Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/246

 ing that the dullest, the most incurious, cannot fail to notice it. And this diversity is so old, so embodied in semi-solutions, in those compromises between different philosophies which we call Christianity, or democracy, or humanitarianism, that it baffles the most intelligent, the most curious, the most analytical.

So for the explanation of the lack of poignancy in the choices of growing girls in Samoa, we must look to the temperament of the Samoan civilisation which discounts strong feeling. But for the explanation of the lack of conflict we must look principally to the difference between a simple, homogenous primitive civilisation, a civilisation which changes so slowly that to each generation it appears static, and a motley, diverse, heterogeneous modern civilisation.

And in making the comparison there is a third consideration, the lack of neuroses among the Samoans, the great number of neuroses among ourselves. We must examine the factors in the early education of the Samoan children which have fitted them for a normal, unneurotic development. The findings of the behaviourists and of the psychoanalysts alike lay great emphasis upon the enormous rôle which is played by the environment of the first few years. Children who have been given a bad start are often found to function badly later on when they are faced with important choices. And we know that the more severe the choice, the more conflict; the more poignancy is attached to the demands made upon the individual, the more neuroses will re-