial group, if the groups overlap, so it is impossible to recognize
an individual by his bodily build as a criminal. We may say that it is
more likely that a person physically and mentally defective will become
a criminal than one who is normal, but we cannot say that he _must_ be
a criminal.
The very definition of the term “crime” proves that no such intimate
relation can exist. What was a crime in times past is no longer a
crime now. Heresy was a crime punishable by death. Among heretics were
included many who were mentally unbalanced and probably physically
defective; but men like Huss or Giordano Bruno were criminals on
account of their mental independence. George Washington would have been
a criminal, if the English had caught him.
In foreign societies the concept of what constitutes a crime may
be even more different than it has been at different periods among
ourselves. Where food is shared by all and property consists solely of
the necessities of life, such as clothing, weapons, household utensils,
small pilfering is all but impossible, for the taking of food is not
stealing, {123} food being freely shared by all. Where strict laws of
endogamy exist, what we call incest may be proscribed. Where exogamy
is found the laws of incest extend over wider, or curiously selected
groups. Where vendetta is the law of the land certain types of murder
are a virtue, not a crime. Where monogamy is the custom polygamy is
a criminal offense, while in other societies the refusal to accept a
number of mates may be so considered. Where sexual life is practically
free sexual crimes do not occur.
Under these conditions the criminal must be defined as the person who
habitually disregards the laws of conduct proscribed by the society to
which he belongs. If we accept this definition we must except those
cases in which conduct contrary to law is ceremonially permitted or
proscribed. This happens, for instance, among the Pueblo Indians and
in British Columbia in the case of certain semi-priestly groups who
have the privilege of acting counter to the sacred rites of the people
and who are accordingly feared by the profane crowd. The same is true
in all cases of prerogatives of social classes--as in the relation
between master and slave, when the slave is considered a chattel; or in
prerogatives of feudal lords.
With the differentiation of what constitutes a crime the mental
characteristics of the criminal {124} must also vary. The criminal who
breaks through the inhibitions developed by the habitual behavior of
the society to which he belongs is actuated by a variety of motives.
The breaking point depends upon the drive that leads to action and
the strength of inhibition. Among two persons with equal power of
inhibition the starving pauper will be led to theft by hunger; the
well-to-do who is deprived of his conveniences will succumb much more
readily, because the strain which for the pauper would be insignificant
is felt by him as suffering. Such conditions may account for the
similar distribution of criminality in well-to-do and poor social
groups.
The problem of the heritability of criminality as well as of other
forms of social deficiency presents the same difficulties that are
encountered in all attempts to discriminate between organic and
environmental determination.
The definition of crime is so complex and so variable, so entirely
dependent upon social conditions that criminality itself can hardly
be considered as hereditary. It is, however, possible that certain
dispositions may be hereditary that lead to acts that are in some
cases considered as criminal. It has been proved that the criminal is,
in many respects, defective. If the deficiency is hereditary, then a
greater probability exists that {125} a defective individual belonging
to a hereditary line of defectives may become a criminal.
The investigation of families like the Kallikaks has shown that there
are strains in which criminality is very frequent. From a purely
practical point of view these data allow us to say that when a person
is a criminal or otherwise defective there is a greater likelihood of
finding criminals or defectives in his family than among the relatives
of a person who is not a criminal.
The reason for this is easily understood if we remember that the
same is true for any trait that occurs comparatively rarely and with
unequal frequency in different families. If in a preponderantly blond
population a blonde is selected we exclude all those families in
which no blondes occur and the average frequency of blondness in the
population thus selected will be considerable. On the other hand,
if we select a brunette individual the whole mass of families that
contain brunette individuals will appear, and the average frequency
of blondness in the series thus selected will be much lower. The same
is true when we select exceptionally short individuals. Then all tall
families will be eliminated the more the higher their average stature,
and the series so selected will contain an inordinately large number
of short individuals. Conversely in the series of families selected as
relatives of a tall person the {126} relative frequency of short ones
will be much less.
If all families were equal in regard to the relative frequency of
criminality, defects, blondness or low stature--then the series
selected as relatives of criminals, defectives, blondes or short
individuals would be the same as the series of relatives of
noncriminals, normals, brunette and tall individuals. The greater
frequency of criminality among relatives of criminals does not allow
us to deduce the laws of heredity of criminality, unless the frequency
distribution of criminality of families is accurately known.
We have seen that the family lines constituting a population differ
among themselves. They differ also in regard to criminality and
frequency of defects. The questions to be answered are whether these
are environmentally determined or hereditary and what the laws of
heredity are.
The observations of Habit-Clinics for preschool children throw an
interesting light upon this problem. Although the statistical results
of these observations must be used with considerable caution, the
psychological analysis elucidates the far-reaching influence of an
unfavorable environment upon the behavior of physically weak subjects
and the development of antisocial tendencies that may arise under
stresses of a family situation that makes for revolt against tyrannical
authority or creates in other ways serious antagonisms. {127}
No less instructive are the observations of psychoanalysis. While I am
not inclined to follow the intricate and, as it seems to me, arbitrary
reasonings of psychoanalysts, sufficient material has been accumulated
showing that under severe stresses, particularly after a sudden
“trauma,” weak individuals may develop abnormal mental habits of the
most varied kind.
The general evidence points to the conclusion that the weak individual
takes to antisocial acts when the environmental stress that brings
about disregard of the laws of society is sufficiently acute. The
stronger the individual the greater the stress that will be required.
C. Goring, in the investigation previously referred to, minimizes
the environmental factor as a determinant of criminality. He tries
to prove that all other social irregularities found among criminals,
such as lack of schooling or irregular employment, or poverty are
dependent upon lack of intelligence. His argument is based on the
statistical interrelation between intelligence and the various social
defects. He determines the average intelligence of a group by the
relative frequency of mental defectives. He assumes that the greater
their number the lower the average intelligence. This is a doubtful
procedure, because the range of variation in the groups does {128}
not need to be the same. If, for instance, the mentality of criminals
were more variable than that of noncriminals, they would have a larger
number of defectives even if they had the same average intelligence.
Social irregularities combined with criminality are the more frequent
the greater the relative number of mental defectives. The argument
might also be reversed and we might say that mental defects combined
with criminality are the more frequent the greater the relative number
of social irregularities, such as lack of schooling or irregular
employment. In order to prove that organically determined intelligence
is the cause of both social irregularities and criminality it would be
necessary to show that groups of individuals of the same intelligence,
taken at random from the total population, would have the same relative
frequency of criminality regardless of other social defects, such as
poverty, lack of schooling or irregularity of employment. Since we do
not know the distribution of intelligence in the total population the
ratio of criminality cannot be determined and it cannot be claimed that
hereditary intelligence is the decisive factor.
I believe, therefore, that the irrelevancy of environment as a factor
producing criminality has not been proved.
Many authors have tried to deduce from the {129} distribution of
cases of criminality in family lines that the tendency is inherited in
a simple Mendelian ratio. The infinite complexity of conditions that
bring an individual into the class of convicted criminals does not make
such a conclusion likely and the number of cases that have been brought
forward is entirely insufficient for a conclusive proof. The actual
statistical data indicate only that in the population family lines
differ in their degree of criminality.
The assumption of a simple form of Mendelian heredity, and that of
the occurrence of much more complex forms which include environmental
factors lead to quite distinct practical results. In the former case
the occurrence of a single case of criminality in a family and a
knowledge of the simple rules of hereditary transmission would enable
us to foretell how many individuals in various family lines would be
affected. In the latter case prediction would be well-nigh impossible,
because the rules of heredity, although following fundamentally the
same laws, would be so varied that the hereditary characteristics of a
single family would not be known.
More important than this is the difficulty of differentiation between
environmental and hereditary causes, for if a whole family is exposed
to the same deleterious conditions and a sufficient {130} organic
weakness exists, the whole family may become criminal, while under more
fortunate conditions it could withstand the social pressure to which it
is exposed.
CHAPTER VII {131}
STABILITY OF CULTURE
An isolated community that remains subject to the same environmental
conditions, and without selective mating, becomes, after a number of
generations, stable in bodily form. As long as there are no stimuli
that modify the social structure and mental life the culture will
also be fairly permanent. Primitive, isolated tribes appear to us and
to themselves as stable, because under undisturbed conditions the
processes of change of culture are slow.
In the very earliest times of mankind culture must have changed almost
imperceptibly. The history of man, of a being that made tools, goes
back maybe 150,000 years, more or less. The tools belonging to this
period are found buried in the soil. They are stone implements of
simple form. For a period of no less than 30,000 years the forms did
not change. When we observe such permanence among animals we explain it
as an expression of instinct. Objectively the toolmaking of man of this
period seems like an instinctive trait {132} similar to the instincts
of ants and bees. The repetition of the same act without change,
generation after generation, gives the impression of a biologically
determined instinct. Still, we do not know that such a view would be
correct, because we cannot tell in how far each generation learned
from its predecessors. Animals like birds and mammals, act not only
instinctively; they also learn by example and imitation. It seems
likely that conditions were the same in early man.
The importance of the process of learning becomes more and more evident
the nearer we approach the present period. The tools become more
differentiated. Not all localities show the same forms, and it seems
likely that if we could examine the behavior of man in periods one
thousand years apart that changes would be discovered.
At the end of the ice age the differentiation in the forms of
manufactured objects had come to be as great as that found nowadays
among primitive tribes. There is no reason why we should assume the
life of the people who lived towards the end of the ice age, the
Magdalenians, to have been in any respect simpler than that of the
modern Eskimo.
With the beginning of the present geological period the
differentiation of local groups and of activities in each group was
considerable. Changes {133} which in the beginning required tens of
thousands of years, later thousands of years, occurred now in centuries
and brought about constantly increasing multiplicity of forms.
With the approach of the historic period the degree of stability
of culture decreased still further and in modern times changes are
proceeding with great rapidity, not only in material products of our
civilization but also in forms of thought.
Since earliest times the rapidity of change has grown at an
ever-increasing rate.
The rate of change in culture is by no means uniform. We may observe
in many instances periods of comparative stability followed by others
of rapid modifications. The great Teutonic migrations at the close of
antiquity brought about fundamental changes in culture and speech.
They were followed by periods of consolidation. The Arab conquest
of North Africa destroyed an old civilization and new forms took
its place. Assimilation of culture may also be observed among many
primitive tribes, and, although we do not know the rate of change,
there is often strong internal evidence of a rapid adjustment to
a new level. In language the alternation between periods of rapid
change and comparative stability may often be observed. The transition
from Anglo-Saxon and Norman to English was rapid. The development of
English since that time has {134} been rather slow. Similar periods of
disturbance have occurred in the development of modern Persian.
The most striking example is presented by the influence of European
civilization upon primitive cultures. When they do not completely
disappear a new adjustment is reached with great rapidity. Examples are
the Indians of Mexico and Peru, or still more strikingly, the Negroes
of the United States during and since the time of slavery. In all these
cases outer influences broke the continuity of development.
Notwithstanding the rapid changes in many aspects of our modern life we
may observe in other respects a marked stability. Conflicts between the
inertia of conservative tradition and the radicalism of rapid change
are characteristic of our civilization.
We are wont to measure the ability of a race by its cultural
achievements which imply rapid changes. Those races among whom the
later changes have been most rapid appear, therefore, as most highly
developed.
For these reasons it is important to study the conditions that make for
stability and for change; and to know whether changes are organically
or culturally determined.
Behavior that is organically determined is called instinctive. When
the infant cries and smiles, {135} when later on it walks, its actions
are instinctive in this sense. Breathing, chewing, retiring from a
sudden assault against the senses, approach towards desired objects are
presumably organically determined. They do not need to be learned. Most
of these actions are indispensable for the maintenance of life. Some,
while useful, may be modified or even suppressed with impunity. Thus we
may change our gait or learn to overcome the reaction to fear. It is
difficult to do so, but not impossible. We can never account for the
reasons of this class of impulses that prompt us to act. The stimulus
is there and we react at once.
On the ground of this experience we are inclined to consider every
type of behavior that is marked by an immediate, involuntary reaction
as instinctive. This is an error, for habits imposed upon us during
infancy and childhood have the same characteristics.
Most of our actions are culturally determined.
We must eat in order to live. Arctic man is compelled by necessity to
live on a meat diet; the Hindu lives on vegetal food by choice.
That we walk on our legs is organically conditioned. How we walk, our
particular gait, depends upon the forms of our shoes, the cut of our
clothing, the way we carry loads, the conformation of the ground we
tread. Peculiar forms of motion {136} may be, in part, physiologically
determined, but many are due to imitation. They are repeated so often
that they become automatic. They come to be the way in which we move
“naturally.” The response is as easy and as ready as an instinctive
action, and a change from the acquired habit to a new one is equally
difficult. When thoroughly established the mental effect of an
automatic action is the same as that of an instinctive reaction.
In all these cases the _faculty_ of developing a certain motor habit is
organically determined. The particular _form_ of movement is automatic,
acquired by constant, habitual use.
This distinction is particularly clear in the use of language. The
_faculty_ of speech is organically determined and should be called,
therefore, instinctive. However, _what_ we speak is determined solely
by our environment. We acquire one language or another, according to
what we hear spoken around us. We become accustomed to very definite
movements of lips, tongue and the whole group of articulating organs.
When we speak, we are wholly unconscious of any of these movements
and equally of the structure of the language we speak. We resent
deviations in pronunciation and in structure. We find it exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible, to acquire as adults complete mastery of
new articulations and new structures such as are required in learning a
foreign language. {137} Our linguistic habits are not instinctive. They
are automatic.
Our thoughts and our speech are accompanied by muscular
movements,--some people would even say they _are_ our thoughts. The
kinds of movements are not by any means the same everywhere. The
mobility of the Italian contrasts strikingly with the restraint of the
Englishman.
The human faculty of using tools is organically determined. It is
instinctive. This, however, does not mean that the kind of tool
developed is prescribed by instinct. Even the slightest knowledge of
the development of tools proves that the special forms characteristic
of each area and period depend upon tradition and are in no way
organically determined. The choice of material depends partly upon
environment, partly upon the state of inventions. We use steel and
other artificially made materials; the African iron, others stone, bone
or shell. The forms of the working parts of the implements depend upon
the tasks they are to perform, those of the handles upon our motor
habits.
The same is ordinarily true of our likes and dislikes. We are
organically capable of producing and enjoying music. What kind of music
we enjoy depends for most of us solely upon habit. Our harmonies,
rhythms and melodies are not of the same kind as those enjoyed by the
Siamese and {138} a mutual understanding, if it can be attained at all,
can be reached solely by long training.
Whatever is acquired in infancy and childhood by unvarying habits
becomes automatic.
All this implies that a culture replete with automatically established
actions is stable. Every individual behaves according to the setting
of the culture in which he lives. When the uniformity of automatic
reaction is broken, the stability of culture will be weakened or lost.
Conformity and stability are inseparably connected. Nonconformity
breaks the force of tradition.
We are thus led to an investigation of the conditions that make for
conformity or nonconformity.
