Read Ebook: The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology by Brinton Daniel G Daniel Garrison Farrand Livingston Editor

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Habits which are forced upon organisms by the environment under penalty of extinction become hereditary modes of procedure. They are persisted in because vitally beneficial. Comparative anatomy shows us that those organs and structures which are most persistent have their functions most instinctive; and conversely, as individual freedom of action increases, instinct retires and intelligence takes its place, accompanied by higher plasticity in the structures involved in the action.

Intelligent action is personal initiative from compared experiences. It is not merely repetition, as in the tricks of animals, but deduction; therefore it introduces new tendencies into life, which instinct never does; and these tendencies are not the direct sequences of external stimuli, as are instincts, but are psychic in origin, proceeding from the mental conclusion reached.

No more interesting comparison between instinct and intelligence can be found than that offered by the social communities of the lower animals,--the bees, ants, beavers, and the like. Their well-regulated activities excite our surprise and admiration. Each member of the little state has his duty and performs it, with the result that all are thereby benefited and the species successfully perpetuated.

But much of the admiration expended on these societies in the lower life has been misplaced. Their perfect organisation is due to narrower development of mental powers. The one object at which they aim is species-continuation, and to this all else is subordinated. They are in no sense comparable to the reflective purpose which is at the base of human society, whose real, though oft unacknowledged, and ever unsuccessful, aim is to insure to each individual the full development of his various powers. Hence it is that human society is and must be ever changing with individual aspirations, and can never be iron-bound in one form.

In this phrase we see why imagination ranks as a criterion of mental development. Ruled chiefly by unconscious instinct the brute has no other aims than to feed and sleep and reproduce his kind; men of low degree add to these, perhaps, the lust of power or of gold or of amusement, or other such vain and paltry ambitions; but the soul that seeks the highest has aims beyond all fulfilment, but which by their glory stimulate its activities to the utmost and lift it into a life above all mundane satisfactions.

The ideal, some ideal, is present in every human heart. It is the goal toward which each strives in seeking pleasure and in avoiding pain. Through the unity of the human mind, the same ideals, few in number, have directed the energies of men in all times and climes. Around them have concentrated the labours of nations, and as one or the other became more prominent, national character partook of its inspiration, and national history fell under its sway. Constantly in the history of culture do we see such general devotion to an ideal lead groups toward or away from the avenue to progress and vitality.

In simpler forms of organic life it must be merely rudimentary; but in most animals it reaches what has been called the "projective" stage; that is, the animal is conscious of the existence of others, like or unlike himself, though he is not yet conscious of himself as a separate entity. This has been held to explain, psychologically, the "gregarious instincts" of many lower species.

Attempting to define this trait, we may say that it is the perception of the unity and continuity of the individual's psychological activities. Just in proportion as this perception becomes clear, positive, sharply defined, does the individual become aware of his own life, his real existence, its laws, and its purposes.

Hence the study of this mental characteristic becomes of the highest importance in ethnology; for it has been well said that the growth or decay of individual self-consciousness is an unfailing measure of the growth or decay of States.

It is instructive to note how differently races and nations have understood and still do understand this notion; instructive, because it has much to do with their characters and actions.

Not less widely received was another opinion, that the self dwells in the name. The personal name was therefore conferred with ceremony, and frequently was not disclosed beyond the family. The individual could be injured through his name, his personality impaired by its misuse.

In higher conditions the Person is usually defined by attributes and environment, as sex, age, calling, property, and the like. Ask a man who he is, he will define himself "by name and standing."

Few reach the conception of abstract Individuality, apart from the above incidents of time and place; so that it is easy to see that self-consciousness is still in little more than an embryonic stage of development in humanity. It differs notably in races and stages of culture. Dr. Van Brero comments on the slight sense of personality among the Malayan islanders, and attributes to that their exemption from certain nervous diseases. Its morbid development in self-attention and Ego-mania is frequently noticed in the asylums of highly civilised centres.

I shall have frequent occasion to insist that the utmost healthful, that is, symmetrical, development of the individuality is the true aim of human society. This is directly due to the fact that self-consciousness, the "I" in its final analysis, depends on the unity and independence of the individual Will, which in a given moment of action can be One only. The cultivation of individuality is therefore the cultivation of the will, to direct and strengthen which must be the purpose of all education.

The logical process is everywhere and at all times the same, in the sage or the savage, the sane or the insane. To reach any conclusion, the mind must work in accordance with its method. This is purely mechanical. An English philosopher invented a "logical machine," which worked as well as the human brain. The logical process has been formulated by a mathematician in a simple equation of the second degree. It must consist of subject and predicate, of general and particular. But the process has nothing to do with the proceeds. A mill grinds equally well wheat, tares, and poisonberries. Not upon the fact that the pepsin digests, but that it digests proper aliments, depends the health of the body. So the content of the intellectual operation, not its form, is of good or harm, and merits the attention of ethnographer or historian.

The aim of both expressions is to put pointedly the principle that the intellectual process is of a mechanico-chemical character, a mere bodily function, to be classed with digestion or circulation. This opinion has of late years been warmly espoused in the United States.

