In illustrating the improving effects of civilization through transmission, much weight is generally laid upon cases of relapse of individuals belonging to primitive races who have been educated. These relapses are interpreted as proofs of the inability of the child of a lower race to adapt itself to our high civilization, even if the best advantages are given to it. It is true that a considerable number of such cases are on record. Among these I will mention Darwin’s Fuegian, who lived in England for a few years and returned to his home, where he fell back into the ways of his primitive countrymen; and the West Australian girl who was married to a white man, but suddenly fled to the bush after killing her husband, and resumed life with the natives. Cases of this kind are true, but not one of them has been described with sufficient detail. The social and mental conditions of the individual have never been subjected to a searching analysis. I should judge that even in extreme cases, notwithstanding their better education, their social position was always one of isolation, while the ties of consanguinity formed a connecting link with their uncivilized brethren. The power with which society holds us and does not give us a chance to step out of its limits cannot have acted as strongly upon them as upon us. On the other hand, the station obtained by many negroes in our civilization seems to me to have just as much weight as the few cases of relapse which have been collected with much care and diligence. I should place side by side with them the cases of white men who live alone among native tribes, and who sink almost invariably to a semi-barbarous position, and the members of well-to-do families who prefer unbounded freedom to the fetters of society, and flee to the wilderness, where many lead a life in no way superior to that of primitive man.
In the study of the behavior of members of foreign races educated in European society, we should also bear in mind the influence of habits of thought, feeling, and action acquired in early childhood, and of which no recollection is retained. If S. Freud is right in assuming that these forgotten incidents remain a living force throughout life,—the more potent, the more thoroughly they are forgotten,—we should have to conclude that many of the small traits of individuals which we ordinarily believe to be inherited are acquired by the influence of the individuals among whom the child spends the first five years of its life. All observations on the force of habit and the intensity of resistance to changes of habit are in favor of this theory.
Our brief consideration of some of the mental activities of man in civilized and in primitive society has led us to the conclusion that these functions of the human mind are common to the whole of humanity. It may be well to state here, that, according to our present method of considering biological and psychological phenomena, we must assume that these have developed from lower conditions existing at a previous time, and that at one time there certainly must have been races and tribes in which the properties here described were not at all, or only slightly, developed; but it is also true that among the present races of man, no matter how primitive they may be in comparison with ourselves, these faculties are highly developed.
It is not impossible that the degree of development of these functions may differ somewhat among different types of man; but I do not believe that we are able at the present time to form a just valuation of the hereditary mental powers of the different races. A comparison of their languages, customs, and activities suggests that their faculties may be unequally developed; but the differences are not sufficient to justify us to ascribe materially lower stages to some peoples, and higher stages to others. The conclusions reached from these considerations are therefore, on the whole, negative. We are not inclined to consider the mental organization of different races of man as differing in fundamental points. Although, therefore, the distribution of faculty among the races of man is far from being known, we can say this much: the average faculty of the white race is found to the same degree in a large proportion of individuals of all other races, and, although it is probable that some of these races may not produce as large a proportion of great men as our own race, there is no reason to suppose that they are unable to reach the level of civilization represented by the bulk of our own people.
V. RACE AND LANGUAGE
In the last chapter I tried to show that the principal characteristics of the mind of primitive man occur among primitive tribes of all races, and that therefore the inference must not be drawn that these traits of the mind are racial characteristics. This negative conclusion, which is based entirely on the consideration of a few selected points that occur with great regularity in the description of primitive tribes, does not give us, however, proof positive of the lack of all correlation between mental life and racial descent, and we must direct our attention to those cases in which an immediate relationship between the two may be and has been claimed.
This has occurred particularly in regard to language and racial types. Indeed, the opinion is still held by some investigators that linguistic relationships and racial relationships are in a way interchangeable terms. An example illustrating this point of view may be seen in the long-continued discussions of the home of the “Aryan race,” in which the blond northwest European type is identified with the ancient people among whom the Indo-European or Aryan languages developed.
If it could be shown that distinct languages belong to distinct racial types, and that these languages exhibit different levels of development or indicate different types of thought, we should have gained a sound basis which would allow us to discuss the genius of each people as reflected in its language. If, furthermore, we could show that certain cultural types belong to certain races and are foreign to the genius of others, our conclusions would be founded on much firmer ground.
Thus we are led to a consideration of the all-important question whether types, languages, and cultures are so intimately connected that each human race is characterized by a certain combination of physical type, language, and culture.