The mind of primitive man

by Franz Boas

With pity he looks down upon those members of the human race who have not succeeded in subduing nature; who labor to eke a meagre existence out of the products of the wilderness; who hear with trembling the roar of the wild animals, and see the products of their toils destroyed by them; who remain restricted by ocean, river, or mountains; who strive to obtain the necessities of life with the help of few and simple instruments.

Such is the contrast that presents itself to the observer. What wonder if civilized man considers himself a being of higher order as compared to primitive man, if he claims that the white race represents a type higher than all others!

Before accepting this conclusion which places the stamp of eternal inferiority upon whole races of man, we may well pause, and subject the basis of our opinions regarding the aptitude of different peoples and races to a searching analysis. The naïve assumption of the superiority of the European nations and their descendants is obviously based upon their wonderful achievements. We conclude that, as the civilization is higher, the aptitude for civilization is also higher; and, as the aptitude for civilization presumably depends upon the perfection of the mechanism of body and mind, the inference is drawn that the white race represents the highest type of perfection. In this conclusion, which is reached through a comparison of the social status of civilized man with that of primitive man, the tacit assumption is made that achievement depends solely, or at least primarily, upon the aptitude for an achievement.

The assertion of a higher aptitude of the European nations leads at once to a second inference relating to the significance of difference in type between the European race and the races of other continents, or even of differences between various European types. The line of thought which we unconsciously pursue is about as follows. Since the aptitude of the European is highest, his physical and mental type is also highest, and every deviation from the white type necessarily represents a characteristic feature of a lower type.

That this unproved assumption underlies our judgments of races, appears from the fact, that, other conditions being equal, a race is commonly described as the lower, the more fundamentally it differs from the white race. Its effect may also be noticed in the long-continued discussions of the occurrence of anatomical peculiarities in primitive man which would characterize him as a being of lower order in the zoölogical series, and in the emphasis laid upon the non-occurrence of such traits in primitive man and their occurrence in the European race.

The subject and form of these discussions show that the idea dwells in the minds of investigators that we should expect to find in the white race the highest type of man.

In drawing inferences from social distinctions, the same point of view is frequently held. It is assumed, that, as the mental development of the white race is the highest, it also has the highest aptitude in this direction, and therefore its mind is supposed to have the most subtile organization. As the ultimate psychical causes are not so apparent as anatomical characteristics, the judgment of the mental status of a people is generally guided by the difference between its social status and our own: the greater the difference between their intellectual, emotional, and moral processes and those which are found in our civilization, the harsher the judgment on the people. It is only when a Tacitus finds the virtues of past stages of the life of his own people among foreign tribes that their example is held up to the gaze of his fellow-citizens, who probably had a pitying smile for the dreamer who clung to the ideas of a time which they had left far behind.

In order to understand clearly the relations between race and civilization, the two unproved assumptions to which I have referred must be subjected to a searching analysis. We must investigate in how far we are justified in assuming that achievement is primarily due to exceptional aptitude, and in how far we are justified in assuming that the European type—or, taking the notion in its extreme form, that the North European type—represents the highest development of mankind. It will be advantageous to clear up these points before we take up the detailed inquiry.

In regard to the former point, it might be said, that, although achievement is not necessarily a measure of aptitude, it seems admissible to judge the one by the other. Have not most races had the same chances for development? Why, then, did the white race alone develop a civilization which is sweeping the whole world, and compared to which all other civilizations appear as feeble beginnings cut short in early childhood, or arrested and petrified in an early stage of development? Is it not, to say the least, probable that the race which attained the highest stage of civilization was the most gifted one, and that those races which remained at the bottom of the scale were not capable of rising to higher levels?

In order to find an answer to these questions, let us consider briefly the general outlines of the history of civilization; let our minds go back a few thousand years, until we reach the time when the civilizations of eastern and of western Asia were in their infancy. As time passed on, these civilizations were transferred from one people to another; some of those who had represented the highest type of culture sinking back into obscurity, while others took their places. During the dawn of history we see civilization cling to certain districts, in which it is taken up, now by one people, now by another. In the numerous conflicts of these times the more civilized people were often vanquished. The conqueror, however, learned the arts of life from the conquered, and carried on the work of civilization. Thus the centres of civilization were shifting to and fro over a limited area, and progress was slow and halting. At the same period the ancestors of the races that are now among the most highly civilized were in no way superior to primitive man as we find him now in regions that have not come into contact with modern civilization.