a to the utmost perfection.^' From South America there comes like evidence. Hemdon was astonished at the mime- tic powers of the Brazilian Indians. Wilkes speaks of the Patagonians as ''admirable mimics.'' And^ describing the Guaranis^ Dobrizhoffer joins with his remark that they can imitate exactly^ the further remark that they bungle stupidly if you leave anything to their intelligence. But it is among the very lowest races that this proneness to mimicry is most conspicuous. Several travellers have commented on the "extraordinary tendency to imitate" shown by the Fuegians. They will " repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we address them " — mimicking the manner and attitude of the speaker. So^ too^ according to Mouat, the Andamanese show high imitative powers; and^ like the Fuegians^ repeat a question instead of answering it: a statement verified by Fytche. Mitchell gives a kindred account of the Australians^ who have^ he aays^ a peculiar talent for imitation^ and " evinced a strange perversity" "in repeating words" which "they knew were meant as questions."
In this imitativeness^ shown in the smallest degree by the highest members of the civilized races and in the greatest degree by the lowest savages^ we have a further mani- festation of the antagonism between perceptive activity and reflective activity. Among inferior gregarious crea- tores generally^ as rooks that rise in a flock when one rises, or as sheep that follow a leader in leaping, we see an almost 94 THE DATA 0¥ SOCIOLOQT.
automatic repetition of aclious witnessed in others; and this peculiarity^ common to the lowest human types — ^this tendency to ''ape'' others^ as we significantly call it— > implies a smaller departure from the brute type of mind. It shows us a mental action which is^ from moment to mo- ment, chiefly determined by surrounding incidents; and is therefore but little determined by causes involving excur- siveness of thought, imagination, original idea.
§ 43. Our conception of the primitive man — ^intellectual, will become clearer when, carrying with us the above induc- tions, we contemplate the proofs of his feeble grasp of thought.
thought.
Common speech &ils to distinguish between mental activities of different grades. A boy is called clever who takes in simple ideas rapidly, though he may prove in- capable of taking in complex ideas; and a boy is con- demned as stupid because he is slow in rote-learning, though his apprehension of abstract truths may be quicker than that of his teacher. Contrasts of this nature must be recognized, if we would interpret the conflicting evi- dence respecting the capacities of the uncivilized. Even of the Fuegians we read that they ''are not usually de- ficient in intellect; " even the Andamanese are said to be " excessively quick and clever; " and it has been asserted of the Australians that they are as intelligent as the average of our own peasants. But the ability thus referred to as possessed even by men of the lowest types, is one for which the simpler &culties suffice; and, as we shall see, goes along with inability when any demand is made on the complex &culties. A passage which Sir John Lubbock quotas from Mr. Sproat's account of the Ahta of North America, may be taken as descriptive of the average state. Mr. Sproat says: — " The native mind, to an educated man, seems generally to be asleep. * * * On his attention being fully aroused, he often shows mueh quickness in reply and ingenuity in arf<ument. But a short conversaUoi THE PBIMITIVE MAN — INTELLECTUAL. 95 v^daries him, paiiicuLuly if qaestions are asked that require eSEoria of ihon^t or memory on his part. The mind of the savage then appears to rock to and fro out of mere weaknes&" Similarly in South America, Spiz and Martins tell us of the Brazilian Indian that *^ scarcely has one begun to question him about his language, when he grows impatient, com- plains of headache, and shows that he is unable to bear the exertion; " and of the same races Mr. Bates says — " It is difficult to get at their notions on subjects that require a little abstract thought.^' Similarly of the Abipones, Do- brizhoffer remarks that ''when they are unable to com- prehend anything at first sight, they soon grow weary of examining it, and cry, ' What is it after all V " Of such more adranced races as the Negroes, there is kindred evidence. Burton says of the East Africans, " ten minutes sufficed to weary out the most intellectual when questioned about their system of numbers/' And even of so comparatively superior a race as the Malagasy, it is observed that they *' do not seem to possess the qualities of mind requisite for close and continued thought/' When we remember that to frame the idea of a species. Bay trout, it is needful to think of the characters common to trout of different sizes — ^when we remember that to con- ceive of fish as a class, we must imagine many variously- formed kinds of fish, and see mentally the likenesses which unite them notwithstanding their unlikenesses; we per- ceive that, rising from the consciousness of individual objects to the consciousness of species, and again to the consciousness of genera, and orders, and classes, each further step implies a greater power of grouping in thought numerous things with approximate simultaneity. And per- ceiving this, we may understand why, lacking the requisite representativeness, the mind of the savage is soon exhausted witb any thought above the simplest. Excluding those referring to individual objects, our most &miliar proposi- tions, such even as " Plants are green," or '^ Animals grow," d6 THB DATA Off SOCIOLOGT.
