The illustrative examples I shall frequently draw from savage conditions of life. This is in accordance with the custom of ethnologists, and is based on the fact that in such conditions the motives of action are simpler and less concealed, and we are nearer the origins of arts and institutions. Only by such direct examples can a true psychology be established. The time has passed when one can seek the laws of mental development from the “inner consciousness”; and we smile at even so recent a philosopher as Cousin, when he tells us that, to discover such laws, “_il nous suffit de rentrer dans nous-mêmes_.” PART I THE CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND CHAPTER I _THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN MIND_ In a treatise on psychology we have to do with the Mind; and what is Mind? So far as we can define it, it is the sum of those activities which distinguish living from dead matter, the organism from the inorganic mass. So broad a definition would include both the vegetable and the animal worlds; and this is not an error; but for the present purpose, which is the consideration of the mind of man, it is enough if we recognise that this mind of his is a development of that of the brute; the same in most of its traits, contrasted to it in a few. It is profitable, in truth indispensable, to scrutinise both closely. _Identities and Differences of the Human and the Brute Mind._—There is a branch of science called “comparative psychology.” Its province is to trace the evolution of human mental powers to their earlier phases in the inferior animals. So successfully has it been pursued that not a few of its teachers claim that there is nothing left as the private property of man in this connection; that he has no powers or faculties which are peculiarly his own; that all his endowments differ in degree only from those evinced by some one or other of the lower species. The brute has his fine senses, as acute as, often acuter than, ours; no one can deny him emotions of love and fear, hate and affection, sorrow and joy, as poignant as ours, and often expressed in strangely similar modes; his memory is retentive, his will strong, his self-control remarkable; he has a lively curiosity, a love of imitation, a sense of the beautiful, and it is acknowledged that we cannot deny him either imagination or reason. Mental progress is not unknown in the brute, and it is well to remember that it is not universal among men.