Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/53

 GOLDENWEISER] A NEW APPROACH TO HISTORY 41

not only modifies, but is in turn modified by the existing system into which it is incorporated (pp. 102-3).

And again:

It will appear, then, that if we are to consider the content of life in addition to the exterior forms of human association, the study before us must concern it- self with the factors and processes through which the idea-systems of different groups have come to be as we find them today (p. 103).

Now, all this is very suggestive, but also very unclear. A good many interpretations could be given of the author's formulation; thus, it will be best to defer more deliberate discussion until concrete performance has clarified the author's intention. One or two points, however, should not be passed over in silence. We are told that "language, implements and institutions" are expressions of an idea-system. Two questions are in order here: in what sense are they expressions? and are they expressions of an idea-system? It is well understood that language is an expression of thought, but also determines thought; that implements are outgrowths of tasks to be achieved, but also determine or modify such tasks; that institutions spring from certain tendencies, attitudes and needs, but, once more, are moulders as well as moulded. In other words, the psychological or psycho-sociological requirements, which may be posited as the primary factor, presently receive concrete embodi- ment in act, tool, or code, which henceforth are operative in pro- ducing shifts in the original psychological factors and in creating new ones with which the process starts anew. Thus the objective and behavioristic elements of a civilization can never be regarded as direct expressions of the ideas or idea-systems that have, or may have, originally engendered them, but are, in fact, indefinitely and often irredeemably removed from them. Neither the objective nor the psychological factors can in this context be regarded as either wholly passive or wholly active. There is rather a con- tinuous give and take. Only in one sense, moreover, may one speak of one idea-system as underlying a state of civilization and this brings us to our second question in the sense, namely, that every civilization displays to a greater or less extent the oft-recog- nized tendency of integrating and assimilating, psychologically, the

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