Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/490

 encountered technique for teaching novices the art of silence. In view of the above-suggested difficulties of guarding the tongue absolutely, in view especially of the tell-tale connection which exists on primitive social planes between thought and expression—among children and many nature peoples thinking and speaking are almost one—there is need at the outset of learning silence once for all, before silence about any particular matter can be expected. Accordingly, we hear of a secret order in the Molucca Islands in which not merely silence about his experiences during initiation is enjoined upon the candidate, but for weeks he is not permitted to exchange a word on any subject with anybody, even in his own family. In this case we certainly have the operation not only of the educational factor of entire silence, but it corresponds with the psychical undifferentiation of this cultural level, to forbid speech in general in a period in which some particular silence must be insured. This is somewhat analogous with the fact that immature peoples easily employ the death penalty, where later for partial sins a partial punishment would be inflicted, or with the fact that similar peoples are often moved to offer a quite disproportionate fraction of their possessions for something that momentarily strikes their fancy. It is the specific “incapacity” (Ungeschicklichkeit) which advertises itself in all this; for its essence consists in its incompetence to undertake the particular sort of inhibition appropriate to endeavors after a strictly defined end. The unskilled person moves his whole arm where for his purpose it would be enough to move only two fingers, the whole body when a precisely differentiated movement of the arm would be indicated. In like manner, in the particular types of cases which we are considering, the preponderance of psychical commerce, which can be a matter of logical and actual thought-exchange only upon a higher cultural level, both enormously increases the danger of volubility, and, on the other hand, leads far beyond prohibition of the specific act which would embarrass its purposes, and puts a ban on the whole function of which such act would be an incident. When, on the other hand, the secret society of the Pythagoreans prescribed silence for the novice during a number