are propositions never definitely framed in Hs oonscions- ness; for the reason that he has no idea of a plant or an animal, apart from kind. And of course until he has become familiar with general ideas and abstract ideas of the lowest grades^ those a grade higher in generality and abstractness are inconceivable by him. The nature of primitive intellect thas analytically stated, will be ren- dered clearer by an illustration taken from Mr. Galton's account of the Damaras, shelving how the concrete, made to serve in place of the abstract as far as possible, soon fails, and leaves the mind incapable of higher thought: — " They puzzle very much after five [in counting], because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units. Yet they seldom lose oxen; the way in which they discover the loss of one is not by the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a feuse they know. When bartering is going on, each sheep must be paid for separately. Thus, suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely puzzle a Damara to take two sheep and give him four sticks." — TropiecU & AfricOy p. 132.
This mental state resulting from inability to transcend the concrete, is, in another direction, exemplified by the remark of Mr. Hodgson concerning the Hill-tribes of India. " Light,'^ he says, '' is a high abstraction which none of my informants can grasp, though they readily give equivalents for sunshine and candle or fire-flame.^' And it is again exemplified by Spix and Martins, when they say that it would be in vain to seek in the language of the Brazilian Indians ''words for the abstract ideas of plant, animal, and the still more abstract notions, colour, tone, sex, species, etc.; such a generalization of ideas is found among them only in the frequently used infinitive of the verbs to walk, to eat, to drink, to dance, to sing, to hear, etc/' § 44. Not until there is formed a general idea., by the colligation of many special ideas which have a common trait amid their differences — ^not until there hence comes the possibility of connecting in thought this common trait with THE PBOimYX MAN — XNTSLLSCTUAL. 97 Boine oiher trait also possessed in oommon^ can there arise tlie idea of a cansal relation; and not until many different cansal relations have been obserred^ can tbere result the conception of causal relation in the abstract. By the pri- mitiye man, therefore, such distinction as we make between natural and unnatural cannot be made. Before the notion of a constant order among phenomena is generated by com- parison of experiences, there does not exist the antithetical notion of disorder. Just as the child, ignorant of the course of things, gives credence to an impossible fiction as readily as to a &miliar fact; so the savage, similarly with- out classified and systematized knowledge, feels no incon- gruity between any absurd falsehood propounded to him and some established general truth: there being, for him, no such established general truth.
Hence a credulity which in us would be unnatural, is, in him, perfectly natural. If the young savage takes as his totem, and thereafter regards as sacred, the first animal he dreams about during a fast — ^if the Negro, as Bosman tells us, when bent on an important undertaking, chooses for a god to help him the first object he sees on going out, and sacrifices to it and prays to it — ^if the Yeddah, failing in a shot with his arrow, ascribes the failure not to a bad aim but to insufficient propitiation of his deity; we must regard the implied conceptions as the normal accompaniments of a mental state in which the organization of experiences has not advanced far enough to evolve the idea of natural causation.
§ 45. An obvious consequence must be specified and illustrated. Absence of the idea of natural causation, im- plies absence of rational surprise.
Until there has been reached the belief that certain con- nections in things are constant, there can be no astonish- ment on meeting with cases seemingly at variance with this belief. The behaviour of the uncultivated among our* 98 THE DATA OF SOGIOLOGT.
selves teaches ns this. Show to a rustic a remarkable experiment, such as the rise of liquid in a capillary tube, or the spontaneous boiling of warm water in an exhausted receiver, and instead of the amazement jou looked for, you find a vacant indifference: that which struck you with wonder when first you saw it, because not apparently recon- cilable with your general ideas of physical processes, does not seem wonderful to him, because he is without those general ideas. And now if we suppose the rustic divested of what general ideas he has, and the causes of surprise thus made still fewer, we get the ijiental state of the primitive man* Of the very lowest races, disregard of novelties is ahnost uniformly alleged. According to Cook, the Fuegians showed the utmost indifference in presence of things that were entirely new to them. The same voyager observed in the Australians the like peculiarity; and others have described them as remarkably impassive when shown strange objects. According to Dampier, those he had on board ''did not notice anything else in the ship'' than what they had to eat. So, too, the Tasmanians were characterized by Cook's surgeon as exhibiting no surprise. Captain Wallis asserts of the Patagonians, that ''they showed the most unaccountable indifference to everything around them [on shipboard]; even the looking-glass, though it afforded great diversion, excited no astonishment;" and Captain Wilkes testifies to the Uke. I also find it stated of the village Yeddahs that two of them " showed no surprise at a looking-glass." And of the Samoiedes we read in Pink^<> ton, that "nothing but the looking-glass caused any surprise in them for an instant; again a moment and this ceased to draw their attention."