Conformity to instinctive activities is enforced by our organic
structure; conformity to automatic actions by habit. The infant learns
to speak by imitation. During the first few years of life the movement
of larynx, tongue, roof of the mouth and lips are gradually controlled
and executed with great accuracy and rapidity. If the child is removed
to a new environment in which another language is spoken, before the
movements of articulation have become stable, and as long as a certain
effort in speech is still required, the movements required by the new
language are acquired with perfect ease. For the adult a change from
one language to another is much more difficult. {139} The demands of
everyday life compel him to use speech, and the articulating organs
follow the automatic, fixed habits of his childhood. By imitation
certain modifications occur, but a complete break with the early habits
is extremely difficult, for many well-nigh impossible, and probably in
no case quite perfect.
The same is true in regard to the movements of the body. In childhood
we acquire certain ways of handling our bodies. If these movements have
become automatic it is almost impossible to change to another style,
because all the muscles are attuned to act in a fixed way. To change
one’s gait, to acquire a new style of handwriting, to change the play
of the muscles of the face in response to emotion is a task that can
never be accomplished satisfactorily.
What is true of the handling of the body is equally true of mental
processes. When we have learned to think in definite ways it is
exceedingly difficult to break away and to follow new paths. For a
person who has never been accustomed as a young child to restrain
responses to emotions, such as weeping or laughing, a transition to
the restraints cultivated among us will be difficult. The teachings
of earliest childhood remain for most people the dogma of adult life,
the truth of which is never doubted. Recently the importance of the
impressions of earliest childhood have {140} been emphasized again by
psychoanalysts. Whatever happens during the first five years of life
sets the pace for the reactions of the individual. Habits established
in this period become automatic and will resist strongly any pressure
requiring change.
It would be saying too much to claim that these habits are alone
responsible for the reactions of the individual. His bodily
organization certainly plays a part. This appears most clearly in
the case of pathological individuals or of those unusually gifted in
one way or another; but the whole population consists of individuals
varying greatly in bodily form and function, and since the same forms
and faculties occur in many groups, the group differences must be due
to habits that determine behavior in adult life. Automatic habits are
one of the most important sources of conservatism.
A few examples may illustrate the conditions that fix our habits.
The tools of tribes of different periods or localities have definite
forms so that an expert can readily determine the provenience of each
object. In most cases the form is an expression of the manner of using
the tool. A hand adze with a long handle, or one held close to the
cutting blade; a draw knife or one used for cutting away from the
body; a pestle and a grinding stone are adjusted to the kind of motion
characteristic {141} of the tribe. For a person who is accustomed to
cut with a drawing knife, a knife handle not fitted for this movement
is unhandy.
The movements determined by the forms of handles are sometimes very
special and a change to another form of handle is correspondingly
difficult. A good example of this is the throwing board of the Eskimo.
The board serves to give a greater impetus to a lance or a dart than
the one that can be given by the hand. It is, as it were, an extension
of the hand. The one end is held in the hand. On the surface is a
groove in which the lance rests so that its butt end is supported at
the other end. When the arm swings forward in the motion of throwing,
the lance rests against the far end of the board, which, on account of
its greater distance from the shoulder, moves more swiftly and thus
gives greater impetus to the weapon. The accuracy with which the lance
is thrown depends upon the intimate familiarity of the hand with the
board, for the slightest variation in its position modifies the flight
of the weapon. The forms of the throwing board differ considerably
from tribe to tribe. In Labrador and in the region farther north it is
broad and heavy, with grip holds for thumb and fingers. In Alaska it
is slender with a grip arranged in quite a different manner. A hand
accustomed to the wide board {142} would require considerable time to
learn the use of the narrower one. An implement of the same kind occurs
in Australia, but its form is fundamentally different. I presume an
Australian who would try to use an Eskimo throwing board would fail to
hit his game.
The same is true of our modern tools. The movements of the body are
adjusted to the handle of the tool. The handle was not changed until
machinery was introduced. The handle of the plane looks as though it
were adapted to the hand. Its form has developed so as to facilitate
the movements which we use. If we should use a different kind of
movement for planing the form of the handle would have to be different,
too; but the use of the handle that has been developed fixes the
habitual movements that we acquire.
Our posture may serve as another example. We sit on chairs. We like
to have our backs supported and our feet on the floor. The Indians do
not find this comfortable at all. They sit on the ground. Some stretch
their legs forward, others sideways. Many squat down, bending the lower
legs backward and sitting on the ground between the feet. For most
adults, among ourselves, this position is impossible.
The form of furniture depends upon our habitual posture. Some people
sleep on the back, others on the side. When sleeping on the side it is
convenient {143} to support the head with a pillow. People who sleep on
the back find it convenient to support the neck by a narrow rest while
the shoulders rest on the ground and the head is suspended. The neck
rest cannot be used when it is customary to sleep on the side. Chairs,
beds, tables and many kinds of household utensils are thus determined
by our motor habits. They have developed as an expression of these
habits, but their use compels every succeeding generation to follow
the same habits. Thus they tend to stabilize them and to make them
automatic.
The difficulty of changing forms dependent upon well-established
motor habits is well illustrated by the permanence of the keyboard
of the piano, which withstands all efforts at improvement; or by the
complexity of forms and inadequacy of the number of symbols of our
alphabet, which is hardly realized by most of those who write and read.
The most automatic activity of man is his speech and it is well worth
while to inquire in how far habitual speech influences our actions and,
either through our actions or directly, our thought. The problem might
also be so formulated that we ask in how far does language control
action and thought, and in how far does our behavior control language.
Some aspects of this question have been touched upon before (p. 55).
{144}
Language is so constituted that when new cultural needs arise it will
supply the forms that express them. There is a large number of words in
our vocabulary that have arisen with new inventions and new ideas that
would be unintelligible to our ancestors who lived two hundred years
ago. On the other hand, words no longer needed have disappeared.
What is true of words is equally true of forms. Many primitive
languages are very definite in expressing ideas. Locality, time
and modality of any statement are denoted accurately. An Indian of
Vancouver Island does not say “the man is dead,” he would say “this
man who has passed away lies dead on the floor of this house.” He does
not, according to the form of his language, express the idea “the man
is dead” in generalized form. It might seem that this is a defect
in his language, that he cannot form a generalized statement. As a
matter of fact he has no need of generalized statements. He speaks to
his fellow-men about the specific events of everyday life. He does
not speak about abstract goodness, he speaks about the goodness of
a certain person and he has no call to use the abstract term. The
question is what happens when his culture changes and generalized terms
are needed. The history of our own language shows clearly what does
happen. We do not mind forcing the language into new molds and {145}
creating the forms that we require. If the philosopher develops a new
idea he forces the language to yield devices that will adequately
express his ideas and if these take root the language follows the
lead thus given. A careful examination of primitive languages shows
that these possibilities are always inherent in their structure. When
missionaries train natives to translate the Bible and the Book of
Prayer they compel them to do violence to the current forms; and it
can always be done. In this sense we may say that culture determines
language.
Most instructive in this respect are those parts of the vocabulary that
express systems of classification; most notably in the numerical system
and in the terminology of relationship.
All counting is based on a grouping of units. We group by tens and
do so automatically. Some languages group by fives and combine four
fives,--that is the fingers and toes,--in one higher unit. In English
their terminology would be one, two, three, four, five; one, two,
three, four, five on the other hand; one, two, three, four, five on the
one foot; one, two, three, four, five on the other foot; and finally,
for our twenty, a man. If I want to say in such a language 973, I have
to group my units not in 9 times 10 times 10 (900) plus 7 times 10 (70)
plus 3, but in 2 times 20 times 20 (800) plus three on the other hand
(=8) times 20 (160) plus three {146} on the one foot (=13). In other
words we cannot count 973 units as 900 + 70 + 3. In the other language
973 are counted as 2 × 400 plus (5 + 3) times 20 plus (10 + 3). Every
number is divided in groups of units, multiples of twenty, of 400,
8,000 and so on. To acquire this new classification automatically is an
exceedingly difficult process.
Our terms of relationship are based on a few simple principles:
generation, sex, direct descent or agnatic line. My uncle is a person
of the first ascendant generation, male, agnatic line. Among other
people the principles may be quite different. For instance, the
difference between direct and agnatic line may be disregarded, while
the terms may differ according to the sex of the speaker. Thus a male
calls his mother and all females of the ascendant generation by one
term, and also his sons and nephews by a single term. The concept and
emotional significance of our term mother cannot persist in such a
terminology. The adjustment to the new concepts that make impossible
the customary automatic emotional reaction to terms of relationship
will also be exceedingly difficult.
In another way language sways the forms of our thought. Every language
has its own way of classifying sense experience and inner life, and
thought is, to a certain extent, swayed by the associations {147}
between words. To us activities like breaking, tearing, folding may
call forth the ideas of the kind of things that we break, tear or fold.
In other languages the terms express with such vigor the way in which
these actions are done, by pressure, by pulling, with the hand; or the
stiffness, hardness, form, pliability of the object that the flow of
ideas is determined in this fashion.
More important than this is the emotional tone of words. Particularly
those words that are symbols of groups of ideas to which we
automatically respond in definite ways have a fundamental value in
shaping our behavior. They function as a release for habitual actions.
In our modern civilizations the words patriotism, democracy or
autocracy, liberty are of this class. The real content of many of these
is not important; important is their emotional value. Liberty may be
nonexistent, the word-symbol will survive in all its power, although
the actual condition may be one of subjection. The name democracy will
induce people to accept autocracy as long as the symbol is kept intact.
The vague concepts expressed by these words are sufficient to excite
the strongest reactions that stabilize the cultural behavior of people,
even when the inner form of the culture undergoes considerable changes
that go unnoticed on account of the preservation of the symbol. {148}
Words are not the only symbols that influence behavior in this manner.
There are also many objective symbols, such as the national flags or
the cross, or fixed literary and musical forms that have attained the
value of symbols, like the formal prayers of various creeds, national
songs and anthems.
The conservative force of all of these rests on their emotional effect.
A study of the behavior of man shows that actions are on the whole more
stable than thoughts. The ease with which words change their meanings
while retaining their form which is produced by movements of the
articulating organs is one of the many examples that may be adduced.
More striking examples are found in a variety of cultural facts.
In North America similar rituals are performed over a wide area.
The general plan and most of the details are the same among many
tribes. They all do nearly the same things. On the other hand, the
significance of the ritual differs considerably among various tribes.
The so-called Sun Dance, which is alike in plan and the main features
of its execution, serves in one tribe as a prayer for success in war;
by another it is used as a pledge in prayers for recovery from serious
illness. It is also a means of preventing disease.
The decorative art of the Plains Indians is another {149} excellent
example. The designs used in painting and embroidery are largely
simple forms, such as straight lines, triangles and rectangles.
Their composition also is so much alike among many tribes that we
must necessarily assume the same origin for the forms. We look at
the designs as purely ornamental. To the Indian they have a meaning,
somewhat in the same way as we associate a meaning with the flag
and other national or religious emblems. The meanings, the thoughts
connected with the design are very variable. An isosceles triangle with
short straight lines descending from its base suggests to one tribe a
bear’s paw with its long claws; to another a tent with the plugs that
hold down the cover; to a third a mountain with springs at its foot;
to a fourth a rain cloud with descending rain. The meaning changes
according to the cultural interests of the people; the form which is
dependent upon their industrial activities does not change.
The same observation may be made in the tales of primitive
people. Identical tales are told over wide territories by people
of fundamentally different types of culture. The ideas that attach
themselves to a tale depend upon cultural interests. What is a sacred
myth in one tribe is told for amusement in another. If the interest of
the people centers in the stars we may have the tale as a star myth, if
they are interested in animals it may {150} explain conditions in the
animal world; if they have at heart ceremonial life the tale will deal
with ceremonies.
Secondary explanations are also common in our own civilization. We
speak of some of these as “survivals.” Many of the paraphernalia used
by European royalty or by the Church are survivals of early lines that
have changed their meaning.
Certain customs that have been transmitted to our times have undergone
fundamental changes in meaning. We are inclined to explain them now on
a utilitarian basis. It has been claimed that the Jews tabooed pork
because it was recognized that pork was injurious to health. Still we
know that the usage is parallel to food taboos that exist all over the
world and which are not founded on hygienic considerations.
An analogous change is developing in regard to Sunday. It is now
considered a day of rest for people to recuperate from the work of the
week. It originated as a holy day and is analogous to unlucky days,
or to days on which hostile tribes meet peacefully for the purpose of
barter.
Still more striking is the example of forbidden marriages. We say that
cousin marriages are dangerous to the offspring. When the parents are
of healthy stock there is no danger. The wide distribution of forbidden
or proscribed cousin {151} marriages and their general setting proves
that the source of the custom must be looked for in forms of social
organization and religious belief, and that by origin it has nothing to
do with hygienic considerations.
I think in most of these cases the action must be considered
as automatic. When an action is raised into consciousness our
rationalizing impulses require a satisfying explanation and this
follows the prevailing pattern of thought.
While the interpretation of single actions may thus undergo
considerable changes while the actions themselves persist, mental
life shows in other ways a remarkable degree of stability while the
material culture and actions related to it may become modified in many
ways. Wherever there is a strong, dominant trend of mind that pervades
the whole cultural life it may persist over long periods and survive
changes in mode of life.
This is most easily observed in one-sided cultures characterized by
a single controlling idea. Excellent examples are found among the
North American Indians. The tribes of the Plains are not only warlike,
but the standing of each individual is determined by his eminence
in warfare. His deeds of valor are the measure of his worth and the
thoughts of every man are forced in this direction. Public life is so
entirely swayed by an interest in war that nothing else counts for
{152} much. This attitude has held sway as long as Indian tribal life
continued unbroken and there is no reason to assume that it is of
recent origin.
On the North Pacific Coast the importance of hereditary social rank,
to be maintained by the display and lavish distribution of wealth,
determines the behavior of the individual. It is the ambition of every
person to obtain high social standing for himself, his family, or for
the chief of his family. Wealth is a necessary basis of social eminence
and the general tone of life is determined by these ideas. They have
even received a new impetus since European civilization has introduced
new methods of acquiring wealth, notwithstanding the disintegration of
the social fabric.
No less instructive is the fundamental rôle played by the idea of the
sacredness of persons of high rank, expressed particularly by the
taboo of their persons and of objects belonging to them, that prevails
practically all over Polynesia and that must be an ancient trait of
Polynesian culture.
European history also shows conclusively that fundamental viewpoints
once established are held tenaciously. Changes develop slowly and
against strong resistance. The relation of the individual to the Church
may serve as an example. The willing submission to Church authority
which {153} characterized European and American life in earlier
times; the unhesitating acceptance of traditional dogma is giving way
to individual independence, but the transition has been slow and is
still vigorously resisted by the earlier attitude. The ease with which
changes of denominational affiliation or complete break with the Church
are accepted were unthinkable for many centuries and are even now
resented by many.
The slow breaking up of feudalism and the gradual disappearance of the
privileges of royalty and nobility are other pertinent examples.
The history of rationalism is equally instructive. The endeavor to
understand all processes as the effects of known causes has led to
the development of modern science and has gradually expanded over
ever-widening fields. The rigid application of the method demands the
reduction of every phenomenon to its cause. A purpose, a teleological
viewpoint, and accident are excluded. It was probably one of the
greatest attractions of the Darwinian theory of natural selection that
it substituted for a purposive explanation of the origin of life forms
a purely causal one.
