Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/468

 45 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

sometimes been regarded as biological differences separating social groups are not really so, and that characteristic expressions of mind are dependent on social environment.

The degree to which the power of inhibition is developed in the lower races as compared with the higher leads again to the employment of psychological methods and ethnological materials. The control of the individual over himself and of society over him depends largely on this faculty, and it is often alleged by psychologists and students of society that the inferior position of the lower races is due in part to feeble powers of inhibition, and consequent lack of ability to sacrifice an immediate satisfaction for a greater future one. An examination of the facts, however, shows that the savage exercises definite and powerful restraints over his impulses, but that these restraints do not correspond to our own. In connection with tabu, totemism, fetich, and ceremonial among the lower races, in the hunger voluntarily sub- mitted to in the presence of food, as well as stoicism under physi- cal hardships and torture, we have inhibitions quite as striking as any exhibited in modern society or in history. The occasions of inhibition depend on the point of view, the traditions, the peculiar life-conditions of the society. In the lower races the conditions do not correspond with our own, but it is doubtful whether the civilized make more use of inhibition in the manipulation of society than the savage, or whether the white race possesses superior power in this respect. The point, at any rate, is to determine the effect in a given group of inhibition on activities, and the reaction of the social life on the inhibitive processes of the individual.

The influence of temperament among different races in deter- mining the directions of attention and interest is also an important social-psychological field. There is much reason to think that temperament, as determining what classes of stimulations are effective, is quite as important as brain-capacity in fixing the characteristic lines of development followed by a group, and that there is more unlikeness on the tempermental than on the mental side between both individuals and races. From this standpoint the social psychologist studies the moods and organic appetites of