§ 46. Along with absence of surprise there naturally goes absence of intelligent curiosity; and where there is leaat faculty of thought, even astonishment may be excited with- out causing inquiry. BurcheU, asserting that the Bushmen "oxpTeaa no curiosity," says — *^I showed them a looking- glass; at this they langhed^ and stared with yacant surprise and wonder to see their own faces; but expressed not the least cariosity about it/' Where we haye testimonies to cariosity we find it among races of not so low a grade. That of the New Caledonians was remarked by Cook; and that of the New Guinea people by Earl and by Jukes. Still more decided is an inquiring nature among the relatively- advanced Malayo-Polynesians. According to Boyle^ the Dyaks have an insatiable curiosity. The Samoans, too, ''are nsnally very inquisitive; '' and the Tahitians '' are remark- ably carious and inquisitive '^ — a statement to which is added the comment that astonishment seemed greater among them than among the inferior races.
Evidently this absence of the desire for information about new things, which, as we see, characterizes the lowest mental state, is itself an obstacle to that acquirement of generalized knowledge which makes rational surprise, and consequent rational inquisitiveness, possible. If his '' want oi curiosity is extreme," as Mr. Bates says of the Cuc&ma Indian, the implication is that he " troubles himself very little concern- ing the causes of the natural phenomena around him.'' Lacking ability to thiok, and the accompanying desire to know, the savage is without tendency to speculate. Actions perpetoally forced on his attention he makes no attempt to esplain. So that even when there is raised such a question ' as that often put by Park to the Negroes — " What became of the sun during the night, and whether we should see the same son, or a different one, in the morning," no reply is forthcoming. " I found that they considered the question as very childish: * ♦ * they had never indulged a conjec- ture, nor formed any hypothesis, about the matter."
The general fact thus exemplified we shall do well to keep in mind. It is one quite at variance with current ideas respecting the thoughts of the primitive man. He is commonly pictured as theorizing about surrounding appear- 100 THE DATA OP 80CI0L00T.
ances; whereas, in fact, the need for explanations of them does not occur to him.
§ 47. One more concomitant of this nndeveloped form of intelligence may be briefly illustrated to advantage — ^I mean the lack of constructive imagination. This lack naturally goes along with the life of simple perception, of imitative- ness, of concrete ideas, and of incapacity for abstract ideas, which the primitive man shows us.
The collection of implements and weapons arranged by Colonel Lane.Fox, to show their relationships to common originals of the simplest types, suggests that primitive men are not to be credited with such inventiveness as even their simple appliances seem to indicate. These have arisen by small modifications; and the selection of such modifications has led unobtrusively to various kinds of appliances, with- out any distinct devising of them.
Evidence of another kind, but of like meaning, is furnished by Sir Samuel Baker's paper on the '* Races of the Nile Basin '' {Eth. Trans,, 1867), in which he points out that the dwellings of the respective tribes are as constant in their types as are the nests of birds: each tribe of the one, like each species of the other, having a peculiarity. He also points out in this paper that the like permanent differences hold among their head-dresses; and he further asserts of head-dresses, as of huts, that they have diverged from one another in their types in proportion as the lan- guages have diverged. All which facts show us that in these races the thoughts, restrained within narrow esta- blished courses, have not the freedom required for entering into new combinations, and so initiating new modes, of action and new forms of product.
Where we find ingenuity ascribed to inferior races, it is to races such as the Tahitians, Javans, etc., who have reached considerable degprees of civilization, who have con- siderable stocks of abstract words and ideas, who show THB PBDUTITB KAN — ^INTlBLLSCTnAL. 101 rational Burprise and coriosily^ and who tlias evince Ugher intellectoal deyelopment.
§ 48. Here we are bronglit naturally to a general truth allied to those with which, in the two foregoing chapters, I have preluded' the snnimaries of results. I mean the truth that the primitiye intellect, relatively simpler, develops more rapidly, and earlier reaches its limit.