The strength of the rationalistic viewpoint is also manifested in the
attitude of psychoanalysis which refuses to accept any of our ordinary,
everyday actions as accidental, but demands an inner, causal connection
between all mental processes. {154}
It would be an error to assume that the universal application of
rationalism is the final form of thought, the ultimate result which our
organism is destined to reach. Opposition to its negation of purpose,
or its transformation of purpose into cause and to its disregard of
accident as influencing the individual phenomenon, is struggling for
recognition.
The stability of a general trend of mind is likely to be the greater,
the greater the uniformity of culture. In a complex culture, in which
diverse attitudes are found, the probability of change must be much
greater.
There is a negative effect of automatism, no less important than the
positive one which results in the ease of performance.
Any action that differs from those performed by us habitually strikes
us immediately as ridiculous or objectionable, according to the
emotional tone that accompanies it. Often deviations from automatic
actions are strongly resented. A dog taught to give his hind paw
instead of the front paw excites us to laughter. Formal dress worn at
times when the conventions do not allow it seems ridiculous. So does
the dress that was once fashionable but that has gone out of use. We
need only think of the hoop skirt of the middle of the last century
or of the bright colors of man’s dress and the impression they would
create to-day. We must {155} also realize the resistance that we
ourselves have to appearing in an inappropriate costume.
More serious are the resistances in matters that evoke stronger
emotional reactions. Table manners are a good example. Most of us are
exceedingly sensitive to a breach of good table manners. There are many
tribes and people that do not know the use of the fork and who dip
into the dish with their fingers. We feel this is disgusting because
we are accustomed to the use of fork and knife. We are accustomed to
eat quietly. Among some Indian tribes it is discourteous not to smack
one’s lips, the sign of enjoying one’s food. What is nauseating to us
is proper to them.
Still more striking is our reaction to breaches of modesty. We have
ourselves witnessed a marked change in regard to what is considered
modest, what immodest. A comparative study shows that modesty is found
the world over, but that the ideas of what is modest and what immodest
vary incredibly. Thirty years ago woman’s dress of to-day would have
been immodest. South African Negroes greet a person of high rank by
turning the back and bowing away from him. Some South American Indians
consider it immodest to eat in view of other people. Whatever the form
of modest behavior may be, a breach of etiquette is always strongly
resented.
This is characteristic of all forms of automatic {156} behavior.
The performance of an automatic action is accompanied by the lowest
degree of consciousness. To witness an action contrary to our
automatic behavior excites at once intense attention and the strongest
resistances must be overcome if we are required to perform such an
action. Where motor habits are concerned the resistance is based on
the difficulty of acquiring new habits, which is the greater the older
we are, perhaps less on account of growing inadaptability than for
the reason that we are constantly required to act and have no time
to adjust ourselves to new ways. In trifling matters the resistance
may take the form of fear of ridicule, in more serious ones of social
criticism. But it is not only the fear of the outer world that
determines the resistance, it rests equally in our own unwillingness to
change, in our thorough disapprobation of the unconventional.
Intolerance is often, if not always, based on the strength of
automatic reactions and upon the feeling of intense displeasure felt in
acts opposed to our own automatism. The apparent fanaticism exhibited
in the persecution of heretics must be explained in this manner. At
a time when the dogma taught by the Church was imposed upon each
individual so intensely that it became an automatic part of his thought
and action, it was accompanied by a strong feeling of opposition, of
hostility {157} to any one who did not participate in this feeling.
The term fanaticism does not quite correctly express the attitude of
the Inquisition. Its psychological basis was rather the impossibility
of changing a habit of thought that had become automatic and the
consequent impossibility of following new lines of thought, which, for
this very reason, seemed antisocial; that is, criminal.
We have a similar spectacle in the present conflict between nationalism
and internationalism with their mutual intolerance.
Even in science a similar intolerance may be observed in the struggle
of opposing theories and in the difficulty of breaking down traditional
common viewpoints.
The example of medieval orthodoxy proves that the uniformity of
automatic reaction of the whole society is one of the strongest forces
making for stability. When all react in the same way it becomes
difficult for an individual to break away from the common habits.
This is strikingly illustrated by the contrast between the culture
of primitive tribes and our modern civilization. Our society is
not uniform. Among us even the best educated cannot participate in
our whole civilization. Among primitive tribes the differences in
occupations, interests and knowledge are comparatively slight. Every
individual is to a great extent familiar with all the {158} thoughts,
emotions and activities of the community. The uniformity of behavior is
similar to that expected among ourselves of a member of a social “set.”
A person who does not conform to the habits of thought and actions of
his “set” loses standing and must leave. In our modern civilization he
is likely to find another congenial “set,” to the habits of which he
can conform. In primitive society such sets are absent. With us the
presence of many groups of different standards of interest and behavior
is a stimulus for critical self-examination, for conflicts of group
interests and other forms of intimate contact are ever present. Among
primitive people this stimulus does not occur within the tribal unit.
For these reasons individual independence is attained with much greater
difficulty and tribal standards have much greater force.
Individual independence is the weaker the more markedly a culture
is dominated by a single idea that controls the actions of every
individual. We may illustrate this again by the example of the Indians
of the northwest coast of America and of those of the Plains. The
former are dominated by the desire to obtain social prominence by
the display of wealth and by occupying a position of high rank which
depends upon ancestry and conformity to the social requirements of
rank. The life of almost every individual is regulated by this {159}
thought. The desire for social prestige finds expression in amassing
riches, in squandering accumulated wealth, in lavish display, in
outdoing rivals of equal rank, in marrying so as to insure rank for
one’s children, more even than in a set of rich young people in our
cities who have inherited wealth and who lose caste unless they come
up to the social pace of their set. The uniformity of this background
and the intensity with which it is cultivated in the young do not
allow other forms to arise and keep the cultural outlook stable. Quite
similar observations may be made among the natives of New Guinea, among
whom display of wealth is also a dominating passion.
Quite different is the background of life of the Indians of the Plains.
The desire to obtain honors by warlike deeds prompts thoughts and
actions of every one. Social position is intimately bound up with
success in war, and the desire for prominence is inculcated in the mind
of every child. The combination of these two tendencies determines
the mental status of the community and prevents the development of
different ideals.
Again different are conditions among the sedentary tribes of New
Mexico. According to Dr. Ruth L. Bunzel the chief desire of the Zuni
Indian is to conform to the general level of behavior and not to be
prominent. Prominence brings with it so many duties and enmities that
it is avoided. The {160} dominating interest in life is occupation with
ceremonialism and this combined with fear of outstanding responsibility
gives a steady tone to life.
In all these cases the uniformity of social habits and the lack of
examples of different types of behavior make deviations difficult and
place the individual who does not conform in an antisocial class, even
if his revolt is due to a superior mind and to strength of character.
In primitive society the general cultural outlook is in most cases
uniform and examples that are opposed to the usual behavior are of
rare occurrence. The participation of many in a uniform attitude has a
stabilizing effect.
When at times of great popular excitement the masses in civilized
society are swayed by a single idea, the independence of the individual
is lost in the same manner as it is in primitive society. We have
passed through a period of such dominant ideas during the World War
and it is probable that every European nation was affected in the same
manner. What seemed before the outbreak of hostilities as momentous
differences vanished and one thought animated every nation.
All this is quite different in a diversified culture, particularly
if the child is exposed to the influences of conflicting tendencies,
so that none has the opportunity to become automatically settled, to
become sufficiently firmly ingrained in {161} nature to evoke intense
resistance against different habits. When only one dominant attitude
exists, the rise of a critical attitude requires a strong, creative
mind. Where many exist and none has a marked, emotional appeal,
opportunity for critical choice is given.
The greater the differentiation of groups within the social unit, and
the closer the contact between them the less is it likely that any of
the traditional lines of behavior will be so firmly established that
they become entirely automatic. In a diversified culture the child
is exposed to so many conflicting tendencies that few only have the
opportunity to become so strongly ingrained in nature as to evoke
energetic resistance against different habits. A stratified society
consisting of classes with privileges and different viewpoints is,
therefore, more subject to change than a homogeneous society. This may
account for the intense conservatism of the Eskimo, whose culture has
changed very little over a long period. They are remote from contact
with foreign cultures, and their society is remarkably homogeneous, all
households being practically on the same level and all participating
fully in the tribal culture. In contrast to the permanence of their
culture there is evidence of comparatively rapid changes among the
Indians of British Columbia. They are exposed to contact with cultures
of distinct types; and on account of the {162} diversity of privileges
of individuals, families and societies their customs have been in a
state of flux.
These changes are facilitated in all those cases in which customs are
entrusted to the care of a few individuals. Among many tribes sacred
ceremonials are in the keeping of a few priests or of a single chief
or priest. Although they are supposed to preserve the ceremonial
faithfully in all its details, we have ample evidence showing that
owing to forgetfulness, to ambition, to the workings of a philosophic
or imaginative mind, or to the premature death of the keeper of the
secret, the forms may undergo rapid changes.
The influence of an individual upon culture depends not only upon
his strength but also upon the readiness of society to accept changes.
During the unstable conditions of cultural life produced by contact
between European and primitive civilizations many native prophets
have arisen who have with more or less success modified the religious
beliefs of the people. Their revelations, however, were reflexes of the
mixed culture. The new ideas created in society are not free, but are
determined by the culture in which they arise. The artist is hemmed in
by the peculiar style of the art and the technique of his environment;
the religious mind by current religious belief; the political leader
by established political forms. Only when these are {163} shaken by
the impact of foreign ideas or by violent changes of culture owing
to disturbing conditions is the opportunity given to the individual
to establish new lines of thought that may give a new direction to
cultural change.
CHAPTER VIII {164}
EDUCATION
When investigating the physical characteristics of mankind,
anthropologists do not confine themselves to the study of the adult.
They investigate also the growth and development of the child. They
record the increase in size of the body and of its organs, the changes
in physiological reaction and of mental behavior. The results of these
studies are laid down in certain norms characteristic of each age and
each social or racial group.
Physiologically and psychologically the child does not function in
the same way as the adult, the male not in the same way as the female.
Anthropological research offers, therefore, a means of determining what
may be expected of children of different ages and this knowledge is of
considerable value for regulating educational methods. From this point
of view Madame Montessori has developed a pedagogical anthropology
and many educators occupy themselves with investigations of form and
function of the body during childhood and adolescence, in the hope of
developing standards by which we can regulate our demands upon {165}
the physiological and mental performances of the child. More than that,
many educators hope to be enabled to place each individual child in its
proper position and to predict the course of its development.
Anthropological investigations of an age class, let us say of
eight-year-old children, show, for a selected social and racial group,
a certain distribution of stature, weight, size of head, development
of the skeleton, condition of teeth, size of internal organs and so
on. The children represented in the group are not by any means equal,
but each series of observations shows the majority of individuals
ranging near a certain value and few exhibiting values of measurements
remote from a middle value, the fewer the more remote from it. If the
statures of eight-year-old boys range about forty-nine inches, then the
number of those who are one, two, three inches taller or shorter than
this value will decrease with the size of the excess or deficiency. We
have seen before, in our consideration of races, that it is a mistake
to consider the middle value as the norm. We must define the type by
the distributions of the various measurements of the whole series of
individuals included in our age class.
When boys of different ages are compared,--for instance, children of
seven years and nine years of age with those of eight years of age
of whom we {166} spoke just now,--it will be found that the range of
forms in these three adjoining years is so wide that many sizes are
found that belong to the three age classes. This is true, not only
of stature, but of all the other measures, no matter whether we are
dealing with anatomical or functional values. This merely expresses the
common observation that the physical development of a child and its
behavior do not allow us to give a correct estimate of its age.
The reasons for the differences between children are quite varied. Form
and size of the body and its functioning depend upon heredity. Children
of a tall family tend to be tall; children of a family of stocky build
are liable to develop bodily form of the same type. The physical basis
for similarity of function is also determined by heredity.
Another cause for differences is found in different environmental
conditions. Food, sunshine, fresh air, accidental sickness or freedom
from sickness are important contributory elements.
Differences in the rate of development may be due to hereditary
constitution or to environmental conditions. These last are of
particular importance in the application of anthropological standards
to educational problems. If we could determine whether a child is
retarded or accelerated in its development, and if we knew the
standards for {167} each age, the demands to be made upon the child
could be regulated accordingly.
The rate of development of the individual is expressed primarily by the
appearance of definite physiological changes. In a group of the same
descent there is presumably a definite order in which physiological
changes occur and deviations from this order may be interpreted as
retardations or accelerations. We observe the ages at which certain
changes in the body and in the functions of organs occur. The length of
the period of gestation; the first appearance of teeth; the appearance
of centers of ossification in the skeleton; the joining of separate
bones, such as the shafts and ends of the long bones, fingers and toes;
sexual maturity; the appearance of the wisdom teeth; are indications
that, physiologically speaking, the respective parts of the body have
reached a certain, definite state of development.
The time of occurrence of such phenomena has been studied to a certain
extent, although not yet adequately. The observations show that at all
ages the time at which these stages are reached, varies materially in
different individuals, and the more so the later in life the particular
stage develops. In fact, the degree of variation, even in childhood,
is surprising. While the period of gestation varies only by days, the
first appearance of the first teeth varies by many weeks. The time of
the loss of the {168} deciduous teeth differs by months and the period
when maturity is reached differs by years. This variability of age at
which definite physiological conditions are reached goes on increasing
in later life. The signs of senility appear in different individuals
many years apart. We speak, therefore, of a physiological age of an
individual in contrast to his chronological age. If the normal age
at which the permanent inner incisors of boys appear is seven and
a half, then a six-year-old boy whose inner incisors are erupting
is, physiologically speaking, seven and a half years old, or his
physiological acceleration amounts to one and a half years, so far as
tooth development is concerned.
If the whole body and its physiological and mental functions were
developing as a unit we should have an excellent means of placing each
individual according to his or her stage of development. Unfortunately
this is not the case and an attempt to use a single trait for the
determination of the physiological age of an individual will generally
fail. Skeleton, teeth and internal organs, while being influenced by
the general state of development of the body, exhibit at the same time
a considerable degree of independence which may be due to hereditary or
to external causes.
The interrelation between the state of development of parts of the
body is not known in detail. {169} We do know that, in general, size
and physiological age are related. Children who are adolescent are
taller and heavier, in every respect larger, than children of the
same age who do not yet show signs of approaching adolescence. The
development of the skeleton is correlated with size, for among children
of the same age the taller ones have long bones that approach maturer
stages than the shorter ones. In a socially and racially homogeneous
group the children whose permanent teeth erupt early are also taller
than those whose permanent teeth erupt late.
The same interrelation is expressed in the growth of children
belonging to different social classes. The rapidity of the development
of the body is closely related to the economic status of the family.
The children of well-to-do parents, who enjoy plenty of food, exercise,
fresh air and sunshine, develop more quickly than the children of the
poor. Observations in Russia, Italy, America and in other countries all
indicate that the time when a certain physiological stage is reached
is earlier in the rich than in the poor. Therefore all the bodily
measurements of children of the rich are greater than those of the poor
of the same age and the differences between the two groups are greatest
when growth is most rapid and the changes of physiological status are
most pronounced. This happens during adolescence {170} Later on, when
growth ceases the rich are at a standstill, while the poor continue to
grow, so that the difference between the groups is lessened, although
it never disappears completely.
