The manuscript of the following work was left by Dr. Brinton at his death in 1899 in a state of approximate completion, lacking only final revision at his hands. The editor has contented himself, therefore, with making such verbal corrections as were necessary and, by slight rearrangement of certain sections to conform to the obvious scheme of the work, bringing the text into readiness for publication. The verification and noting of references have not been attempted. The author’s encyclopedic acquaintance with the literature of his subject as well as his general method of quotation has made this impracticable.

Dr. Brinton’s contributions to anthropology are too well known to call for especial comment, his writings, particularly in the fields of American archæology and linguistics, being so numerous and valuable as to give him a world-wide reputation. His interest, however, was general as well as special, and the development of anthropology owes much to his insight and ready pen. Among the doctrines for which he stood at all times an active champion was the psychological unity of man, a principle which is now widely accepted and forms the working basis for most of our modern ethnology. Tacitly assumed, as it is and has been, for the most part since the writings of Waitz, the need of a succinct statement of the doctrine has long been felt, and this is now given, possibly in somewhat extreme form, in the present work.

Apart from its intrinsic interest the book will be welcomed as the last word of the distinguished author whose lamented death has deprived the science of anthropology of one of its ablest representatives.

L. F.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction[vii]
PART I
THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND
CHAPTER I
The Unity of the Human Mind[3]
CHAPTER II
The Individual and the Group. The Ethnic Mind[23]
CHAPTER III
Physiological Variation in the Ethnic Mind. Progressive and Regressive Variation. Modes and Rates of Ethnic Variation[46]
CHAPTER IV
Pathological Variation in the Ethnic Mind[82]
PART II
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND
Introduction[123]
CHAPTER I
The Influence of the Somatic Environment[126]
CHAPTER II
Ethnic Mental Diversity from Cognatic Causes. Heredity; Hybridity; Racial Pathology[147]
CHAPTER III
The Influence of the Social Environment[163]
CHAPTER IV
The Influence of the Geographic Environment[180]
Index[201]

INTRODUCTION

It is strange that not in any language has there been published a systematic treatise on Ethnic Psychology; strange, because the theme is in nowise a new one but has been the subject of many papers and discussions for a generation; indeed, had a journal dedicated to its service for a score of years; strange, also, because its students claim that it is the key to ethnology, the sure interpreter of history, and the only solid basis for constructive sociology.

Why this apparent failure to establish for itself a position in the temple of the Science of Man? This inquiry must be answered on the threshold of a treatise which undertakes to vindicate for this study an independent position and a permanent value.

It has been cultivated chiefly by German writers. The periodical to which I have referred was begun in 1860, under the editorship of Dr. M. Lazarus and Dr. H. Steinthal, the former a psychologist, the latter a logician and linguist. The contributors to it often occupied high places in the learned world. Their articles, usually on special points in ethnography or linguistics, were replete with thought and facts. But they failed to convince their contemporaries that there was any room in the hierarchy of the sciences for this newcomer. The failure was so palpable that after twenty years’ struggle the editors abandoned their task. But the seed they sowed had not perished in the soil. Under other names it struck root and flourished, and is now asserting for itself a right to live by virtue of its real worth to the right understanding of human progress.