In the Principles of Psychology, § 165, 1 have given testi- monies concerning the Australians, the Negroes in the United States, the Negroes on the Nile, the Andamanese, the New Zealanders, the Sandwich Islanders, to the effect that the children among these races are quicker than European children in the acquisition of simple ideas, but presently stop short from inability to grasp the complex ideas readily grasped by European children, when they arrive at them. In further illustration I may add the remark of Mr. Beade, that in Equatorial Africa the children are ''absurdly precocious;'' the statement of Captain Burton, that tke West Africans are " remarkably sharp when under puberty, — ^that epoch, as amongst the Hindus, seeming to addle fheir brains; '' and the description of the Aleuts of Alaska^ who '' up to a certain point are readily taught.'' This early cessation of development — ^this change from an active receptivity while only simple ideas have to be taken in, to a slow receptivity when ideas of some generality have to be taken in, implies both low intellectual nature and a great impediment to intellectual advance; since it makes the larger part of life unmodifiable by further experi- ences. When we read that the East African '' unites the incapacity of infancy with the impliancy of age" — ^when we find it alleged of the Australians that ''after twenty their mental vigour seems to decline, and at the age of forty seems nearly extinct;" we cannot fail to see how greatly this arrest of mental evolution hinders improvement where improvement is most required.
102 THl DATA or 800I0I00T.
The intellectaal traits of the tmciyiluiecl^ thus made specially difficult to change^ may now be recapitnlated while observing that thej are traits recurring in the children of the ciyilized.
Infency and nnrseiy-lif e, show ns an absorption in sensa- tions and perceptions^ akin to that which characterizes the savage. In pnlling to pieces its toys, in making mud- pies, in gazing at each new thing or person, the child exhibits a predominant perceptiyeness with oomparatiyely little reflectiveness. There is, again, an obvions parallelism in the mimetic tendency. Children are ever dramatizing the lives of adults; and savages, along with their other mimicries, similarly dramatize the actions of their civilized visitors. Want of power to discriminate between useless and useful &cts, characterizes the juvenile mind, as it does the mind of the primitive man. Indeed, on observing how the feM^ts learnt by a child, either as lessons or by spontaneous observation, are learnt for their own sakes only, without thought of their values as materials from which to generalize, it becomes manifest that this inability to select nutritive facts, is a necessary accom- paniment of low development; since until generalization has made some progress, and the habit of generalizing has become established, there cannot be reached the conception that a fact has a remote value apart from any immediate value it may have. Again, we see in the young of our own race a parallel inability lio ooncentrate the attention on anything complex or abstract. The mind of the child, like that of the savage, soon wanders from sheer exhaustion when generalities and in- volved propositions have to be dealt with. Neces*- sarily, along with feebleness of the higher intellectual faculties, there goes, in both cases, an absence, or a paucity^ of the ideas grasped by those faculties. The child, like the savage, has few words of even a low grade of abstractness^ and none of a higher grade. For a long time it is fftwiliju* THI PBUOnVB UAH — ^IVTILLaCTnAL. 103 wiih oat, dog, horse, cow, but has no oonoeption of animal apart from kind; and years elapse before words end- ing in ion and Uy occur in its yocabnlary. Thus, in both cases, the very implements of developed thought are wanting. ITnsupplied as its mind is with general tmths, and with the conception of natural order, the civil- ized child when quite young, like the savage throaghout life, shows but little rational surprise or rational curiosity. Something startling to the senses — an unexpected flash or explosion — ^makes it stare vacantly, or perhaps cry; but show it a chemical experiment, or draw its attention to the behaviour of a gyroscope, and its interest is like that shown in a common-place new toy. After a time, indeed, when the liigher intellectual powers it inherits from civilized ances- tors are beginning to act, and when its stage of mental development represents that of such semi-civilized races as the Malayo-Polynesians, rational surprise and rational curi- oeitj about causes, begin to show themselves. But even then its extreme credulity, like that of the savage, shows OB the result of undeveloped ideas of causation and law. Any stoiy, however monstrous, is believed; and any expla- nation, however absurd, is accepted as satisfactory. In the absen&e of generalized knowledge there is nothing with which the statement of an impossibility seems incongruous; Bo that criticism and scepticism are absent.
And here, in final elucidation of these intellectual traits of the primitiye man, it may be pointed out respecting them, as respecting the emotional traits, that they coold not be other than they are in the absence of the conditions brought about by social erolution. In the Principles of Psydiology, §§ 484—498, it was shown in various ways that only as societies grow, become organized, and gain stability, do there arise those experiences by assimilating which the powers of thought deyelop. It nee^s but to ask what would happen to ourselyes were the whole mass of existing knowledge obliterated, and were children with nothing 104 THB DATA OF BOOIOLOGY, bejond their nnrsery-langaage left to grow up withbni^ guidance or mstraction from adults^ to perceive tliat even now the higher intellectual faculties would be aknost inopera- tive^ from lack of the materials and aids accumulated by past civilization. And seeing this^ we cannot &dl to see thai development of the higher intellectual faculties has gone on pari passu with social advance^ alike as cause and conse- quence; that the primitive man could not possibly evolve tiiese higher intellectual faculties in the absence of a fit environment; and that in this^ as in other respects^ his progress was retarded by the absence of capacities which only progress could bring.