That intellectual actions are governed by fixed laws was long ago said and demonstrated by Quetelet in his remarkable studies of vital statistics. That the development of thought proceeds "under the rule of an iron necessity" is the ripened conviction of that profound student of man, Bastian. We must accept it as the verdict of science.

What, then, becomes of individuality, personality, free-will? Must we, as the great dramatist said, "confess ourselves the slaves of chance, the flies of every wind that blows?"

Not yet. That we are subject to our surroundings and our history; that our forefathers, though dead, have not relaxed their parental grasp; that time, clime, and spot master thought and deed, is all true. But above all is Volition, Will, a final, insoluble, personal power, the one irrefragable proof of separate existence, not itself translatable into Force, but the director, initiator, of all vital forces.

The physiologist explains mental phenomena as the function of specialised cell-life. He points out the cells, strange triangular masses in the cortex of the brain, with long processes and spiny branches, touching but never uniting. In the lower animals the network is simple, the branches short; as mental capacity advances, they become more complex and longer.

These are the "psychic cells" in whose microscopic laboratory is worked the magic of mind, transforming waves of impact, some into sweet music, others into colour and light and all the glory of the landscape; changing sights and sounds into emotions of joy or dread; transmitting them into passions or lusts; assorting the gathered stores of comparison, and from them building ideas base or noble, and awakening the Will to direct the use of all.

The answer of modern science is that between "mind" and "soul" no distinction can be drawn; and that this very quality of "ideation" is not a sudden acquisition, some free gift of the gods, bestowed full-blown and perfected, but the development of a very slow process, traceable in its beginnings in some beasts, faint in the lowest men, strictly conditioned on the growth of articulate expression, far from complete in the ripest intellects. It neither excludes nor assumes persistence after corporeal death. We may use the word "soul," therefore, because it is rich in associations; but use it as a synonym of "mind."

The soul is not some transcendental substance outside of the individual, but exists by virtue of the connection of his psychic processes with each other. This does not lessen the reality of his personal existence, but explains it.

As for the relation which mind or soul in general bears to the material external world, most thinkers are of opinion now that the contrast formerly supposed to exist is one merely of view-point; that natural science considers all our experiences as external, while mental science studies them as wholly internal.

To these inquiries I shall address myself.

It is true, as I shall have many occasions to show hereafter, that in mental endowment tribes and races widely differ; but so do individuals of the same race, even of the same family; and in regard to many of these differences we can so accurately put our finger on what brings it about that we have but to alter conditions in order to alter endowments.

The Fuegian savage is one of the worst specimens of the genus; but put him when young in an English school, and he will grow up an intelligent member of civilised society. However low man is, he can be instructed, improved, redeemed; and it is this most cheering fact which should encourage us in incessant labour for the degraded and the despised of humanity.

Language, however, is the guarantor of thought in general terms. The words are the "associative symbols" of abstract ideas. Wherever men talk, they think in a solely human fashion.

Philologists talk of "higher" or "lower" languages. The assertion has been made that some more than others favor abstract expressions. Such statements may be granted; but the fact remains that every word itself is the symbol of an abstraction, and only as such can it be rationally uttered.

We can trace language back to its pristine rudiments, to the form that it must have had among the hordes of the "old stone age," cave-dwellers, naked savages. I have made such an attempt. But the essentials of speech as a vehicle of thought still remain; and though doubtless there was a period when articulate separated from inarticulate speech, that was during the morning twilight of man's day on earth, when he as yet scarcely merited the name of man.

From all analogy we may be confident that the early palaeolithic men who shaped the symmetrical axes of Acheul, scrapers, punches, and hammers; who carefully selected and tested the flint-flakes; who had enough of an eye for beauty to preserve fine quartz pebbles; and who lived in social groups, in stationary homes along watercourses,--these men unquestionably had a spoken language, and minds competent to deal in simple abstractions. Yet these are the most ancient men of whom we know anything, dwellers in central Europe before the Great Ice Age.

When we have such evidence as this for the psychical unity of the human species, is it worth while going into that antiquated discussion of the "monogenists" and "polygenists" as to whether man owns one or several birthplaces? Surely not. We declare all nations of the earth to be of one blood by the judgment of a higher court than anatomy can furnish; though it also hands down no dissenting opinion.

As there are conditions which are universal, such as the structure and functions of the body, its general relations to its surroundings, its needs and powers, these developed everywhere at first the like psychical activities, or mental expressions. They constitute what Bastian has happily called the "elementary ideas" of our species. In all races, over all continents, they present themselves with a wonderful sameness, which led the older students of man to the fallacious supposition that they must have been borrowed from some common centre.

Nor are they easily obliterated under the stress of new experiences and changed conditions. With that tenacity of life which characterises simple and primitive forms, they persist through periods of divergent and higher culture, hiding under venerable beliefs, emerging with fresh disguises, but easily detected as but repetitions of the dear primordial faiths of the race.

Where such externals were alike or nearly so, the progress was parallel; where unlike, it was divergent; analogous in this to well-known doctrines of the biologist.

