Ethnical psychology, the study of the mind of other races and peoples, of which, among the more backward races, glimpses can be obtained only by living among them and endeavouring to reach their point of view by means of observation and experiment, is a modern conception; and for this branch of the subject there is no history.
As an illustration of the change of attitude with regard to ethnical psychology during the last fifty years, we may quote from Burmeister[[60]] in 1853: “It is not worth while to look into the soul of the negro. It is a judgment of God which is being executed that, at the approach of civilisation, the savage man must perish”; and again,[[61]] in 1857: “I have often tried to obtain an insight into the mind of the negro, but it was never worth the trouble.” Compare with this such works as R. E. Dennett’s At the Back of the Black Man’s Mind, 1906. In justification of his attempt to represent the basal ideas of the West African native, Dennett says: “I cannot help feeling that one who has lived so long among the Africans, and who has acquired a kind of way of thinking black, should be listened to on the off-chance that a secondary instinct, developed by long contact with the people he is writing about, may have driven him to a right, or very nearly right, conclusion” (pp. 133-4). And as the keynote of his elaborate investigation, which results in “crediting the Africans with thoughts, concerning their religious and political system, comparable to any that may have been handed down” to ourselves by our own ancestors, he quotes from Flora L. Shaw[[62]]: “It may happen that we shall have to revise entirely our view of the black races, and regard those who now exist as the decadent representatives of an almost forgotten era, rather than as the embryonic possibility of an era yet to come.”
[60]. Der Schwarze Mensch.
[61]. Reise nach Brasilien.
[62]. Flora L. Shaw (Lady Lugard), A Tropical Dependency, p. 17.
The earliest recognition of the anthropological aspect of psychology is found in Germany, where Bastian was always insisting on the essential connection between psychology and ethnology; and, although his own literary method was peculiarly obscure, he did a very great deal, both by his writings and personal influence, to stimulate the study of psychology from the point of view of ethnology.
P. W. A. Bastian.
Bastian.
Folk Psychology.