CHAPTBE Vllt.
PBIMITIYE IDEAS.
§ 49. Yet a fnrtlier preparation for interpreting social phenomena is needed. It is not enough tliat we slionld acquaint ourselves^ first with the external factors^ and then with those internal factors treated of in the foregoing three chapters, describing primitive man — ^physical, emotional, and intellectual. The behavionr of the social unit as exposed to enyironing conditions — inorganic, organic, and super* organic— depends in part on certain additional traits. For b^ond those visible specialities of organization which the body displays, and beyond those hidden specialities of organization implied by the mental type, there are those kindred specialities, still less traceable, implied by the ac- quired beliefs. As the mental powers themselves are in- herited products of accumulated experiences which moulded the nervous structures; so the ideas elaborated by those powers during individual life, are products of personal ex- periences to which there correspond certain minute modi- fications of the inherited structures. A complete account of the original social unit must include these — or rather, must include the correlative ideas implying them. For, manifestly, the ideas he forms of himself, of other beings, and of the surrounding world, greatly affect his conduct.
106 THl DATA Of 80CI0L00T.
A true oonoeption of these final modifications, or of tlie ideas wUcli are their correlatiyes, is very difficult to form. Great obstacles stand in the way alike of indactire inter- pretation and dednctive interpretation. We must first of all glance at these.
§ 50. To determine what conceptions are tmlj primitiye, would be easy if we had accounts of truly primitiye men. But there are sundry reasons for suspecting that existing men of the lowest types, forming social groups of the simplest kinds, do not exemplify men as they originally were. Probably most of them, if not all of them, had an- cestors in higher states; and among their beliefs remain some which were evolved during those higher states. While the degradation-theory, as currently held, is unten- able, the theory of progression, taken in its unqualified form, seems to me untenable also. If, on the one hand, the notion that savagery is caused by lapse from civilization, is irre- concilable with the evidence; there is, on the other hand, inadequate warrant for the notion that the lowest savagery has always been as low as it is now. It is quite possible, and, I believe, highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression.
Evolution is commonly conceived to imply in everything an intrinsic tendency to become something higher; but this is an erroneous conception of it. In all cases it is deter- mined by the co-operation of inner and outer factors. This co-operation works changres until there is reached an equi- librium between the environing actions and the actions which the aggregate opposes to them-^--a complete equi- librium if the aggregate is without life, and a moving equi- librium if the aggregate is living. Thereupon evolution, continuing to show itself only in the progpressing integration that ends in rigidity, practically ceases. If in the case of the living aggregates forming a species, the environing actions remain constant from generation to g^eration, the PBDOTIVl n>8^. 107 flpeoies remaiBS constant. If tlie enyironing actions dbsxige, tlie species changes nntil it re-eqnilibrates itself with them. But it by no means follows that this change in the species constitntes a step in evolntion. XJsnallj neither advance nor recession results; and often, certain previonsly-acqnired Btmctores being rendered snperflaonSi tiiere results a sim- pler form. Only now and then does the environing change initiate in the organism a new complication^ and so produce a somewhat higher type* Hence the truth that while for immeasurable periods some types have neither advanced nor receded, and while in other types there has been further evolution, there are many types in which retrogression has happened. I do not refer merely to such facts as that the tetrabranchiate Gephalopods, once multitudinous in their kinds and some of them very large, have now dwindled to a single medium-sized representative; or to such facts as that the highest orders of reptiles, thePterosaniriaBSii Bi/no^ sauria, which once had many genera superior in structure and gigantic in size, have become extinct, while lower orders of reptQes have survived; or to such facts as that in many genera of mammals there once existed species larger than any of their allies existing now; but I refer more especially to the &ct that among parasitic creatures, we have almost innumerable kinds which are degraded modifications of higher kinds. Of all existing species of animals, if we in* dude parasites, the greatec number have retrograded from a structure to which their remote ancestors had once ad- vanced. Often, indeed^ progression in some types involves retrogression in others. For always the more evolved type^ conquering by the aid of its acquired superiority, tends to drive competing types into inferior habitats and less profit- able modes of life: usually implying some disuse and decay of their higher powers.