Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/488

 mc gee] THE TREND OF HUMAN PROGRESS 4 2 9

with the law under which observation begins with the unusual), the activital coincidences among diverse peoples are much less common and persistent than those differences in mode of think- ing which form the strongest bar against union of tribes and nations. It is a commonplace of observation that aliens can inter- marry more easily than live together in harmony (save where one is able to extinguish the discord by overpowering tone) ; it is a commonplace of history that nations war ten times over differ- ences in faith, or faith-inspired conduct, to each battle over reali- ties; and when tribes, either in natural condition or grouped on reservations, engage in strife, the source is almost invariably traceable to diversities of belief or language or law, that is, to mode of thinking. So, too, the most serious obstacles encoun- tered by ethnologic students and missionaries are fundamental differences in the way of viewing things which hold them apart from their alien co-laborers ; and when the lower thinker adopts a higher faith, it is long a lightly-worn veil, to be cast aside in times of stress, before the new woof is fully woven into his web of thought through fixed habit or heritage. By superficial ob- servers these persistent diversities in* mental operation are some- times ascribed to difference in race ; but deeper study indicates that they reflect habitual activities, and are thus demotic rather than biotic, the expression of brain rather than blood, the mark of culture rather than color.

Incongruities in mode of thinking form a social factor of no small moment among higher as well as lower peoples : The European statesman constantly stands guard against misunder- standings growing out of local habits of thought and colloquial forms of speech ; even the American nation has more than once met threat of disruption merely because citizens of different sec- tions failed to understand each other's motives; and the chief obstacles to international alliances grow out of provincial preju- dices, which are only slowly — albeit steadily — disappearing with the unification of knowledge by means of travel, telegraphy, tele-

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