All this indicates that there is a correlation between the growth of
different parts of the body. Still, these relations are subject to
many disturbances. This has been observed particularly in regard to
the teeth. The poor whose general development is retarded, shed their
deciduous teeth earlier than the well-to-do--presumably on account
of the greater care with which the deciduous teeth of children of
the better situated classes are treated. Their deciduous teeth are
carefully preserved, while those of the poor often decay and are lost.
Therefore the stimulus for the early development of the permanent teeth
due to the loss of the corresponding deciduous teeth does not occur
among the well-to-do.
More important than the purely anatomical relations are those between
the functions of the body and the state of bodily development. We have
good evidence that these also are related. When we classify children
of the same age according to their school standing, we find that those
in the higher grades are much larger in every way than those in the
lower grades. We also find that in regard to physiological status
they are more advanced than children who are retarded in their {171}
school standing. Although this proof is not quite satisfactory, since
the advancement in school will also depend upon the apparent bodily
development of children, it indicates a rather interesting relation
between the general functioning of the body and maturity.
A comparison between the two sexes from these points of view shows that
every physiological stage that has been investigated occurs earlier
in girls than in boys. The difference in time is at first slight. The
early stages of development of the skeleton observed during the first
few years of life indicate a difference in favor of the girls of a few
months. At the time of adolescence the physiological development of
girls precedes that of boys by more than two years.
This difference is important. During the early years of childhood the
apparent development of girls and boys, expressed by their stature and
weight, is very nearly the same. From this observation the inference
has been drawn that in early childhood the sex differences in size and
form of the skeleton, muscles and so on are negligible, notwithstanding
their importance in later life. If we compare, however, boys and
girls at the same stage of physiological development, their relation
appears quite differently. If a girl seven years old is at the same
stage of physiological development as a boy eight years old, we should
compare the {172} bulk of the body at these stages, and not at the same
chronological age. The boy of eight years is considerably taller and
heavier than the girl of seven years. In other words, at the same stage
of physiological development the relation of size characteristic of the
sexes in adult life exists.
The correctness of this interpretation is proved by the measures of
those parts of the body that grow slowly. Thus, on the average, the
head of girls is always smaller than that of boys of the same age. In
this case the actual ratio of the measures in the two sexes is not
obscured because the increment of size corresponding to the amount
of physiological acceleration of the girl is small as compared to
the actual amount of sex difference; while in the case of weight and
stature the corresponding increment is so great that it obscures
the typical sex difference. The sex difference in the length of the
head, measured from forehead to occiput, is about eight millimeters
in favor of the men. The total increment due to growth for girls who
may be in their physiological development two years ahead of boys is
not more than about three millimeters. A sexual difference of five
millimeters remains even during this period. The same relations appear
in the slow-growing thickness of long bones which exhibit the same sex
differences in childhood as in adult life.
These observations are important because they {173} emphasize the
existence in childhood of sexual differences in many parts of the
body. These suggest the further question in how far the anatomical
differences are accompanied by physiological and psychological
differences.
What is true of physical measurements is equally true of mental
observations: the powers of children increase rapidly with increasing
age. The growing power of attention, of resistance to fatigue, the
gradual increase of knowledge, the changes in form of thought, have
been studied.
The practical value of all these investigations is that they give us
the means of laying out a standard of demands that may be made on
boys and girls of various ages and belonging to a certain society.
Particularly in an educational system of a large city the knowledge so
gained is helpful in planning the general curriculum.
In a large educational system the observations on physiological age
will also be helpful in assigning children a little more adequately
to the grades into which they fit. It is probable that children of
the same stage of physiological development will work together more
advantageously than children of the same chronological age.
The existence of secondary sexual characteristics and the difference
between the sexes in functional maturity should be considered in
the problem of coeducation. During the period of adolescence {174}
the physiological development of boys and girls of the same ages is
so different that joint education seems of doubtful value. It would
probably be of advantage to retain contact between boys and girls of
equal maturity. The detailed plan of instruction should consider the
differences between boys and girls.
We do not know much about differences in the rate of development
determined by heredity, but it is not unlikely that these exist.
A comparison of some well-to-do Jewish children in New York and
Northwest European children in Newark shows a fairly uniform growth
of the two groups while they are young. With approaching adolescence
the growth of Jewish boys slackens, while the Northwest Europeans
continue to grow vigorously. The effect is that the stature of the
adults is quite distinct. There is no evidence that maturity sets in
at an earlier age among the Jews. Neither is there any indication that
the mode of life is essentially different. The same relation is found
in a comparison of poor Hebrews and the mass of American Public School
children. Here also boys agree in their stature up to the fifteenth
year. Then follows a period of rapid growth for the public school boys,
and of retarded growth for the Jews.
Other differences have been observed in the growth of full blood
Indians and half bloods. As {175} children the former seem to be taller
than the half bloods, while as adults the half bloods are taller than
the Indians. It has also been shown that the increase of the size of
the head differs in different racial groups. The data available at the
present time are still very imperfect.
It is not by any means certain that these differences may not be due
to environmental as much as to hereditary conditions. All we know with
certainty is that when the adult forms of two races vary materially
then the course of growth is also different.
It is probable that the characteristic periods when physiological
changes occur may also differ among different races. The influence
of outer conditions upon these phenomena is so great that nothing
certain can be stated. The value of a knowledge of these phenomena for
educational problems cannot be doubted.
Educators are not satisfied with the general result here outlined. They
wish to ascertain the exact position of each individual in order to
assign to him his proper place. This is more than the anthropological
method can accomplish. Although a group of children may be segregated
that are approximately of the same stage of physiological development,
the individuals will not be uniform. This may be illustrated by a few
examples.
Badly nourished children are on the whole {176} smaller and lighter
in weight than those well nourished. It is, therefore, likely
that the small and light children of a certain age will include
more undernourished individuals than the tall and heavy children.
Undernourishment will also make children of a given age deficient in
weight in comparison to their stature. It may then be expected that
those who are small and light of weight in proportion to their size are
more often undernourished than those showing the opposite traits.
According to this method, to which may be added a few other
characteristics, undernourished children have been segregated and given
better food to bring them up to the standard.
It is not difficult to prove that these criteria are not adequate
and that errors may be expected. Children differ in bodily build by
heredity. Some are tall with heavy bones, others small with a light
skeleton. These may be perfectly healthy and well nourished and still
will appear in the “undernourished” class. Others may have been
retarded in their early development by sickness and may be both too
small and too light of weight. If we examine each individual carefully
in regard to the appearance of skin and muscles and whatever indication
can be found of undernourishment, we actually find a lack of agreement
between the really undernourished group and the one segregated
according {177} to statistical methods. The group contains so many
individuals who are tall and heavy that a tolerably accurate selection
of the undernourished cannot be made by such means. Even if we consider
the food that is given to each individual and include this criterion in
our selection we do not succeed much better, because there are those
who are well fed, but whose digestive system is at fault and who cannot
make proper use of their food.
The selection will bring it about that a greater number of
undernourished individuals are in the segregated class, but it
would not be right to claim that in this manner all those who are
undernourished have been found, nor that all those segregated are
really undernourished. The individual investigation cannot be dispensed
with.
The same conditions prevail in regard to all other characteristics. If
the child is short of stature the shortness may depend upon hereditary
smallness, upon retardation, or upon early unfavorable conditions
which, however, may have been completely overcome.
Even when retardation can be proved by direct physiological evidence
it does not follow that the child must belong mentally to the age
class so indicated, for the conditions controlling physiological and
psychological functioning are not by any means exclusively determined
by physiological age. Hereditary character and environmental causes
entirely {178} independent of the time element are no less important.
A group of children of exactly the same stage of physiological
development as determined by the few available tests differ
considerably among themselves. Their reactions may be quick or slow,
their senses may be acute or dull, their experience may be so varied
according to their home surroundings and general mode of life that a
considerable variation in adaptability to educational requirements may
be expected.
No matter what kind of measurements, experiments, and tests may be
desired, their relation to the actual personality is always indirect.
Without detailed study of the individual a proper pedagogical treatment
is unattainable.
What is true of a group cannot be applied to an individual.
It will be seen that this agrees with our judgment regarding the
significance of racial characteristics. We are apt to consider those
features or measurements around which the great mass of individuals
cluster as characteristic of the group. We believe that this is the
type to which all conform. In doing so we forget that a wide range of
variations is characteristic of every group and that a considerable
number of individuals deviate widely from the “type,” and that
nevertheless these belong to the same group. For this reason the
group standard cannot be applied to every individual. {179} If, for
practical reasons, as in education, it is desired to form a homogeneous
group, the component individuals must be picked out according to their
characteristics from different groups.
There are cases in which for the sake of efficiency anthropological
grouping may be utilized. When it is necessary to select large numbers
from a population, as, for instance, for enlistment during the late
war, it is useful to know that individuals of an unfavorable body
build are on the whole not able to withstand the strain of army life.
Very tall, slim persons with a slight depth of chest are of this kind.
The flatter the chest the more of them will be unable to fulfill
the demands made on bodily strength and endurance. It will then be
economical to discard the whole class rather than to take advantage of
the few who may be useful.
Similar considerations are valid in the selection of laborers for those
employers who rate the laborer not as a person but solely according
to his money value, because the turnover of labor will be less rapid
if the adaptable individuals are numerous in the class from which the
selection is made.
Educators are interested in another problem. It is desirable to
predict the development of an individual. If a child has difficulties
in learning, will it continue to be a dullard or may a better prognosis
{180} be given; or if a child is underdeveloped will it continue to
remain puny?
The answer can be given at least to the physical side of this question.
We have followed a considerable number of children from early growth
on. A group of small young children are liable to grow less than tall
children of the same age. During adolescence a group of tall children
will grow less than a group of short children of the same age. The
latter condition expresses clearly that the short children are on the
whole physiologically younger than the tall ones and are, therefore,
still growing while the taller ones are nearly mature. In early years
the conditions are different. Accelerated children grow with increased
rapidity, while those who are retarded lag the more behind the more
they are retarded. For a whole group it is possible to predict what the
average increment will be if the rate of growth at an early time is
given. However, these results are not significant for the individual.
The causes by which the whole course of growth is controlled are too
varied, the accidents that influence it cannot be predicted. It is true
that the course of undisturbed development depends upon the hereditary
character of the individual, but the varying environmental conditions
disturb this picture.
What is true of the growth of the body is much more true of its
functions, particularly of the {181} mental functioning. A prediction
of the future development of a normal individual cannot be made with
any degree of assurance.
* * * * *
Anthropology throws light upon an entirely different problem of
education. We have discussed before the causes that make for cultural
stability and found that automatic actions based on the habits of early
childhood are most stable. The firmer the habits that are instilled
into the child the less they are subject to reasoning, the stronger is
their emotional appeal. If we wish to educate children to unreasoned
mass action, we must cultivate set habits of action and thought. If we
wish to educate them to intellectual and emotional freedom care must be
taken that no unreasoned action takes such habitual hold upon them that
a serious struggle is involved in the attempt to cast it off.
The customary forms of thought of primitive tribes show us clearly
how an individual who is hemmed in on all sides by automatic reactions
may believe himself to be free. The Eskimo present an excellent
example of these conditions. In their social life they are exceedingly
individualistic. The social group has so little cohesion that we have
hardly the right to speak of tribes. A number of families come together
and live in the same village, but there is nothing to prevent any one
of them from living and settling at another place with {182} other
families of his acquaintance. In fact, during a period of a lifetime
the families constituting an Eskimo village are shifting about; and
while they generally return after many years to the places where their
relatives live, the family may have belonged to a great many different
communities. There is no authority vested in any individual, no
chieftaincy, and no method by which orders, if they were given, could
be enforced. In short, so far as human relations are concerned, we have
a condition of almost absolute anarchy. We might, therefore, say that
every single person is entirely free, within the limits of his own
mental ability and physical competency, to determine his own mode of
life and his own mode of thinking.
Nevertheless it is easily seen that there are innumerable restrictions
determining his behavior. The Eskimo boy learns how to handle the
knife, how to use bow and arrow, how to hunt, how to build a house;
the girl learns how to sew and mend clothing and how to cook; and
during all their lives they apply the methods learned in childhood. New
inventions are rare and the whole industrial life of the people runs in
traditional channels.
What is true of their industrial activities is no less true of their
thoughts. Certain religious ideas have been transmitted to them,
notions of right and wrong, amusements and enjoyment of certain types
of art. Any deviation from these is not likely to {183} occur. At the
same time, and since all alien forms of behavior are unknown to them,
it never enters into their minds that any different way of thinking and
acting would be possible, and they consider themselves as perfectly
free in regard to all their actions.
Based on our wider and different experience we know that the industrial
problems of the Eskimo might be solved in a great many other ways and
that their religious traditions and social customs might be quite
different from what they are. From the outside, objective point of view
we see clearly the restrictions that bind the individual who considers
himself free.
It is not difficult to see that the same conditions prevail among
ourselves. Families and schools which assiduously cultivate the tenets
of a religious faith and of a religious ceremonial and surround
them with an emotional halo raise, on the whole, a generation that
follows the same path. The Catholicism of Italy, the Protestantism
of Scandinavia and Germany, the Mahometanism of Turkey, the orthodox
Judaism, are intelligible only on the basis of a lack of freedom of
thought due to the strength of the automatic reaction to impressions
received in early childhood that exclude all new viewpoints. In the
majority of individuals who grow up under these conditions a new,
distinct viewpoint is not brought out with sufficient {184} vigor
to make it clear that theirs is not freely chosen, but imposed upon
them; and, _if_ strange ideas are presented, the emotional appeal of
the thoughts that are part of their nature is sufficient to make any
rationalization of the habitual attitude acceptable, except to those
of strong intellect and character. To say the least, the cultivation
of formal religious attitudes in family and school makes difficult
religious freedom.
What is true of religion is equally true of subservience to any other
type of social behavior. Only to a limited extent can the distribution
of political parties be understood by economic considerations.
Often party affiliation is bred in the young in the same way as
denominational allegiance.
With the weakening of the impressions of youthful instruction and
familiarity with many varying forms develops the freedom of choice. The
weakening of the valuation of the dogma and the spread of scientific
information has resulted in the loss of cohesion of the Protestant
churches.
The methods of education chosen depend upon our ideals. The
imperialistic State that strives for power and mass action wants
citizens who are one in thought, one in being swayed by the same
symbols. Democracy demands individual freedom of the fetters of social
symbols. Our public schools are hardly conscious of the conflict of
these ideas. {185} They instill automatic reactions to symbols by means
of patriotic ceremonial, in many cases by indirect religious appeal
and too often through the automatic reactions to the behavior of the
teacher that is imitated. At the same time they are supposed to develop
mind and character of the individual child. No wonder that they create
conflicts in the minds of the young, conflicts between the automatic
attitudes that are carefully nursed and the teachings that are to
contribute to individual freedom.
It may well be questioned whether the crises that are so characteristic
of adolescent life in our civilization and that educators assume to
be organically determined, are not due in part to these conflicts, in
part to the artificial sexual restraints demanded by our society. We
are altogether too readily inclined to ascribe to physiological causes
those difficulties that are brought about by cultural interference with
the physiological demands of the body. It is necessary that the crises
and struggles that are characteristic of individual life in our society
be investigated in societies in which our restraints do not exist while
others may be present, before we assume all too readily that these are
inherent in “human nature.”
