ture only a short time ago. Astronomy and human life gave us astrology; botany and magic gave us medicine.

Dewey has summarized the emotional and intellectual characteristics of primitive man as given by Spencer. "He is explosive and chaotic in feeling, improvident, childishly mirthful, intolerant of restraint. . . . attentive to meaningless detail and incapable of selecting the facts from which conclusions may be drawn, with feeble grasp of thought, incapable of rational surprise, incurious, lacking in ingenuity and constructive imagination." The savage, as the field anthropologist knows him, after an intimate study, corresponds only in a few respects to Spencer's description. Dewey, in a well-known passage, says, "Immediacy of interest, attention, and deed is the essential trait of the nomad hunter. He has no cultivated plants, no system of appliances for tending and regulating plants and animals; he does not even anticipate the future by drying meat. When food is abundant he gorges himself, but does not save . . . Now such facts as these are usually given a purely negative interpretation. They are used as proofs of the incapacities of the savage. But in fact they are parts of a very positive psychosis, which taken in itself and not merely measured against something else, requires and exhibits highly specialized skill, and affords intense satisfactions-psychical and social satisfactions, not merely sensuous indulgences. The savage's repugnance to what we term a higher plane of life is not due to stupidity or dullness or apathy-or to any other merely negative qualities. . . His aversion is due to the fact that in the new occupations he does not have so clear or so intense a sphere for the display of intellectual and

practical skill, or such opportunity for a dramatic play of emotion.

...

"No one has ever called a purely hunting race dull, apathetic or stupid. Much has been written regarding the aversion of savages to higher resources of civilization-their refusal to adopt iron tools or weapons, for example, and their sodden absorption in routine habits . . Their attention is mobile and fluid as is their life; they are eager to the point of greed for anything which will fit into their dramatic situations so as to intensify skill and increase emotion . . . It is when the native is forced into an alien use of the new resources, instead of adapting them to his own ends, that his workmanship, skill, and artistic taste uniformly degenerate.

"Competent testimony is unanimous as to the quickness and accuracy of apprehension evinced by the natives in coming in contact even for the first time with complicated constructive devices of civilized man, provided only these appliances have a direct or immediate actionindex." 34

In spite of some exceptions, early society is conservative. Reflection is far rarer than imitation. Tradition of the elders has been called "the instinct of society." If everyone is imitating everyone else the result is no movement in either direction. That there is movernent and hence change, however slowly accomplished in some societies,—is proved on all sides. The fact that we find peoples speaking the same languages and with a similar early history, occupying different scales of culture, doing different things in different ways, proves that originality must have been present to inaugurate these changes. The tendency to change may be small or great. The incentive depends upon many factors:-a

crisis of war bringing about the selections of a leader; the crisis of a deplenished food supply, leading to migration or to the development of new methods of raising food; new ideas brought in from another people by conquest or by subjection.

The greatest variation in the attitude towards cultural novelties is seen in the modern world. One modern writer, assimilating conservatism to a disease, has given it a name,-"neophobia," a form of disease that has been recognized for years. He cites a letter by Creevey against a bill introduced into the British Parliament in 1825 against the construction of the first railway, and Napier in the House of Commons against the introduction of steam power into the English navy. Walter Scott called coal gas for lighting a pestilential innovation, Byron satirized it in verse. The introduction of bath tubs in the United States in 1840 was considered by doctors as dangerous to health; and, as late as 1845, there was a municipal ordinance in Boston that such tubs were unlawful except on medical advice.35 And we all remember an aged relative who vowed she would never ride in "one of those automobiles." Conservatism today is considered old-fashioned. And yet the world needs conservatism as a balance for new ideas.

In the first chapter I tried to show that culture is not mainly made up of congenital factors. I have carried this thesis a step further and endeavored to point out that society is thus not a biological organism. Man's intellectual equipment, made possible by a large brain, coupled with his possession of articulate speech, places human society in an entirely different category from that found among non-human animals. Individual dif

ferences, race, and environment should be considered as factors in the diversities of cultures. All play a part, but not one occupies the entire rôle in the drama of peoples.

Many of the more common ideas regarding the nature of the savage are not founded upon facts. He is not a creature of unbridled passions, but is held in check by numerous tabus. The acuity of his senses, his power of concentration, and his emotional qualities do not differ greatly from corresponding qualities in civilized man. As regards intellect, we cannot at present prove that he has an inferior endowment in mental equipment. Such a postulated theory may be advanced, but it cannot be derived from any scientific data at present available. It should also be pointed out that superiority does not consist of intellect alone but that other unmeasurable qualities which are relative to emotional and volitional make-up may contribute to the preeminence of a people. According to the common view, "Man is many, and civilization one." The reverse is one of the theses of this book: "Man is one, civilizations are many."

CHAPTER III

THE CRISES IN THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

THERE are almost as many different types of persons in a primitive community as in a modern one; and, furthermore, there are various kinds of societies which can be classed as rude, ranging all the way from that of the lowly Australian and the Bushman to the more complicated life of the Polynesian.

The mistake is often made of envisaging a typical savage, or, as some have called him, a "natural man," and a standard society to which he belongs. There is neither the one nor the other. For this reason it is perhaps a mistake even to attempt a discussion of the life of such a hypothetical individual; as there is, in reality, no such creature. But out of the mass of facts concerning the daily routine of a savage, certain practices stand out as common among many peoples, a social and religious etiquette observed in the various crises of life.

Mention has already been made of the suggestibility of primitive man. This is especially noticeable in regard to the unseen forces of his environment. He is always alert in the face of the imagined dangers of evil powers who wait in a sort of ethereal ambush to work harm. Practically all the observances that will be noted are based on the attempt to placate these unseen powers with the request that good spirits come in their stead.

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