Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/162

 to them. I tried over and over again to get judgments as to who was the wisest or the best man of the community. An informant's first impulse was always to answer: "Oh, they are all good"; or, "There are so many wise ones." Curiously enough, there seemed to be less difficulty in distinguishing the vicious than the virtuous. This is probably due to the Missionary influence which if it has failed to give the native a conviction of Sin, has at least provided him with a list of sins. Although I often met with a preliminary response, "There are so many bad boys"; it was usually qualified spontaneously by "But so-and-so is the worst because he " Ugliness and viciousness were more vivid and unusual attributes of personality; beauty, wisdom, and kindness were taken for granted.

In an account given of another person the sequence of traits mentioned followed a set and objective pattern: sex, age, rank, relationship, defects, activities. Spontaneous comment upon character or personality were unusual. So a girl describes her grandmother: "Lauuli? Oh, she is an old woman, very old, she's my father's mother. She's a widow with one eye. She is too old to go inland but sits in the house all day. She makes tapa." This completely unanalytical account is only modified in the case of exceptionally intelligent adults who are asked to make judgments.

In the native classification attitudes are qualified by four terms, good and bad, easy and difficult, paired. A