It remains to speak of psychological characters—that is to say, of temperament and the different manifestations of mind, feeling, and affections. But it must be admitted that it is almost impossible to treat these in the face of many contradictory facts. Speaking generally, it may be said that the American and Mongoloid races are grave, meditative, a little obtuse, melancholic; and that, on the contrary, the Negro races and Melanesians are playful, laughing, lively, and superficial as children. But there are many exceptions to such general rules. Each traveller, each observer, tends to judge in his own way a given people according to the nature of the relations (pacific, hostile, etc.) which he has had with it. We are unable to affirm anything when we have once made up our minds to escape from the commonplace generalities that savages are wanting in foresight and general ideas, that they are cruel, that their imitative faculties are highly developed, etc.
Pathological characters are better known, as for example, in regard to immunities. It is a proved fact that Negroes, for instance, are proof against the contagion of yellow fever; that they resist much better than Europeans the terrible intermittent fevers which prevail on the coasts of Africa. But if savage peoples enjoy certain immunities, they are, on the contrary, very susceptible to the infectious diseases which civilised peoples introduce among them; whole tribes have been exterminated by syphilis, measles, and consumption in South America, Polynesia, and Siberia.[143] There are also diseases peculiar to certain populations, such, for example, as the sleeping sickness among the Wolofs and Songhaï, which manifests itself in an invincible tendency to sleep.[144] It has long been asserted that savage peoples are not afflicted by nervous and mental diseases. Nothing of the kind. The genuine “great hysteria” of Charcot has been observed among Negresses of Senegal, among Hottentot women and Kafirs, as well as in Abyssinia and Madagascar.[145] Other nervous diseases have been noticed among Hurons and Iroquois,[146] and in New Zealand. Some forms of neurosis appear to be limited to certain ethnic groups. Such is the “Amok” of the Malays—a sort of furious and imitative madness perhaps provoked at the same time by suggestion. Developed especially among the Malays, it is also met with among the Indians of North America, where it has been called “jumping” by the Whites. The “Myriachit” of the Ostiaks and other natives of Siberia, the “Malimali” of the Tagals of the Philippines, the “Bakchis” of the Siamese, are similar diseases. Under the name of “Latah” are designated among the Malays all sorts of nervous diseases, but more particularly the imitative madness which impels women to undress before men, to throw children up in the air in imitation of a game of ball, etc. Besides, the name Latah is also given to a mental state in which the patient is afraid of certain words (tiger, crocodile), and which is met with somewhat frequently not only among the Malays, but also among the Tagals and the Sikhs of India.[147]
CHAPTER IV.
ETHNIC CHARACTERS.
Various stages of social groups and essential characters of human societies: Progress.—Conditions of Progress: Innovating initiative, and tradition—Classification of “states of civilisation.”
I.—LINGUISTIC CHARACTERS.
Methods of exchanging ideas within a short distance—Gesture and speech—Divisions of language according to structure—Jargons—Communications at a relatively remote distance: optic and acoustic signals—Transmission of ideas at any distance and time whatever—Handwriting—Mnemotechnic objects—Pictography—Ideography—Alphabets—Direction of the lines of handwriting.
SO far we have considered man as an isolated being, apart from the groupings which he forms with his fellows. But in order to get a correct idea of the sum-total of the manifestations of his physical life, and especially of his psychical life, we must further consider him in his social environment.
Nowhere on the earth has there been found a race of men the members of which lived completely alone and isolated as the majority of animals are seen to do. It is in fact but very rarely that the latter combine into societies; they form a family group only temporarily during the period of raising the young, etc. Man, on the contrary, becomes almost helpless apart from society, incapable of maintaining the struggle for existence without the help of his fellow-men. The development of all the manifestations of “sociality” is then the measure of progress of human societies. The more man is “socialised,” if I may thus express it, the less he depends on nature.