Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/22

 in the systematic presentation of the cultural life of the people. The picture is standardised, like a collection of laws that tell us how we should behave, and not how we behave; like rules set down defining the style of art, but not the way in which the artist elaborates his ideas of beauty; Like a list of inventions, and not the way in which the individual overcomes technical difficulties that present themselves.

And yet the way in which the personality reacts to culture is a matter that should concern us deeply and that makes the studies of foreign cultures a fruitful and useful field of research. We are accustomed to consider all those actions that are part and parcel of our own culture, standards which we follow automatically, as common to all mankind. They are deeply ingrained in our behaviour. We are moulded in their forms so. that we cannot think but that they must be valid everywhere.

Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, good manners, and ethical! standards is not universal. It is instructive to knew that standards differ in the most unexpected ways. It is still more important to know how the individual reacts to these standards.

In our own civilisation the individual is beset with difficulties which we are likely to ascribe to fundamental human traits. When we speak about the difficulties of childhood and of adolescence, we are thinking of them