Such branches were constantly blending in peace or colliding in war, leading to a perpetual interaction of the one growth with the other, engendering a complexity of relation to each other and to the primitive substratum. But the ethnic character, once crystallised, remained as ingrained as the national life or the bodily stigmata. It compelled the members as a mass to look at life and its aims through certain lights, to comprehend the world under certain forms, to move to a measure, and dance to a tune.

Such is the power of the Ethnic Mind, fraught with weal or woe for the nation over whom it rules, tyrannical, portentous, a blind natural force, which may lift its helpless followers to skyey heights or drag them into the abyss.

How it is formed and what decides its fateful beneficent or maleficent decrees, I shall consider in detail in the next chapters.

The ethnic character becomes more fixed with advancing culture, and its component parts--that is, the individuals who compose it--more uniform. This has not been understood by one of the latest writers on the subject, Professor Vierkandt, who maintains that in savage groups there is a much greater sameness between the individuals who compose them. Superficially, this is true on account of the limited range of their activity; but in proportion to that range the individuals differ more widely, because they are so much more subjected to external influences and emotional attacks. Dr. Krej?i is more correct in his opinion that the sum of the differences between cultured individuals and peoples is less than that between the uncultured. This obviously flows from the fact that cultivated minds are governed by reason and knowledge, whose prescriptions are everywhere the same; while illiterate minds are victims of ignorance and passion. All who learn that twice two are four act on the knowledge of it; but the Brazilian Indian, who has no word in his language for numerals above two, may disregard it.

Some have maintained that the promptings of the group-mind as felt by the individual belong in the unconscious or involuntary part of his nature, and partake of the character of mechanical necessity.

There is indeed this tendency, but it is not by any means a necessary character of the collective mind, as an example easily shows. I may adopt a prevailing custom or belief merely through imitation, which is a mechanical procedure; or I may adopt it, being led to examine it from its prevalence and to approve it from my examination,--and this is a voluntary action.

In this we see the contrast of cultured and uncultured group-minds. The latter demand assent merely from their unanimity, the former wish it only from enlightenment; the latter ask faith, the former knowledge; the latter command obedience, the former urge investigation.

Plato has a dialogue on the problem of "The One and the Many"; and the abstract subtleties he brings forward are almost paralleled by the concrete facts which we encounter in an endeavour to state the mutual relations of the Individual and the Group.

This science of ours, ethnic psychology, has, in one sense, nothing to do with the individual. It does not start from his mind or thoughts but from the mind of the group; its laws are those of the group only, and in nowise true of the individual; it omits wide tracts of activities which belong to the individual and embraces others in which he has no share; to the extent that it does study him, it is solely in his relation to others, and not in the least for himself.

On the other hand, as the group is a generic concept only, it has no objective existence. It lives only in the individuals which compose it; and only by studying them singly can we reach any fact or principle which is true of them in the aggregate.

Yet it is almost as correct to maintain that the group is that which alone of the two is real. The closer we study the individual, the more do his alleged individualities cease, as such, and disappear in the general laws by virtue of which society exists; the less baggage does he prove to have which is really his own; the more do all his thoughts, traits, and features turn out to be those of others; so that, at last, he melts into the mass, and there is nothing left which he has a right to claim as his personal property. His pretended personal mind is the reflex of the group-minds around him, as his body is in every fibre and cell the repetition of his species and race. As an American writer strongly puts it: "Morally I am as much a part of society as physically I am a part of the world's fauna."

But let no one deduce from this that the group is merely the sum total of the individuals which compose it, the net balance of their thoughts and lives. Nothing would be more erroneous. I have already said that laws and processes belong to the group which are foreign to the individual. We may go further, and prove that these processes, the spirit of the group, are quite different from those of any single member of it. To use the expression of Wundt: "The resultant arising from united psychological processes includes contents which are not present in the components."

In numerous respects, indeed, the individual and the group stand in opposition to each other. The qualities of the former are incoherent, disorderly, irregular; while those of the latter are fixed, stable, computable.

Let us contemplate further this relation of the individual to the group, for upon its correct apprehension must the whole fabric of ethnic psychology, as a science, rest.

In every healthy individual there is a feeling that his thoughts and actions are vain unless they are somehow directed towards his fellow human beings; yet there is a further feeling that these fellow creatures are but a means for the developing and perfecting of himself. He desires to be intimately associated with the group, but not to be absorbed and lost in it. His unconscious goal is individuality, but not isolation; and he feels that the most complete and sane individuality can be obtained only by association with others of his kind. For that reason, he submits his will to the collective will, his consciousness to the collective consciousness. He accepts from the group the ideas, conclusions, and opinions common to it, and the motives of volition, such as customs and rules of conduct, which it collectively sanctions.

These ideas and motives are strictly the property of the group, not of its separate members. Such a prevailing unity of thought and sentiment does not rest on unanimity of opinion; it does not necessarily exclude any amount of individuality, and is consistent with the utmost freedom of the personal mind. Its basis is a similarity of form and direction of the psychical activities, guiding and modifying them in such a way that a general colour and tendency can be recognised.

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