The serious mental struggle induced by the conflict between
instinctive reaction and traditional social ethics is illustrated by a
case of suicide {186} among the Eskimo. A family had lost a child in
the fall and according to custom the old fur clothing had to be thrown
away. Skins were scarce that year and a second death in the family
would have led to disaster to all its members. This induced the old,
feeble grandmother, a woman whom I knew well, to wander away one night
and to expose herself, in a rock niche, to death by freezing, away from
the family who thus would not have been contaminated by contact with a
corpse. However, she was missed, found and brought back. She escaped a
second time and died before she was found.
Another case is presented by the Chukchee of Siberia. They believe
that every person will live in the future life in the same condition
in which he finds himself at the time of death. As a consequence an
old man who begins to be decrepit wishes to die, so as to avoid life
as a cripple in the endless future; and it becomes the duty of his son
to kill him. The son believes in the righteousness of his father’s
request, but, at the same time, feels the filial love for his father,
and a conflict of duties arises between filial love and the traditional
customs of the tribe. Generally the customary behavior is obeyed, but
not without severe struggles.
An instructive example of the absence of our difficulties in the life
of adolescents and the occurrence of others is found in the studies of
Dr. {187} Margaret Mead on the adolescents of Samoa. With the freedom
of sexual life, the absence of a large number of conflicting ideals,
and the emphasis upon forms that to us are irrelevant, the adolescent
crisis disappears, while new difficulties originate at a later period
when complexities of married life develop. A similar example is
presented in the life of one of our southwestern Indian tribes, the
Zuni, among whom, according to Dr. Ruth L. Bunzel, the suppression
of ambition, the desire to be like one’s neighbor and to avoid all
prominence are cultivated. They lead to a peculiar impersonal attitude
and to such an extent of formalism that individual crises are all but
suppressed.
We do not know enough about these questions, but our anthropological
knowledge justifies the most serious doubts regarding the physiological
determination of many of the crises that characterize individual life
in our civilization. A thorough study of analogous situations in
foreign cultures will do much to clear up this problem which is of
fundamental importance for the theory of education.
It is a question whether the doubts that beset the individual in such
a period are beneficial or a hindrance. The seriousness of the struggle
is certainly undesirable and an easier transition will be facilitated
by lessening the intensity of attachment {188} to the situation against
which he is led to rebel.
The lack of freedom in our behavior is not confined to the uneducated,
it prevails in the thoughts and actions of all classes of society.
When we attempt to form our opinions in an intelligent manner, we
are inclined to accept the judgment of those who by their education
and occupation are compelled to deal with the questions at issue. We
assume that their views must be rational and based on an intelligent
understanding of the problems. The foundation of this belief is the
tacit assumption that they have special knowledge and that they are
free to form perfectly rational opinions. However, it is easy to see
that there is no social group in existence in which such freedom
prevails.
The behavior in somewhat complex primitive societies in which there is
a distinction between different social classes, throws an interesting
light upon these conditions. An instance is presented by the Indians
of British Columbia, among whom a sharp distinction is made between
people of noble birth and common people. In this case the traditional
behavior of the two classes shows considerable differences. The social
tradition that regulates the life of the nobility is somewhat analogous
to the social tradition in our society. A great deal of stress is laid
upon strict observance of convention and upon display, and nobody can
maintain {189} his position in high society without an adequate amount
of ostentation and without strict regard for conventional conduct.
These requirements are so fundamental that an overbearing conceit
and a contempt for the common people become social requirements of
an important chief. The contrast between the social proprieties for
the nobility and those for the common people is very striking. Of the
common people are expected humbleness, mercy and all those qualities
that we consider amiable and humane.
Similar observations may be made in all those cases in which, by a
complex tradition, a social class is set off from the mass of the
people. The chiefs of the Polynesian Islands, the kings of Africa, the
medicine men of many countries, present examples in which the line of
conduct and thought of a social group is strongly modified by their
segregation from the mass of the people. They form closed societies. On
the whole, in societies of this type, the mass of the people consider
as their ideal those actions which we should characterize as humane;
not by any means that all their actions conform to humane conduct,
but their valuation of men shows that the fundamental altruistic
principles which we recognize are recognized by them too. Not so with
the privileged classes. In place of the general humane interest the
class interest predominates; and while it cannot {190} be claimed that
their conduct, individually, is selfish, it is always so shaped that
the interest of the class to which a person belongs prevails over the
interest of society as a whole. If it is necessary to secure rank
and to enhance the standing of the family by killing off a number of
enemies, there is no hesitation felt in taking life. If the standards
of the class require that it members should not perform menial
occupations, but should devote themselves to art or learning, then all
the members of the class will vie with one another in the attainment
of these achievements. It is for this reason that every segregated
class is much more strongly influenced by special traditional ideas
than is the rest of the people; not that the multitude is free to think
rationally and that its behavior is not determined by tradition; but
the tradition is not so specific, not so strictly determined in its
range, as in the case of the segregated classes. For this reason it is
often found that the restriction of freedom of thought by convention is
greater in what we might call the educated classes then in the mass of
the people.
I believe this observation is of great importance when we try to
understand conditions in our own society. Its bearing upon the problem
of the psychological significance of nationalism will at once be
apparent; for the nation is also a segregated class, a closed society,
albeit segregated according {191} to other principles; and the
characteristic feature of nationalism is that its social standards are
considered as more fundamental than those that are general and human,
or rather that the members of each nation like to assume that their
ideals are or should be the true ideals of mankind. The late President
Wilson once gave expression to this misconception when he said that, if
we,--Americans,--hold ideals for ourselves, we should also hold them
for others, referring in that case particularly to Mexico. At the same
time it illustrates clearly that we should make a fundamental mistake
if we should confound class selfishness and individual selfishness;
for we find the most splendid examples of unselfish devotion to the
interests of the nation, heroism that has been rightly praised for
thousands of years as the highest virtue, and it is difficult to
realize that nevertheless the whole history of mankind points in the
direction of a _human_ ideal as opposed to a _national_ ideal. And
indeed may we not continue to admire the self-sacrifice of a great
mind, even if we transcend to ideals that were not his, and that
perhaps, owing to the time and place in which he lived, could not be
his?
Our observation has also another important application. The
industrial and economic development of modern times has brought about
a differentiation within our population that has never been {192}
equalled in any primitive society. The occupations of the various parts
of a modern European or American population differ enormously; so much
so that in many cases it is almost impossible for people speaking
the same language to understand one another when they talk about
their daily work. The ideas with which the scientist, the artist, the
tradesman, the business man, the laborer operate are so distinctive
that they have only a few fundamental elements in common. Here it may
again be observed that those occupations which are intellectually or
emotionally most highly specialized require the longest training, and
training always means an infusion of historically transmitted ideas.
It is therefore not surprising that the thought of what we call the
educated classes is controlled essentially by those ideals which have
been transmitted to us by past generations. These ideals are always
highly specialized, and include the ethical tendencies, the æsthetic
inclinations, the intellectuality, and the expression of volition of
past times. After long continued education according to these standards
their control may find expression in a dominant tone which determines
the whole mode of thought and which, for the very reason that it has
come to be ingrained into our whole mentality, never rises into our
consciousness.
In those cases in which our reaction is more conscious, it is either
positive or negative. Our {193} thoughts may be based on a high
valuation of the past, or they may be in revolt against it.
When we bear this in mind we may understand the characteristics of the
behavior of the intellectuals. It is a mistake to assume that their
mentality is, on the average, appreciably higher than that of the rest
of the people. Perhaps a greater number of independent minds find
their way into this group than into some other group of individuals
who are moderately well-to-do; but their average mentality is surely
in no way superior to that of the workingmen, who by the conditions
of their youth have been compelled to subsist on the produce of their
manual labor. In both groups mediocrity prevails; unusually strong
and unusually weak individuals are the exceptions. For this reason
the strength of character and intellect that is required for vigorous
thought on matters in which intense sentiments are involved is not
commonly found,--either among the intellectuals or in any other part
of the population. This condition, combined with the thoroughness with
which the intellectuals have imbibed the traditions of the past, makes
the majority of them in all nations conventional. It has the effect
that their thoughts are based on tradition, and that the range of their
vision is liable to be limited.
There are of course strong minds among the intellectuals who rise
above the conventionalism of {194} their class, and attain that freedom
that is the reward of a courageous search for truth, along whatever
path it may lead.
In contrast to the intellectuals, the masses in our modern city
populations are less subject to the influence of traditional teaching.
Many children are torn away from school before it can make an indelible
impression upon their minds and they may never have known the strength
of the conservative influence of a home in which parents and children
live a common life. The more heterogeneous the society in which they
live, and the more the constituent groups are free from historic
influences; or the more they represent different historic traditions,
the less strongly will they be attached to the past.
This does not preclude the possibility of the formation of small,
self-centered, closed societies,--gangs,--among the uneducated, that
equal primitive man in the intensity of their group feeling and in
the disregard of the rights of the outsider. On account of their
segregation they no longer belong to the masses.
It would be an exaggeration if we should extend the view just
expressed over all aspects of human life. I am speaking here only of
those fundamental concepts of right and wrong that develop in the
segregated classes and in the masses. In a society in which beliefs
are transmitted with great intensity {195} the impossibility of
treating calmly the views and actions of the heretic is shared by
both groups. When, through the progress of scientific thought, the
foundations of dogmatic belief are shaken among the intellectuals and
not among the masses, we find the conditions reversed and greater
freedom of traditional forms of thought among the intellectuals,--at
least in so far as the current dogma is involved. It would also be
an exaggeration to claim that the masses can sense the right way of
attaining the realization of their ideals, for these must be found
by painful experience and by the application of knowledge. However,
neither of these restrictions touches our main contention; namely, that
the desires of the masses are in a wider sense human than those of the
classes.
It is therefore not surprising that the masses of the people, whose
attachment to the past is comparatively slight, respond more quickly
and more energetically to the urgent demands of the hour than the
educated classes, and that the ethical ideals of the best among them
are human ideals, not those of a segregated class. For this reason I
should always be more inclined to accept, in regard to fundamental
human problems, the judgment of the masses rather than the judgment
of the intellectuals, which is much more certain to be warped by
unconscious control of traditional ideas. I do not mean to say that the
judgment of the masses would {196} be acceptable in regard to every
problem of human life, because there are many which, by their technical
nature, are beyond their understanding; nor do I believe that the
details of the right solution of a problem can always be found by the
masses; but I feel strongly that the problem itself, as felt by them,
and the ideal that they want to see realized, is a safer guide for our
conduct than the ideal of the intellectual group that stand under the
ban of an historical tradition that dulls their feeling for the needs
of the day.
One word more, in regard to what might be a fatal misunderstanding
of my meaning. If I decry unthinking obedience to the ideals of our
forefathers, I am far from believing that it will ever be possible or
that it will even be desirable, to cast away the past and to begin
anew on a purely intellectual basis. Those who think that this can be
accomplished do not, I believe, understand human nature aright. Our
very wishes for changes are based on criticism of the past, and would
take another direction if the conditions under which we live were of a
different nature. We are building up our new ideals by utilizing the
work of our ancestors, even where we condemn it, and so it will be in
the future. Whatever our generation may achieve will attain in course
of time that venerable aspect that will lay in chains the minds of our
successors, and it will require new efforts to free {197} a future
generation of the shackles that we are forging. When we once recognize
this process, we must see that it is our task not only to free
ourselves of traditional prejudice, but also to search in the heritage
of the past for what is useful and right, and to endeavor to free the
mind of future generations so that they may not cling to our mistakes,
but may be ready to correct them.
CHAPTER IX {198}
MODERN CIVILIZATION AND PRIMITIVE CULTURE
In the preceding pages we have considered the effect of a number of
fundamental biological, psychological and social factors upon modern
problems.
There are many other aspects of modern culture that may be examined
from an anthropological point of view.
One of the great difficulties of modern life is presented by the
conflict of ideals; individualism against socialization; nationalism
against internationalism; enjoyment of life against efficiency;
rationalism against a sound emotionalism; tradition against the logic
of facts.
We may discern tendencies of change in all these directions;
and changes that appear to one as progress appear to another as
retrogression. Attempts to further individualism, to restrict
efficiency, to make tradition more binding would be considered as
objectionable and energetically resisted by many. What is desirable
depends upon valuations that are not universally accepted.
Such differences of opinion do not exist in the {199} domain of
physics or chemistry. The purposes to which we apply physical or
chemical knowledge are definite. We have certain needs that are to
be filled. A bridge is to be built, houses are to be constructed,
machinery for accomplishing some specific work is required,
communication is to be facilitated, dyes are to be made, fertilizers
to be invented. In every case, even if the need is called forth by
preceding inventions, there is a definite object to be attained, the
value of which lies in the improvement of the outer conditions of life.
As long as we are satisfied that the resulting comforts and facilities
are desirable, the application of our knowledge is valuable. The
importance of achievements based on advances in physical sciences is
readily acknowledged in so far as they enable us to overcome obstacles
that would beset our lives if we had to do without them.
The applicability of the results of research to practical problems of
social life are similar when we consider aims universally recognized
as desirable. Individual health depending upon the health of the whole
group is perhaps one of the simplest of these. Even in this case
difficulties arise. There are individuals of impaired health whose
existence may somewhat endanger public health. Is it of greater value
to segregate these from the social body to their disadvantage, or to
run the slight risk of their unfavorable influence {200} upon the whole
population? The answer to this question will depend upon valuations
that have no basis in science, but in ideals of social behavior, and
these are not the same for all members of a modern social group.
In general we may say that in the practical application of social
science absolute standards are lacking. It is of no use to say that we
want to attain the greatest good for the greatest number, if we are not
able to come to an agreement as to what constitutes the greatest good.
This difficulty is strongly emphasized as soon as we look beyond the
confines of our own modern civilization. The social ideals of the
Central African Negroes, of the Australians, Eskimo, and Chinese
are so different from our own that the valuations given by them to
human behavior are not comparable. What is considered good by one is
considered bad by another.
It would be an error to assume that our own social habits do not
enter into judgments of the mode of life and thought of alien people.
A single phenomenon like our reaction to what we call “good manners”
illustrates how strongly we are influenced by customary behavior. We
are exceedingly sensitive to differences in manners; definite table
manners, etiquette of dress, a certain reserve, are peculiar to us.
When different table manners, odd types of dress, and an unusual
expansiveness {201} are found, we feel a revulsion and the valuation of
our own manners tinges our description of the foreign forms.
The scientific study of generalized social forms requires, therefore,
that the investigator free himself from all valuations based on our
culture. An objective, strictly scientific inquiry can be made only
if we succeed in entering into each culture on its own basis, if
we elaborate the ideals of each people and include in our general
objective study cultural values as found among different branches of
mankind.
