Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/385

 outlined, that of the psychological laws which govern man as an individual member of society.

This problem has been the object of intensive study by the great minds that have laid the foundation of modern anthropology. The ultimate aim of Waitz’s great work is the inquiry into the question whether there are any fundamental differences between the mental make-up of mankind the world over, racially as well as socially. Tylor, in his brilliant investigations on the development of civilization, showed the common occurrence of similar types of ideas the world over, and demonstrated the possibility of conceiving of the scattered phenomena as proof of certain tendencies of evolution of civilization. The many investigators who have studied the evolution of marriage relations, the evolution of law, of art, of religion, all start from the same basis—the assumption of a general similarity of mental reaction in societies of similar structure. Bastian has tried to prove by the use of anthropological data that man the world over develops the same elementary ideas, on which the fabric of his mental activities is based; and that these elementary ideas may be modified by geographical and social environment, but that they remain essentially the same everywhere.

It may be well to illustrate the facts here referred to by a few examples. In the domain of industrial activity we find that mankind is everywhere in possession of the art of producing fire by friction, that everywhere food is prepared by cooking, that shelters are built, that tools are used for breaking and cutting. We do not know mankind in any stage where any of these inventions are absent. In regard to social structure we find that man nowhere lives alone; that even the cases in which the social group consists of members of one family only, are exceedingly rare and of temporary occurrence. We furthermore find that the social units are subdivided into groups, which are kept apart by customary laws forbidding intermarriages in one group, and prescribing intermarriages in another.

In the domain of religion an idea of this type is that of life after death. There is probably no people that believes in the complete extinction of existence with death, but some belief in the continuity of life seems to exist everywhere. To the same domain belongs that type of concepts of the world, in which the surface of our earth is considered as forming a central level, above and below which other worlds are located.

An examination of the types of ideas represented by the few examples that I have here given shows that their subject-matter is highly complex, and that in a strict sense the occurrence of these ideas by itself does not explain clearly the psychological