The mind of primitive man : $b A course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., and the National University of Mexico, 1910-1911Boas, Franz
Science
The mind of primitive man : $b A course of lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston, Mass., and the National University of Mexico, 1910-1911
Boas, Franz
Ethnopsychology; Race
We are thus led to the conclusion that the assumption of a uniform
development of culture among all the different races of man and among
all tribal units is true in a limited sense only. We may recognize a
certain modification of mental activities with modifications of form of
culture; but the assumption that the same forms must necessarily develop
in every independent social unit can hardly be maintained. Thus the
question with which we began our consideration—namely, whether the
representatives of different races can be proved to have developed each
independently, in such a way that the representatives of some races
stand on low levels of culture, while others stand on high levels of
culture—may be answered in the negative. If we should make the attempt
to arrange the different types of man in accordance with their
industrial advancement, we should find representatives of the most
diverse races—such as the Bushman of South Africa, the Veddah of Ceylon,
the Australian, and the Indian of Terra del Fuego—on the same lowest
level. We should also find representatives of different races on more
advanced levels, like the negroes of Central Africa, the Indians of the
Southwestern pueblos, and the Polynesians; and in our present period we
may find representatives of the most diverse races taking part in the
highest types of civilization. Thus it will be seen that there is no
close relation between race and culture.
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Footnote 6:
In a few localities in this district pottery is found, perhaps due to
a late local introduction.
Footnote 7:
The cultural conditions of Melanesia Northwest America, and of some of
the nomadic tribes of Africa, might thus be compared.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII. SOME TRAITS OF PRIMITIVE CULTURE
IT now remains to formulate more clearly the difference between the
forms of thought of primitive man and those of civilized man, regardless
of their racial descent.
Even a superficial observation demonstrates that groups of man belonging
to distinct social strata do not behave in the same manner. The Russian
peasant does not re-act to his sense-experiences in the same way as does
the native Australian; and entirely different from theirs are the
re-actions of the educated Chinaman and of the educated American. In all
these cases the form of re-action may depend to a slight extent upon
hereditary individual and racial ability, but it will to a much greater
extent be determined by the habitual re-actions of the society to which
the individual in question belongs.
It seems necessary, therefore, as a last step in our discussion, to
define and explain the mental re-actions which distinguish primitive man
and civilized man of all races.
We must confine this discussion to a very few examples of fundamental
psychological facts.
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