Even in the domain of science the favorite method of approaching
problems exerts a dominating influence over our minds. This is well
illustrated by the fashions prevailing in different periods: the
dialectics of the Middle Ages were as satisfying to the average
scientific minds of those periods as is the aversion to dialectics
and the insistence on observation in modern times. The concentration
of biological thought upon problems of evolution in the early
Darwinian period presents another example. The kaleidoscopic changes
in interest, foremost in physiological and psychological inquiries
of our times,--such as the theories based on the functions of glands
of internal secretion, on racial and individual constitution, or on
psychoanalysis,--are others. The passionate intensity with which these
ideas are taken up, leading {202} to a temporary submersion of all
others and to a belief in their value as a sufficient basis of inquiry,
proves how easily the human mind is led to the belief in an absolute
value of those ideas that are expressed in the surrounding culture.
The reasons for this type of behavior are not far to seek. We are apt
to follow the habitual activities of our fellows without a careful
examination of the fundamental ideas from which their actions spring.
Conformity in action has for its sequel conformity in thought. The
emancipation from current thought is for most of us as difficult in
science as it is in everyday life.
The emancipation from our own culture, demanded of the anthropologist,
is not easily attained, because we are only too apt to consider the
behavior in which we are bred as natural for all mankind, as one that
must necessarily develop everywhere. It is, therefore, one of the
fundamental aims of scientific anthropology to learn which traits of
behavior, if any, are organically determined and are, therefore, the
common property of mankind and which are due to the culture in which we
live.
We are taught to lay stress upon national differences that occur among
Europeans and their descendants. Notwithstanding the peculiarities
characteristic of each nation or local division the essential cultural
background is the same for {203} all of these. The cultural forms of
Europe are determined by what happened in antiquity in the Eastern
Mediterranean. In our modern civilization we have to recognize the
progeny of Greek and Roman culture. The slight local variations are
built up on a fundamental likeness. They are insignificant when we
compare them to the differences that obtain between Europe and peoples
that have not developed on the basis of the ancient Mediterranean
culture. Even India and China cannot be entirely separated from the
historical influences emanating from western Asia and the Mediterranean
area.
The objective study of types of culture that have developed on
historically independent lines or that have grown to be fundamentally
distinct enables the anthropologist to differentiate clearly between
those phases of life that are valid for all mankind and others that
are culturally determined. Supplied with this knowledge he reaches a
standpoint that enables him to view our own civilization critically
and to enter into a comparative study of values with a mind relatively
uninfluenced by the emotions elicited by the automatically regulated
behavior in which he participates as a member of our society.
The freedom of judgment thus obtained is of great value. We may not
hope to reach it with ease, because it depends upon a clear recognition
{204} of what is organically and what culturally determined. The
inquiry into this problem is hampered at every step by our own
subjection to cultural standards that are misconstrued as generally
valid human standards. The end can be reached only by patient inquiry
in which our own emotional valuations and attitudes are conscientiously
held in the background. The psychological and social data valid for all
mankind that are so obtained are basal for all culture and not subject
to varying valuation.
The values of our social ideals will thus gain in clarity by a rigid,
objective study of foreign cultures.
If we could be sure that these studies would ultimately lead in their
results to the discovery of definite laws governing the historical
development of social life we might hope to construe a system for
a reasonable treatment of our social problems. It is, however,
questionable whether such an ideal is within our reach.
The fundamental difficulty may be illustrated by examples taken from
the inorganic world. When we express a law in physics or chemistry
we mean that, certain conditions being given, a definite result will
follow. I release an object at a given place and it will fall with
definite speed and acceleration. I bring two elements into contact and
they will form, under controlled conditions, a definite {205} compound.
The result of an experiment may be predicted if the conditions
controlling it are known. If our knowledge of mechanics and mathematics
is sufficient and the position of all the planets at one given moment
is known, we can foretell what movements are going to happen and
what movements happened in the past, as long as no disturbing outer
influences make themselves felt.
Social phenomena cannot be subjected to experiments. Controlled
conditions, excluding disturbing outer influences, are unattainable.
These complicate every process that we try to study.
The more complex the phenomena the more difficult it is to foretell
the future from a condition existing at a given moment, even if the
essential laws governing the happenings are known. Supposing, for
instance, we are studying erosion on a mountainside. Can we foretell
which course it is to take, or how the present forms have resulted? We
find a gulch. At its head is a large bowlder that deflected the water
and caused it to cut a channel for itself on one side. If the stone
had not been there, the gulch would have had a different direction.
It so happens that the soil in one direction was soft so that the
running water cut readily into it. We are dealing solely with the
laws of erosion, but even the most intimate knowledge of these cannot
adequately explain the present course of the gulch. The bowlder may
be in its place because {206} it was loosened by an animal walking
along the mountainside. It fell down and rested at the place where it
obstructed the course of the running water.
All incidents of this class that influence the isolated process we want
to study are excluded in experimentation. They are accidents in so far
as they have no logical relation to the process about which we desire
to gain knowledge. Even in the astronomical problem just alluded to
the positions of the heavenly bodies at the initial moment are in this
sense accidental, because they cannot be derived from any mechanical
law. Disturbing outer influences that have no relation to the law must
be admitted as accidents that determine the distribution of matter at
the moment chosen as the initial one.
These conditions make prediction of what is going to happen in a
special case exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Accidental
occurrences that are logically not related to the phenomena studied
modify the sequence of events that might be determined if the
conditions were absolutely controlled and protected against all outside
interference. This condition is attained in a completely defined
physical or chemical experiment, but never in any phenomenon of nature
that can only be observed, not controlled. Notwithstanding the advances
in our knowledge of the mechanics of air currents, weather prediction
remains insecure in {207} regard to the actual state of the weather at
a given hour in a given spot. A general, fairly correct prognosis for a
larger area may be possible, but an exact sequence of individual events
cannot be given. Accidental causes are too numerous to allow of an
accurate prediction.
What is true in these cases is ever so much more true of social
phenomena. Let us assume that there exists a society that has developed
its culture according to certain laws discovered by a close scrutiny of
the behavior of diverse societies. For some reason, perhaps on account
of hostile attacks that have nothing to do with the inner workings of
the society, the people have to leave their home and migrate from a
fertile country into a desert. They have to adjust themselves to new
forms of life; new ideas will develop in the new surroundings. The fact
that they have been transplanted from one region to another is just an
accident,--like the loosened bowlder that determined the direction of
the gulch.
Even a hasty consideration of the history of man shows that accidents
of this kind are the rule in every society, for no society is isolated
but exists in more or less intimate relations to its neighbors.
The controlling conditions may also be of quite a different nature.
The game on which the people subsist may change its habitat or become
extinct, a wooded area may become open country. All {208} cases of
change of geographical or economic environment entail changes in the
structure of society, but these are accidental events in no way related
to the inner working of the society itself.
As an example we may consider the history of Scandinavia. If we try to
understand what the people are at the present time we have to inquire
into their descent. We must consider the climatic and geographic
changes that have occurred since the period when the glaciers of
the pleistocene retracted and allowed man to settle, the changes in
vegetation, the early contact with southern and eastern neighbors.
All these have no relation to the laws that may govern the inner life
of a society. They are accidents. If the Central Europeans had had no
influence whatever upon Scandinavia the people would not be what they
are. These elements cannot be eliminated.
For these reasons every culture can be understood only as an historical
growth. It is determined to a great extent by outer occurrences that do
not originate in the inner life of the people.
It might be thought that these conditions did not prevail in early
times, that primitive societies were isolated and that the laws
governing their inner development may be learned directly from
comparative studies of their cultures. This is not the case. Even the
simplest groups with which we are familiar have developed by contact
with their {209} neighbors. The Bushman of South Africa has learned
from the Negro; the Eskimo from the Indian; the Negrito from the Malay;
the Veddah from the Singhalese. Cultural influences are not even
confined to close neighbors; wheat and barley traveled in early times
over a large part of the Old World; Indian corn over the two Americas.
If we find that the legal forms of Africa, Europe and Asia are alike
and different from those of primitive America, it does not follow that
these forms represent a natural sequence, unless an actual, necessary
order of the development can be demonstrated. It is much more probable
that by cultural contact the legal forms of the Old World have spread
over a wide area.
It is more than questionable whether it is justifiable to construct
from a mere static examination of cultural forms the world over an
historical sequence that would express laws of cultural development.
Every culture is a complex growth and, on account of the intimate,
early associations of people inhabiting large areas, it is not
admissible to assume that the accidental causes that modify the course
of development will cancel one another and that the great mass of
evidence will give us a picture of a law of the growth of culture.
I am far from claiming that no general laws relating to the growth
of culture exist. Whatever they may be, they are in every particular
case overlaid {210} by a mass of accidents that were probably much more
potent in the actual happenings than the general laws.
We may recognize definite, causally determined relations between the
economic conditions of a people and the density of population. The
number of individuals of a hunting tribe inhabiting a particular
territory is obviously limited by the available amount of game. There
will be starvation as soon as the population exceeds the maximum
that may be maintained in an unfavorable year. If the same people
develop agriculture and the art of preserving a food supply for a long
period, a denser population is possible and, at the same time, each
individual will have more leisure and there will be a greater number of
individuals enjoying leisure. Under these conditions the population is
liable to increase. We may perhaps say that complexity of culture and
density of population are correlated. Whether this development actually
occurs in a given population is an entirely different question.
Sociologists have made many attempts to discover the conditions
controlling the social behavior of man and the development of culture,
but their generalizations do not enable us to predict the actual
happenings in a specific culture.
When we try to apply the results of anthropological studies to the
problems of modern life, we {211} must not expect results parallel to
those obtained by controlled experiments. The conditions are so complex
that it is doubtful whether any significant “laws” can be discovered.
There are certain tendencies in social behavior which are manifest; but
the conditions in which they are active are controlled by accident,
in so far as the varied activities of society and its relation to the
outer world are logically unrelated. To give only one example: the
technical development of electricity depended upon purely scientific
work. The scientific discoveries depended upon the general advance of
physics and upon purely theoretical interests. They were seized upon by
the tendency of our times to exploit every discovery technically. The
modifications of our lives brought about by the use of the telephone,
radio, Roentgen rays and the many other inventions are so little
related to the scientific discovery itself that in relation to them it
plays the rôle of an accident. If some of the discoveries had been made
at another time their effect upon our social life might have been quite
different. Thus every change in one aspect of social life acts as an
accident in relation to others only remotely related to it.
For these reasons anthropology will never become an exact science in
the sense that the knowledge of the status of a society at a given
moment will permit us to predict what is going to happen. {212}
Our observations relate primarily to the state of society and the
processes that go on in it.
These viewpoints must be borne in mind when we try to approach the
problems of cultural progress. They may also help us in a critique of
some of the theories on which modern social aspirations are based.
The rapid development of science and of the technical application of
scientific knowledge are the impressive indications of the progress of
modern civilization.
An increase in our knowledge and in the control of nature, an addition
of new tools and processes to those known before may well be called
progress, for nothing need be lost, but new powers are acquired and
new insight is opened. Much of the increase in knowledge is, at the
same time, elimination of error and in this sense also represents a
progress. In the acquisition of new methods of controlling the forces
of nature no qualitative standard is involved. It is a quantitative
increase in the extent of previous achievements. In the recognition
of earlier errors our standard is truth; but at the same time the
recognition of error implies more rational, often useful conclusions.
In all these acquisitions a process of reasoning is involved. The
achievements are a result of intellectual work extending over
ever-widening fields and increasing in thoroughness. {213}
The discovery of methods of preserving food, the invention of manifold
implements of the chase and of tools for manufacture; of clothing,
shelter and utensils for everyday life; the discovery of agriculture
and the association with animals that led to their domestication; the
substitution of metals for stone, bone, and wood; all these are rungs
on the long ladder that led to our modern inventions, which are now
being added to with overwhelming rapidity.
Knowledge has been increasing apace. The crude observation of nature
taught man many simple facts,--the forms and habits of animals and
plants, the course of the heavenly bodies, the changes of weather and
the useful properties of materials, of fire and of water.
A long and difficult step was taken when the acquired knowledge was
first systematized and conscious inquiry intended to expand the
boundaries of knowledge was attempted. In early times imagination was
drawn upon to supply the causal links between the phenomena of nature,
or to give teleological explanations that satisfied the mind. Gradually
the domain for the play of imagination has been restricted and the
serious attempt is being made to subject imaginative hypotheses to the
close scrutiny of observation.
Thus we may recognize progress in a definite {214} direction in the
development of invention and knowledge. If we should value a society
entirely on the basis of its technical and scientific achievements
it would be easy to establish a line of progress which, although not
uniform, leads from simplicity to complexity.
Other aspects of cultural life are not with equal ease brought into a
progressive sequence.
The intensity of technical activity which creates ever-increasing
desires for physical comforts and conveniences makes such demands upon
the time of all individuals that for the majority leisure is much
restricted. The example of primitive life proves that activities that
appeal to the emotions cannot flourish without leisure; but leisure
alone is not sufficient. Unless the individual participates in a
multiplicity of cultural activities, if his life is restricted within
a narrow compass, leisure is unprofitable. If we measure progress in
culture by these standards, advances in the control of nature and of
knowledge alone are insufficient.
We have to consider also their effect upon the participation of the
individual in social life.
It is not easy to define progress in any phase of social life other
than in knowledge and control of nature.
* * * * *
It might seem that the low value given to life in primitive society
and the cruelty of primitive man {215} are indications of a low ethical
standard. It is quite possible to show an advance in ethical _behavior_
when we compare primitive society with our own. Westermarck and
Hobhouse have examined these data in great detail and have given us an
elaborate history of the evolution of moral ideas. Their descriptions
are quite true, but I do not believe that they represent a growth of
moral _ideas_, but rather reflect the same moral ideas as manifested in
different types of society and taking on forms varying according to the
extent of knowledge of the people.
If we restrict our considerations to the closed society to which an
individual belongs we do not find any appreciable difference in moral
ideas. We have seen at another place that in a closed society without
differentiation in rank there is an absolute solidarity of interest
and the same moral obligation of altruistic behavior is found, as
among ourselves. The behavior towards the slave or to members of alien
societies may be cruel. There may be no regard for their rights. The
obligations within the society are binding. The prevailing idea of a
fundamental, even specific difference between the members of the closed
society and outsiders hinders the development of sympathetic feeling.
We consider it our right to kill criminals dangerous to society, to
kill in self-defense and in war. {216} We also kill animals for the
mere pleasure of hunting and the excitement of the chase. Exactly
the same rules prevail in primitive society. They give a different
impression, because crime, self-defense, war and the killing of animals
have not the same meaning as among ourselves. A breach of the laws
regulating marriage may be considered a heinous crime endangering the
existence of the whole community because it calls forth the ire of
supernatural powers; an apparently slight breach of good manners may be
a deadly insult.
It is true that in the life of primitive man revenge as a right and
a duty is keenly felt and that its form is much more cruel than our
ethical standards would permit. In judging the psychological causes
of this difference we must consider the infinitely greater hazards
of life in primitive society. The weather, the dangers of the chase,
attacks of wild animals or of enemies make life much more precarious
than in civilized communities and dull the feeling for suffering. The
thoughtless pleasure that children feel in tormenting animals and
cripples, an expression of their inability to identify their own mental
processes with those of others, is quite analogous to the actions
of primitive men. The significance of this attitude will best be
understood when we compare our feeling of sympathy for animal suffering
with that of the Hindu. While we kill animals that we need for food,
{217} albeit without inflicting unnecessary suffering, all life is
sacred to the Hindu. We claim the right to kill animals which we need;
the Hindu extends the right to live over all his fellow creatures.
