The philosophical ethnologist can see in this nothing but the near-sighted effort of the strong to oppress the weak, unaware of its sure recoil on themselves. In reducing the influence of woman, exerted through beneficial activities, the ethnos directly diminishes the elements of its own advancement. Goethe never wrote a deeper truth than in his famous lines:
Das ewig weibliche,
Zieht uns hinan.
And the ethnic psychologist has no sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal: “The position of woman is the cardinal point of all social relations.”
The ethnic psychologist has a wide field in the study of the influence of particular occupations on the minds of those engaged in them, and thereafter on the mind of the group. He will have to examine the assertion that some, though necessary, are in themselves deteriorating to the better elements of humanity. Can the slaughter of men in war be carried on without brutalising the sentiments? Can commerce be successfully conducted without deception? Can the advocate do his best for the guilty client without impairing his sentiment of truthfulness?
Further subjects of study must be the influence of occupations on home and family life. Many involve travel, enforced absences, or a migratory career, weakening such ties.
A marked tendency of modern occupations is toward increased specialisation. A man will spend his life, it has been said, in making the ninth part of a pin; and it has been asked, with accents of despair, what hope for the mental growth of such a case? Yet, in fact, the lawyer confined to his local code, or the medical specialist to the diseases of one organ, has the horizon of his daily labour as narrowly circumscribed.
The truth is that the individual is in the position of the primitive tribe. If he is forced to give all his waking hours to “getting a living,” it matters little what his employment is. One is as bad as another. And if by his work he wins leisure, all depends on the use of that leisure. Spinoza gained his bread by grinding optical glasses,—surely an uninspiring mechanical drudgery! But in odd times he wrote his Ethics, than which no nobler contribution to the highest realms of thought has ever been composed.
CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE OF THE GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT
The extent to which the geographic environment decides the character and history of a people has been and still is a question on which competent writers differ widely.