Great changes are taking place, with the introduction of modern methods of education, in our own insular possessions. Mr. Axel Holst, of the National Bank of the Danish West Indies, who has been a close and assiduous student of Negro folklore in the Virgin Islands, says that the effect of the American system of education will within a few years totally change the mental habits of the natives of St. Thomas. Since the younger generation have begun to read books, they are not so interested as they were in the Nansi stories, which correspond to the Bre’r Rabbit stories of the States. Since the introduction of American rule, newspapers have come into vogue, and the young men have taken to political discussion. The changes in the “mentality” of the Negro population are, Mr. Holst says, going on visibly, and at a surprising rate. These changes, if they are actually taking place, should be made the subject of further investigation. Such study should enable us to determine, among other things, more precisely than we have been able to determine hitherto, the rôle which cultural contacts, social heritages, and racial temperament play in the whole cultural process. It is evident that we are not to assume, as otherwise we might, that there is no area of the experience in which primitive or preliterate people think realistically and rationally. On the other hand, in contrasting primitive mentality with that of civilized man, we need not assume—except for the sake of the contrast—that the thinking of civilized man is always and everywhere either rational or scientific. As a matter of fact, there are still wide areas of our experience that have not as yet been fully rationalized, notably the fields of medicine and religion. In medicine, at least—if we are to believe a recent medical critic of what, in imitation of Lévy-Bruhl, we might call “medical mentality”—the majority of practitioners still think of diseases as morbid entities instead of convenient labels for groups of symptoms. The following paragraph from a recent writer states the matter from the point of view of a critic of “medical mentality.” It is not to be thought that any educated medical man indeed believes “a disease” to be a material thing, although the phraseology in current use lends colour to such supposition. Nevertheless, in hospital jargon, “diseases” are “morbid entities,” and medical students fondly believe that these “entities” somehow exist in _rebus Naturae_ and were discovered by their teachers, much as was America by Columbus.... In fact, for these gentlemen “diseases” are Platonic realities; universals _ante rem_. This unavowed belief, which might be condoned were it frankly admitted, is an inheritance from Galen, and carries with it the corollary that our notions concerning this, that, or the other “diseases” are either absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and are not merely matters of mental convenience.