However these associations may have been brought about, there is no doubt that they do exist, and that, psychologically considered, they are of the same character as those previously discussed, and that the rationalizing mind of man soon lost the historic thread, and reinterpreted the established customs in conformity with the general trend of thought of his culture. We are therefore justified in concluding that these customs must also be studied by the pragmatic method, because their present associations are not likely to be original, but rather secondary.
It is perhaps venturesome to discuss at the present moment the origin of these types of association; yet it may be admissible to dwell on a few of the most generalized facts which seem to characterize primitive culture as compared to civilization. From our point of view, the striking features of primitive culture are the great number of associations of entirely heterogeneous groups of phenomena, such as natural phenomena and individual emotion, social groupings and religious concepts, decorative art and symbolic interpretation. These tend to disappear with the approach to our present civilization, although a careful analysis reveals the persistence of many, and the tendency of each automatic action to establish its own associations according to the mental relations in which it regularly occurs. One of the great changes that has taken place may perhaps best be expressed by saying that in primitive culture the impressions of the outer world are associated intimately with subjective impressions, which they call forth regularly, but which are determined largely by the social surroundings of the individual. Gradually it is recognized that these connections are more uncertain than others that remain the same for all mankind, and in all forms of social surroundings; and thus sets in the gradual elimination of one subjective association after another, which culminates in the scientific method of the present day. We may express this also by saying that when we have our attention directed to a certain concept which has a whole fringe of incident concepts related to it, we at once associate it with that group which is represented by the category of causality. When the same concept appears in the mind of primitive man, it associates itself with those concepts related to it by emotional states.
If this is true, then the associations of the primitive mind are heterogeneous, and ours homogeneous and consistent only from our own point of view. To the mind of primitive man, only his own associations can be rational. Ours must appear to him just as heterogeneous as his to us, because the bond between the phenomena of the world, as it appears after the elimination of their emotional associations, which is being established with increasing knowledge, does not exist for him, while we can no longer feel the subjective associations that govern his mind.
This peculiarity of association is also another expression of the conservatism of primitive culture and the changeability of many features of our civilization. We tried to show that the resistance to change is largely due to emotional sources, and that in primitive culture emotional associations are the prevailing type: hence resistance against the new. In our civilization, on the other hand, many actions are performed merely as means to a rational end. They do not enter sufficiently deeply into our minds to establish connections which would give them emotional values: hence our readiness to change. We recognize, however, that we cannot remodel, without serious emotional resistance, any of the fundamental lines of thought and action which are determined by our early education, and which form the subconscious basis of all our activities. This is evinced by the attitude of civilized communities towards religion, politics, art, and the fundamental concepts of science.
In the average individual among primitive tribes, reasoning cannot overcome this emotional resistance, and it therefore requires a destruction of the existing emotional associations by more powerful means to bring about a change. This may be effected by some event which stirs up the mind of the people to its depths, or by economic and political changes against which resistance is impossible. In civilization there is a constant readiness to modify those activities that have no emotional value. This is true not only of activities designed to meet practical ends, but also of others that have lost their associations, and that have become subject to fashion. There remain, however, others which are retained with great tenacity, and which hold their own against reasoning, because their strength lies in their emotional values. The history of the progress of science yields example after example of the power of resistance belonging to old ideas, even after increasing knowledge of the world has undermined the ground on which they were erected. Their overthrow is not brought about until a new generation has arisen, to whom the old is no longer dear and near.
Besides this, there are a thousand activities and modes of thought that constitute our daily life,—of which we are not conscious at all until we come into contact with other types of life, or until we are prevented from acting according to our custom,—that cannot in any way be claimed to be more reasonable than others, and to which, nevertheless, we cling. These, it would seem, are hardly less numerous in civilized than in primitive culture, because they constitute the whole series of well-established habits according to which the necessary actions of ordinary every-day life are performed, and which are learned less by instruction than by imitation.
We may also express these conclusions in another form. While in the logical processes of the mind we find a decided tendency, with the development of civilization, to eliminate traditional elements, no such marked decrease in the force of traditional elements can be found in our activities. These are controlled by custom almost as much among ourselves as they are among primitive man. We have seen why this must be the case. The mental processes which enter into the development of judgments are based largely upon associations with previous judgments. This process of association is the same among primitive men as among civilized men, and the difference consists largely in the modification of the traditional material with which our new perceptions amalgamate. In the case of activities, the conditions are somewhat different. Here tradition manifests itself in an action performed by the individual. The more frequently this action is repeated, the more firmly it will become established, and the less will be the conscious equivalent accompanying the action; so that customary actions which are of very frequent repetition become entirely unconscious. Hand in hand with this decrease of consciousness goes an increase in the emotional value of the omission of such activities, and still more of the performance of actions contrary to custom. A greater will-power is required to inhibit an action which has become well established; and combined with this effort of the will-power are feelings of intense displeasure.
Thus an important change from primitive culture to civilization seems to consist in the gradual elimination of what might be called the social associations of sense-impressions and of activities, for which intellectual associations are gradually substituted. This process is accompanied by a loss of conservatism, which, however, does not extend over the field of habitual activities that do not come into consciousness, and only to a slight extent over those generalizations which are the foundation of all knowledge imparted in the course of education.
[8]. Some Australian tribes are divided into four exogamic groups. The laws of exogamy demand that a member of the first group must marry a member of the second group, and a member of the third group one of the fourth group. Cunow explains these customs by showing that when custom provides that a man in a tribe that is divided into two exogamic units, and in which only members of the same generation are allowed to intermarry, conditions like those found in Australia will naturally develop, if each group has a name, and one set of names are used for the first, third, fifth, generations, and another set of names for the second, fourth, sixth, generations, etc. If we should designate the two tribal divisions by the letters A and B, the generations by 1 and 2, the names of the four divisions would be A1, A2, B1, B2; and in marriages in which is placed first the sex that determines the group to which the offspring belongs, we find that—