The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic PsychologyBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Science
The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Ethnopsychology; Sociology
The physical criteria of race, such as the colour of the skin, the hair,
the shape of the skull, the odour of the glands, are well marked in the
gross. I have examined their relative values for purposes of
classification in another work, and need not repeat the details here.
But the question is pertinent: Are there psychological distinctions
separating the subspecies of man as clearly as those of his physical
economy?
Conflicting answers have been and still are offered to this inquiry. By
some the mental powers of the races are asserted to be as sharply
contrasted as their personal appearance, and the gulf between them to be
practically impassable.
I have already said that nothing in the minute or gross anatomy of the
brain can be offered to support this view. The contributions to the
general culture of the species have been markedly unequal; but may not
this be explained by other reasons than inherent physical inequalities?
I have already expressed the opinion that human groups have differed
less in inherent psychical capacity than in stimuli and opportunities.
Such, also, is the belief of that profound student of human development,
Professor Bastian. He claims that convincing evidence in favour of such
a view can be drawn from the uniformity in the development of thoughts,
inventions, customs, religions, and the other elements of culture the
world over, up to a certain point at which other intercurrent influences
entered, not dependent on race distinctions.
After a prolonged study of primitive peoples the anthropologist Waitz
reached the conclusion that there is not and never was any positive
difference in the intellectual power of races; and the historian Buckle,
reviewing the record of the species in time, announced his conviction
that “the natural faculties of man have made no progress.”
In abundant instances the children of savage parents have been brought
up in civilised surroundings and have shown themselves equal and
occasionally superior to their comrades of the so-called higher race in
all the tastes of cultured society. It were useless, therefore, to talk
of an average natural inferiority.
The attainment of a possible average, therefore, must be conceded. But
this must not be construed as closing the question historically or
psychically.
It is constantly observed in education that children of equal ability
are by no means equally good scholars. They respond differently to the
stimulus of the desire of knowledge.
Such contrasts are witnessed in races also, and, apart from whatever
other influences we may name, are hereditary characteristics, recurring
indefinitely and controlling the racial mind, its activities and its
ambitions.
So visible are the mental differences of races that some writers have
advocated a psychological classification in anthropology. Professor
Letourneau has attempted it in one of his many treatises.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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