Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/171

Rh chief factors in the determination of culture, but we must note that they are selective only and not real producers of new things. As in the previous discussion our quest for the producer ends at the threshold of the inventive process. In this case, however, we start not with the unrelated experiences, but with the invention already made and offered to society.

Many of the factors entering into the choice of society are familiar to the general reader, for in sociological literature will be found lengthy discussions of prejudice, tradition, the function of the genius, etc. These, it will be observed, are social, or human factors, and are not due to the environment. Yet when we take material culture alone it must be recognized that with respect to it these social forces are less active. The experience of the world is that while a savage will throw away a stone knife and substitute a steel one after the first trial, he will be very slow to change a religious practise and especially a social custom. We may expect then greater opportunities for the socialization of material inventions and that industrial progress will be more rapid. But there is a fallacy here, for while it is true that a savage will quickly substitute a steel knife, it will be otherwise if one of his tribe attempts to develop the manufacture of knives, or even engages in extensive trade with knives, for then at once there will be a conflict with social customs. Nevertheless, it is probably true that most improvements in weapons, tools, etc., will, when demonstrated by the inventor, find little resistance and in most cases positive encouragement. The criterion would then be the usefulness of the new invention. Thus to a roving people a birchbark house might be an improvement, provided birchbark was readily attainable or transportable. Here the environment appears as a selective factor because the adoption of any particular set of traits appears finally as an adjustment between the community and the environment. But, as such, the environment is a passive factor, for the inventions that happen to fit sufficiently well to survive pass into the cultural complex, while the others fall by the wayside. And, after all, we must not forget that the fitness of an invention is a matter of judgment and that many a maladjustment to the environment passes as the superior trait because of an error in social judgment. It is truly surprising how ill-fitting the adjustments may be and still give men time and strength to maintain family, religious and political organizations of considerable complexity. We see then that while an invention must work to survive, there is no guarantee that it will be given a fair trial and be allowed to stand according to its deserts. Its fitness is chiefly a matter of social belief, and as such subject to all the ills and vagaries of folk thought.

In general it seems that the tendency of some geographers is to lay very great stress on the part played by the environment in the