Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/280

266 consciousness accompanying performance of such action), evidently diverges but little from the automatic; and decrease of it is to be expected along with increase of self-regulating power. This trait of automatic mimicry is evidently allied with that less automatic mimicry which shows itself in greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation from the last, without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate which overmasters critical and skeptical tendencies: so maintaining habits for which no reason can be given. The decrease of this irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid and a hindrance to civilization; an aid in so far as it gives that fixity to the social organization without which a society cannot survive; a hindrance in so far as it offers resistance to changes of social organization that have become desirable.

2. Incuriosity.—Projecting our own natures into the circumstances of the savage, we imagine ourselves as marveling greatly on first seeing the products and appliances of civilized life. But we err in supposing that the savage has feelings such as we should have in his place. Want of rational curiosity respecting these incomprehensible novelties is a trait remarked of the lowest races wherever found; and the partially-civilized races are distinguished from them as exhibiting rational curiosity. The relation of this trait to the intellectual nature, to the emotional nature, and to the social state, should be studied.

3. Quality of Thought.—Under this vague head may be placed many sets of inquiries, each of them extensive: (a.) The degree of generality of the ideas; (b.) The degree of abstractness of the ideas; (c.) The degree of definiteness of the ideas; (d.) The degree of coherence of the ideas; (e.) The extent to which there have been developed such notions as those of class, of cause, of uniformity, of law, of truth. Many conceptions, which have become so familiar to us that we assume them to be the common property of all minds, are no more possessed by the lowest savages than they are by our own children; and comparisons of types should be so made as to elucidate the processes by which such conceptions are reached. The development under each head has to be observed: (a.) Independently in its successive stages; (b.) In connection with the coöperative intellectual conceptions; (c.) In connection with the progress of language, of the arts, and of social organization. Already linguistic phenomena have been used in aid of such inquiries; and more systematic use of them should be made. Not only the number of general words, and the, number of abstract words, in a people's vocabulary should be taken as evidence, but also their degrees of generality and abstractness; for there are generalities of the first, second, third, etc., orders and abstractions similarly ascending in degree. Blue is an abstraction referring to one class of