We must compare the code of primitive ethics with our own ethics and
primitive conduct with our own conduct. It may safely be said that the
code, so far as relations between members of a group are concerned,
does not differ from ours. It is the duty of every person to respect
life, well-being and property of his fellows, and to refrain from any
action that may harm the group as a whole. All breaches of this code
are threatened with social or supernatural punishment.
When the tribe is divided into small self-contained groups and moral
obligations of the individual are confined to the group members, a
state of apparent lawlessness may result. When the tribe forms a firm
unit, the impression of peaceful quiet, more closely corresponding to
our own conditions is given. An example of the former kind is presented
by the tribes of northern Vancouver Island, which are each divided
into a considerable number of clans or family groups of conflicting
interests. Solidarity does not extend beyond the limits of the clan.
For this reason conflicts between clans are rather frequent. Harm done
to a member of one clan leads to clan feuds.
The distinction between members of a group and {218} outsiders
persists in modern life, not only in everyday relations but also in
legislation. Every law discriminating between citizens and foreigners,
every protective tariff that is by its nature hostile to the foreigner
is an expression of a double ethical standard, one for fellows, the
other for outsiders.
The duty of self-perfection has developed in modern society, but
is apparently absent in more primitive forms of human life. The
irreconcilable conflicts of valuations that are characteristic of our
times and to which we referred previously are in part absent because
in simple societies a single standard of behavior prevails. We have
referred to the freedom of the Eskimos of human control and saw that,
nevertheless, he is hemmed in on all sides by the narrowness of his
material culture, his beliefs and traditional practices. There is no
group known to him that possesses different standards, that presents
the problem of choice between conflicting alternatives that beset our
lives. We have also referred to the social development of the child
in Samoa where the lack of stratification into groups of decidedly
distinct ideals makes it exceedingly difficult for new types of thought
to develop. It does occur every now and then that a person does not fit
temperamentally into his culture, as for instance a timid, unambitious
nobleman or an aggressive, ambitious commoner among the Northwest Coast
Indians; {219} but these cases are as a rule rare and it is difficult
for the individual to impress his qualities upon his environment. Thus
it happens that the ethical duties that we feel towards ourselves,
that in some strata of our society set the duty of self-perfection
infinitely higher than that of service to the community, seem lost in
the simple endeavor of every person to come up to the standards of his
society.
The actual conduct of man does not correspond to the ethical code, and
obedience depends upon the degree of social and religious control.
Among ourselves actions opposed to the ethical code are checked by
society, which holds every single person responsible for his actions.
In most primitive societies there is no such power. The behavior of
an individual may be censured, but there is no strict accountability,
although the fear of supernatural punishment may serve as a substitute.
There is no evolution of moral ideas. All the vices that we know,
lying, theft, murder, rape, are discountenanced in the life of equals
in a closed society. There is progress in ethical conduct, based on the
recognition of larger groups which participate in the rights enjoyed by
members of the closed society, and on an increasing social control.
* * * * *
It is difficult to define progress in ethical ideas. It is still more
difficult to discern universally valid progress in social organization,
for what we choose {220} to call progress depends upon the standards
chosen. The extreme individualist might consider anarchy as his ideal.
Others may believe in extreme voluntary regimentation; still others in
a powerful control of the individual by society. Developments in all
these directions have occurred and may still be observed in the history
of modern states. We can speak of progress in certain directions,
hardly of absolute progress, except in so far as it is dependent upon
knowledge which contributes to the safety of human life, health and
comfort.
Generally valid progress in social forms is intimately associated with
advance in knowledge. It is based fundamentally on the recognition
of a wider concept of humanity and with it on the weakening of the
conflicts between individual societies. The outsider is no longer a
person without rights, whose life and property are the lawful prey of
any one who can conquer him, but intertribal duties are recognized.
However these are developed, whether the tribe wishes to avoid the
retaliation of neighbors, or whether friendly relations are established
by intermarriage or in other ways, the intense solidarity of the tribal
unit is liable to break down.
The important change of attitude brought about by this expansion is a
weakening of the concept of a status into which each person is born.
The history of civilization demonstrates that the {221} extent to
which the status of a person is determined by birth or by some later
voluntary or enforced act has been losing in force. For most of us
there are still two forms of status that entail serious obligation and
that persist unless the status is changed by consent of the state.
These are citizenship and marriage. The latter status shows even now
strong evidence of weakening. In earlier times the status of the
nobleman, of the serf, even of a member of a guild, was fixed. In
primitive societies of complex structure the status of a person as a
member of a clan, of an age group, of a society, was often absolutely
determined and involved unescapable obligations. In this sense the
freedom of the individual has been increasing.
* * * * *
The multitude of forms found in human society as well as observations
on the variability of human types throw important light upon modern
political questions, particularly upon the demand for equality, upon
sexual relations and upon the denial of the right of individual
property.
Anatomy, physiology and psychology of social groups demonstrate
with equal force that equality of all human beings does not exist.
Bodily and mental ability and vigor are unevenly distributed among
individuals. They also depend upon age and sex. Even in the absence of
any form of organization which implies subordination, leadership {222}
develops. Eskimo society is fundamentally anarchical because nobody
is compelled to submit to dictation. Nevertheless the movements of
the tribe are determined by leaders to whose superior energy, skill
and experience others submit. The man, the provider of the family,
determines the movements of the household and his wives and dependents
follow.
It depends upon historical conditions to what extent the powers of a
leader may be developed. In early times monarchical institutions spread
over a large part of the Old World, democratic institutions over the
New World. It is common to all forms of political organization that
wherever communal work had to be undertaken, recognized leaders spring
up. Among the North American Indians who were averse to centralized
political control, the buffalo hunt necessitated strict police
regulations to which the tribe had to submit, because disorganized,
individual hunting would have endangered the tribal food supply. The
hunt and war in particular require leadership. How far each individual
must submit to leadership depends upon the complexity of organization,
upon the necessity of joint action, and upon conflicts arising from
individual occupations.
The assumption that all leadership is an aberration from the primitive
nature of man and an expression of individual lust for power cannot
be {223} maintained. We have pointed out repeatedly that man is a
gregarious being, living in closed societies, and that new closed
societies are always springing up. Almost all closed societies of
animals have leaders and in many cases a definite order of rank may
be observed. It seems probable that conditions were different in the
primitive horde of man.
* * * * *
Observations on primitive society throw an interesting light upon the
relation of the sexes. Setting aside for a moment that phase which
is related to property rights we find everywhere a clear distinction
between the occupations of man and woman. The woman, being encumbered
throughout a large part of her mature life by the care of young
children, is tied to the home more rigidly than the man. She is
hindered in her mobility and for this reason more than for anything
else she cannot participate in the strenuous life of the hunter and
warrior. Here also a comparison with the life forms of gregarious
animals is useful, for division of duties according to sex is not
unusual. In some species the males are protectors of the herd, in other
cases the females.
The domestic occupations of the home do not necessarily preclude women
from active participation in the higher cultural activities of the
tribe. Owing to the skill attained in their varied technical activities
they are in some cases creative artists, {224} while the men who devote
themselves to the chase do not participate to any extent in artistic
production. Where a more complex economic system prevails in which
wealth depends upon the management and care of the produce secured by
the members of the household, her influence in social or even political
matters may be important. She is not excluded from religious activities
and acts as shaman or priestess.
Since among primitive tribes unmarried women are all but unknown, the
position of womanhood is practically determined by the limitations
imposed upon all by child-bearing and care of children.
Among primitive tribes the mortality of infants is high, and the
intervals between births are correspondingly short. With the modern
decrease in infant mortality, voluntary reduction of the number of
children and the increasing number of unmarried women, the movements of
many women have become freer and one of the fundamental causes of the
differentiation between the social positions of men and of women has
been removed. It is not by any means solely economic pressure that has
led to the demand for wider opportunities and equality of rights of men
and women, but the removal of the limitations due to child-bearing that
have given to woman the freedom of action enjoyed by man.
The cultural values produced by woman in primitive society make us
doubt the existence of {225} any fundamental difference in creative
power between the sexes. We rather suspect that the imponderable
differences in the treatment of young children, the different attitudes
of father and mother to son or daughter, the differentiation of the
status of man and woman inherent in our cultural tradition, outweigh
any actual differences that may exist.
In other words, the creative power and independence of man and of
woman seem to me largely independent of the physiologically determined
differences in interests and character. The danger in the modern
desire of woman for freedom lies in the intentional suppression of the
functions connected with child-bearing that might hinder free activity.
Society will always need a sufficient number of women who will bear
children and of those who are willing to devote themselves lovingly to
their bringing up.
* * * * *
Marriage is another aspect of the relation between the sexes upon
which light is thrown by the study of foreign cultures. The customs
of mankind show that permanent marriage is not based primarily on the
permanence of sexual love between two individuals, but that it is
essentially regulated by economic considerations. Formal marriage is
connected with transfer of property. In extreme cases the woman herself
is an economic value that is acquired, although she may not become
{226} the property of her husband in the sense that he can dispose of
her at will without interference of her own family or herself.
Occasional sexual relations between man and woman are of a different
order and are among many tribes permitted or even expected. In other
cases girls are carefully guarded and illicit sexual intercourse is
severely punished.
A religious sanction of marriage exists in hardly any primitive tribe.
Strict monogamy does occur in rare cases and suggests that the sexual
relations in earliest times were not of uniform character in all parts
of the world. The binding elements in marriage are considerations of
property in which the children who add potential strength to the family
are included. It seems likely that our view of marriage developed from
this earlier stage by reinterpretation.
In a well balanced family with competent parents permanence of
matrimonial union is undoubtedly best adapted to the wholesome
development of the individual and of society. But not all families
are well balanced and competent, and permanence of affection is not
universal. On the contrary, almost all societies illustrate fickleness
of affection and instability of unions among young people. Unions
become fairly stable only in old age, when the sexual passions have
abated. Instability is found as much in modern civilization as in
simpler {227} societies. Man is evidently not an absolutely monogamous
being.
The efforts to force man into absolute monogamy have never been
successful and the tendency of our times is to recognize this. The
increasing ease of divorce which has been carried furthest in Mexico
and Russia is proof of this. Equally significant are the endeavors
to ease the unenviable position of the unmarried mother, the social
attempts to lift the undeserved stigma from the illegitimate child, and
the claims for a single standard of sexual ethics for man and woman.
The anthropologist may not be able to propose on the basis of his
science the steps that should be taken to remedy the hypocrisy that
attaches to the general treatment of sexual relations without unduly
encouraging the light-hearted breaking of the marriage bond. He
can only point out that the traditional point of view of absolute
continence until a monogamic marriage is contracted is not enforceable,
because it runs counter to the nature of a large part of mankind. In
many cases it is accepted and followed like other social standards, but
not without giving rise to severe crises.
* * * * *
It is interesting to investigate the concept of property in simple
tribes. We do not know of a single tribe that does not recognize
individual property. The tools and utensils which a person {228} makes
and uses are practically always his individual property which he may
use, loan, give away or destroy, provided he does not damage the life
of his household by doing so. An Eskimo man who would destroy his kayak
and hunting outfit would make himself and his family dependent upon
the industry of others; the Eskimo woman who would destroy her cooking
utensils or her clothing would deprive the family of valuable property
which could not be replaced without the help of her husband or other
men. In this sense the control of their property is not absolutely
free. Any economic theory that does not acknowledge these facts runs
counter to anthropological data.
The concept of property in natural resources is of a different
character. Except in the rare cases of truly nomadic peoples, the tribe
is attached to a definite geographical area which is its property in
so far as foreigners who would try to utilize it are considered as
intruders. In simpler societies tribal territory and all its resources
belong to the community as a whole; or when the tribe consists of
subdivisions the tribal territory may be subdivided among them, and
mutual encroachments are not permitted.
It is not possible to follow in the brief compass of these remarks
the variety of concepts of property that develop from this primitive
control, the centralization of ownership in the hands {229} of a
favored class or of individuals, and the privileges that grow up with
increasing complexity of society.
* * * * *
Political theories have also been built upon the assumption that single
forces determine the course of cultural history. Most important among
these are the theories of geographical and economic determinism.
Geographical determinism means that geographical environment controls
the development of culture; economic determinism that the economic
conditions of life shape all the manifestations of early culture and of
complex civilization.
It is easy to show that both theories ascribe an exaggerated importance
to factors that do play an important part in the life of man, but that
are each only one of many determinant elements.
The study of the cultural history of any particular area shows clearly
that geographical conditions by themselves have no creative force and
are certainly no absolute determinants of culture.
Before the introduction of the horse the western American prairies
were hardly inhabited, because the food supply was uncertain. When the
Indians were supplied with horses their whole mode of life changed,
because buffalo hunting became much more productive and the people
were able to follow the migrating herds of buffalo. Many tribes {230}
migrated westward and gave up agriculture. When the white man settled
on the prairies, life was again different. Agriculture and herding were
adapted to the new environment. According to the type of culture of the
people who occupied the prairies, these played a different rôle. They
compelled man to adapt his life to the new conditions and modified the
culture. The environment did not create a new culture.
Another example will not be amiss. The Arctic tundra in America and
Asia has about the same character. Still the lives of the Arctic
Indians and Eskimos and that of the tribes of Siberia are not the same.
The Americans are exclusively hunters and fishermen. The Asiatics have
domesticated reindeer. The environment has not the same meaning for the
hunter and for the herder; but herding was not invented owing to the
stress of environment. It is a type of Asiatic culture that takes a
particular form in the Arctic climate.
When the principal trade routes from Europe to the East crossed the
Mediterranean Sea and vessels were of moderate size, the distribution
of trade centers, of sea routes and of available harbors was quite
different from that found in later times, when, owing to shifts in
political and cultural conditions, to new discoveries, new demands, and
in modern times, to larger vessels, the same environment brought about
new alignments, decay {231} to once flourishing cities, and increased
importance to others.
The error of the theory of geographic determinism lies in the
assumption that there are tribes on our globe without any culture,
that must learn to adapt themselves to the environment in which they
live. We do not know of any tribe without some form of culture and
even in the times of the older stone age, perhaps 50,000 years ago,
this condition did not exist. The environment can only act upon a
culture and the result of environmental influences is dependent upon
the culture upon which it acts. Fertility of the soil has nowhere
created agriculture, but when agriculture exists it is adapted to
geographical conditions. Presence of iron ore and coal does not create
industries, but when the knowledge of the use of these materials is
known, geographical conditions exert a powerful influence upon local
development.
Geographical conditions exert a limiting or modifying power, in so far
as available materials, topographical forms, and climate compel certain
adjustments, but many different types of culture are found adjusted to
similar types of environment.
The error that is often committed is similar to the one that has for
a long time made experimental psychology unproductive. There is no
society without some type of culture, and there is no blank {232} mind,
upon which culture,--or bringing up of the individual,--has left no
impress. An immediate reaction of the mind to a stimulus depends not
alone upon the organization of the mind and the stimulus, but also upon
the modifications that the mind has undergone, owing to its development
in the setting of a culture.
Economic determinism is open to the same objections. The theory is more
attractive than geographic determinism because economic conditions are
an integral part of culture and are closely interwoven with all its
other aspects. In our life their influence makes itself felt in the
most varied forms and modern civilization cannot be understood without
constant attention to its economic background.
Nevertheless it would be an error to claim that all manifestations
of cultural life are determined by economic conditions. The simplest
cultural forms prove this. There are many tribes of hunters and
fishermen whose economic life is built up on the same foundation.
Nevertheless they differ fundamentally in customs and beliefs. African
Bushmen and Australian aborigines; Arctic Indians and some of the
river tribes of Siberia; Indians of Alaska, Chile and the natives of
the island of Saghalin in eastern Asia are comparable, so far as their
economic resources are concerned. Still, their social organization,
their beliefs and customs {233} are diverse. There is nothing to
indicate that these are due to economic differences; rather the use of
their economic resources depends upon all the other aspects of cultural
life.
Irregularities due to individual differences in skill and energy
which may result in differences in economic status offer an adequate
explanation of some aspects of cultural life.
Even the differences in the status of man and woman are not primarily
economic. They are rather due to the differences in the physiological
life of man and of woman. Based on this there is a difference in
occupation, in interests and in mental attitude. These in turn produce
economic differentiation, but the economic status is not the primary
cause of the status of man and woman.
We may observe here that what is an effect of differentiation,
becomes a cause of further differentiation. This relation may be
observed in all specific phenomena of nature. A valley has been
formed as the effect of erosion. It is the cause that in the further
action of erosion the waters follow its course. Luxurious vegetation
is the effect of a moist soil. It is the cause of retaining more
moisture in the soil. A household performs joint work, and the joint
work strengthens the unity of the household. Leisure obtained by the
preservation of a plentiful supply of food stimulates invention, and
the inventions give more leisure. {234}
The interaction between the various forces is so intimate that to
select one as the sole creative force conveys an erroneous impression
of the process. It seems impossible to reduce the fundamental beliefs
of mankind to an economic source. They arise from a variety of
sources, one of which is the unconscious conceptualization of nature.
The organization of the household is controlled in part by the size
of the economic unit allowed by the food supply, in part by ties of
association that are established by beliefs or habits so slightly
related to economic conditions that it would require great ingenuity
and a forced reasoning to reduce them to economic causes.
It is justifiable to investigate the intricate relations of economic
life and of all the other numerous manifestations of culture, but it is
not possible to rule out all the remaining aspects as dependent upon
economic conditions. It is just as necessary to study economic life as
dependent upon inventions, social structure, art, and religion as it is
to study the reverse relations.
Economic conditions are the cause of many of these and they are with
equal truth their effect. Social bonds and conflicts, concepts,
emotional life, artistic activities are in their psychological and
social origin only incompletely reducible to economic factors.
As geographical environment acts only upon a {235} culture modifying
it, so economic conditions act upon an existing culture and are in turn
modified by it.
* * * * *
A final question must be answered. Can anthropology help to control
the future development of human culture and well-being or must we be
satisfied to record the progress of events and let them take their
course? I believe we have seen that a knowledge of anthropology may
guide us in many of our policies. This does not mean that we can
predict the ultimate results of our actions. It has been claimed that
human culture is something superorganic, that it follows laws that are
not willed by any individual participating in the culture, but that are
inherent in the culture itself. Some of the gradual changes referred to
before might seem to support this view. The increase of knowledge, the
freeing of the individual from traditional fetters, the extension of
political units have proceeded regularly.
It seems hardly necessary to consider culture a mystic entity that
exists outside the society of its individual carriers, and that moves
by its own force. The life of a society is carried on by individuals
who act singly and jointly under the stress of the tradition in
which they have grown up and surrounded by the products of their own
activities and those of their forbears. These determine the {236}
direction of their activities positively or negatively. They may
proceed to act and think according to the transmitted patterns or they
may be led to move in opposite directions. Occupation with a thought or
an invention may lead on in different directions. Seen retrospectively
they may appear like a predetermined growth.
The forces that bring about the changes are active in the individuals
composing the social group, not in the abstract culture.
Here, as well as in other social phenomena, accident cannot be
eliminated, accident that may depend upon the presence or absence of
eminent individuals, upon the favors bestowed by nature, upon chance
discoveries or contacts, and therefore prediction is precarious,
if not impossible. Laws of development, except in most generalized
form, cannot be established and a detailed course of growth cannot be
predicted.
All we can do is to watch and judge day by day what we are doing by
what we have learned and to shape our steps accordingly.
REFERENCES {237}
In the following pages some of the more important literature is quoted
on which are based the statements made in the text of the book:
P. 20. Claims of fundamental racial differences will be found in A. de
Gobineau, _Essai sur l’inégalité des races_; Madison Grant, _The
Passing of the Great Race_; Hans F. K. Günther, _Rassenkunde des
deutschen Volkes_; Houston Stewart Chamberlain, _Die Grundlagen
des XIX Jahrhunderts_. The opposite view is held by Th. Waitz,
_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 381; Franz
Boas, _The Mind of Primitive Man_; Friedrich Hertz, _Race and
Civilization_; Ignaz Zollschan, _Das Rassenproblem_. An attempt
at a critical review of the literature is contained in Frank H.
Hankins, _The Racial Basis of Civilization_, and more fully,
but with a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of racial
and national traits in Théophile Simar, _Etude critique sur la
formation de la doctrine des races_.
Pp. 27, 28. The effect of inbreeding upon the variability {238}
of family lines has been discussed by F. Boas in the American
Anthropologist N. S. Vol. 18 (1916), pp. 1 et seq., and by Isabel
Gordon Carter, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol. 11,
pp. 457 et seq. See also Eugen Fischer, _Die Rehobother Bastards_.
P. 30. The foreign elements in the Swedish nation have been discussed
by Gustav Retzius and Carl M. Fürst in _Anthropologia Suecica_, p.
18.
P. 32. The reversion to the type of a population has been first
discussed by Francis Galton, _Natural Inheritance_; and later on
elaborated by Karl Pearson, _Mathematical Contributions to the
Theory of Evolution_, III; Royal Society of London, 1896, A, pp.
253 et seq. The varying regression from the same parental type
to distinct populations has been illustrated by F. Boas, in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 14, pp. 496
et seq.
P. 35. The changes of stature in Europe are summarized in Rudolf
Martin, _Lehrbuch der Anthropologie_, pp. 224 et seq., 1st edition.
Edw. Ph. Mackeprang, _De vaernepligtiges legemshojde i Danmark_,
Meddelelser om Danmarks Antropologi, Vol. 1, pp. 1 et seq.
Comparisons of parents and their own children {239} are given in F.
Boas, _Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants_, pp.
28, 30.
P. 36. A discussion of the measures of the hand according to
occupation is found in E. Brezina and V. Lebzelter, _Ueber die
Dimensionen der Hand bei verschiedenen Berufen_, Archiv für
Hygiene, Vol. 92, 1923; and Zeitschrift für Konstitutionslehre,
Vol. 10, pp. 381 et seq.
P. 36. A brief discussion of the effect of the use of the limbs upon
the form of the leg bones is found in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie,
Anthropologie und Urgeschichte, Vol. 17 (1885), p. 253; and by L.
Manouvrier in Bulletin de la Société d’Anthropologie, Paris, Series
3, Vol. 10, p. 128.
P. 44. Traits due to domestication have been studied particularly by
Eugen Fischer. His results have been briefly summarized in his
book, _Rasse und Rassenentstehung beim Menschen_.
P. 46. A summary of the literature relating to the study of the senses
of races is found in Gustav Kafka, _Handbuch der vergleichenden
Psychologie_, Vol. 1, pp. 163 et seq.
P. 46. Differences in basal metabolism were found by Francis G.
Benedict, _The racial factor in metabolism_. Proceedings National
Academy of Sciences, Vol. 11, pp. 342 et seq. {240}
P. 47. The margin of safety has been discussed by S. J. Meltzer,
_Factors of safety in animal structure and animal economy_, Journal
of the American Medical Association, Vol. 48, pp. 655, et seq.;
Science, New Series, Vol. 25, pp. 481 et seq.
P. 54. O. Klineberg, _An experimental study of speed and other factors
in “racial” differences_. Archives of Psychology, No. 93.
P. 54. Paul Roloff has found considerable differences in the ability
to define terms, among different social classes of the same
district. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie, Vol.
27, pp. 162 et seq.
P. 59. Melville J. Herskovits discusses the mental behavior of a
socially uniform group of negroes and mulattoes in _The American
Negro_.
Pp. 60, 61. Studies of human culture without any regard to race
are, for instance, Edward B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_; Herbert
Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_; F. Ratzel, _The History of
Mankind_. Adolf Bastian’s viewpoint has been analyzed by Th.
Achelis, _Moderne Völkerkunde_, pp. 189 et seq.
P. 64. Romain Rolland speaks of “race antipathy” in his _Jean
Christophe_, 44th edition, Vol. 10, p. 23.
P. 66. The relations between Negroes, Indians, and Whites in Brazil
were described to me {241} by Mr. Rüdiger Bilden, those in Santo
Domingo by Mr. Manuel Andrade.
P. 68. Local forms in animal life have been described by Friedrich
Alverdes, _Tiersoziologie_, 1925. The social life of insects has
been treated by William M. Wheeler, _Social Insects, Their Origin
and Evolution_, 1928.
P. 72. The actual distribution of mixtures of Whites and Negroes has
been described by Melville J. Herskovits in the book previously
referred to. The United States Census is not a reliable source for
the relative number of Mulattoes and full-blood Negroes.
P. 75. Marriage preferences of Negroes and Mulattoes have been
discussed by Herskovits in the book just mentioned.
P. 87. Owing to the economic advantages accruing to Indians who speak
Spanish, there is a marked tendency in many Mexican villages to
discourage the use of the native language. I have heard Indian
mothers reprimand their children for speaking Indian.
P. 87. The descent of the Swedish nobility has been discussed by P. E.
Fahlbeck, _Der Adel Schwedens_, Jena, 1903.
P. 107. As examples of attempts to correlate bodily form and
pathological or psychological conditions I mention George Draper,
_Human {242} Constitution_, and E. Kretschmer, _Körperbau und
Charakter_.
P. 109. For examples of heredity of defective traits see R. L.
Dugdale, _The Jukes_, and A. H. Estabrook, _The Jukes in 1915_;
also H. H. Goddard, _The Kallikak Family_; A. H. Estabrook and
C. B. Davenport, _The Nam Family_; F. H. Danielson and C. B.
Davenport, _The Hill Folk_.
P. 122. C. Lombroso’s views are set forth in many of his books, for
instance, _L’uomo delinquente in rapporto all’ antropologia_;
_L’homme criminel_.
P. 123. One of the most thorough studies of criminals is that by C.
Goring, _The English Convict_.
P. 128. A discussion of observations in Habit Clinics is given in
Blanche C. Weill, _The Behavior of Young Children of the Same
Family_, Cambridge, 1928.
P. 146. In F. Boas, _Handbook of American Indian Languages_, the
forms of primitive languages are discussed. See also Edward Sapir,
_Language_.
P. 150. The significance of the Sun Dance among various tribes has
been studied by Leslie Spier, in Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 16, pp. 451 et seq. {243}
P. 151. The stability of ornamental form and the variety of
interpretation are illustrated in F. Boas, _Primitive Art_, pp. 88
et seq. Examples of the varied interpretation of tales have been
collected by T. T. Waterman, Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol.
27, pp. 1 et seq.
P. 152. The theory of survivals has been set forth by Edward B. Tylor,
_Primitive Culture_, Vol. 1, pp. 70 et seq.
P. 152. Some of the rules of forbidden and proscribed cousin marriages
will be found in Robert H. Lowie, _Primitive Society_.
P. 163. A remarkable instance illustrating the conservatism of the
Eskimo and their Arctic neighbors is contained in a phrase in
their folklore. In East Greenland it is told of a man “who was so
strong even in death, that he did not lie stretched out, but rested
on his muscles (_i.e._, of the buttocks and shoulders);” Knud
Rasmussen, _Myter og Sagn, from Grönland_, Vol. 1, p. 272 (figure).
The Chukchee of eastern Siberia tell of a strong man who had been
killed: “He lay there, touching the ground merely with his calves,
with his shoulder blades, and with the other fleshy parts of his
body.” W. Bogoras, _Chukchee Texts_, Publications of the Jesup
North Pacific Expedition, Vol. 8, p. 98.
P. 164. Changes of ritual are occurring among {244} the Kwakiutl
Indians of Vancouver Island who, during the last seventy or eighty
years, have constantly been adding new features and dropping
old ones. Changes owing to the premature death of the keeper of
a secret ritual must have occurred repeatedly among the Pueblo
tribes. The best authenticated case is that of the Pueblo of
Cochití where, owing to the death of the chief of ceremonies and
rituals during the absence of his successor, the latter had only a
fragmentary knowledge of his duties.
P. 164. The best described example of the origin of a mixed religion
is that of the Ghost Dance by James Mooney in the 14th Annual
Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology.
P. 164. The restriction of inventiveness of the artist has been
described in F. Boas, _Primitive Art_.
P. 166. Maria Montessori, in her _Pedagogical Anthropology_, has tried
to apply anthropometric data to educational problems.
P. 169. The periods of certain physiological stages have been
described by F. Boas in _Remarks on the Anthropological Study of
Children_, Transactions of the 15th International Congress of
Hygiene and Demography.
P. 171. Observations on variations in development according to
social classes are found in {245} many places. See, for instance,
references in H. Ploss, _Das Weib_, 2nd edition, Vol. 1, p. 228;
also H. P. Bowditch, _The Growth of Children_, 8th Annual Report
State Bureau of Health of Massachusetts; C. Roberts, _A Manual
of Anthropometry_. See also the selected bibliography in D. A.
Prescott, _The determination of anatomic age in school children and
its relation to mental development_.
P. 172. Milo Hellman, _Nutrition, Growth and Dentition_, Dental
Cosmos, January, 1923.
P. 174. The differences in bodily form of boys and girls have been
pointed out by me at the place just mentioned and by Ruth O.
Sawtell, _Sex Differences in Bone Growth of Young Children_,
American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1928.
P. 175. A full treatment of the psychology of childhood in its
relation to educational problems is contained in E. L. Thorndike,
_Educational Psychology_.
P. 177. A comparison of Jewish and Northwest European children will
be found in F. Boas, _The Growth of Children as Influenced by
Environmental and Hereditary Conditions_, School and Society, Vol.
17, p. 305 et seq.
P. 178. The uncertainty of correlations between height and weight
and undernourishment have been set forth by Louis I. Dublin and
{246} John C. Gebhart, _Do Height and Weight Tables Identify
Undernourished Children?_, New York Association for Improving the
Condition of the Poor.
P. 182. The correlations between stature attained at a certain age and
subsequent growth have been discussed by Clark Wissler, American
Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 5, pp. 81 et seq.
P. 188. See descriptions of the killing of aged persons in Waldemar
Bogoras, _The Chukchee_, Publications of the Jesup North Pacific
Expedition, Vol. 8.
P. 189. The life of the adolescent girl in Samoa has been discussed by
Margaret Mead, _Coming of Age in Samoa_.
P. 217. E. Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_;
L. T. Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_.
THE END
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