Looking, now, at the ancient myths in general, their seemingly most inexplicable trait is the habitual combination of alleged human ancestry and adventures, with the possession of personalities otherwise figuring in the heavens and on the earth, with totally non-human attributes. This enormous incongruity, not the exception but the rule, the current theory fails to explain. Suppose it to be granted that the great terrestrial and celestial objects and agents naturally become personalized; it does not follow that each of them shall have a specific human biography. To say of some star that he was the son of this king or that hero, was born in a particular place, and when grown up carried off the wife of a neighbouring chief, is a gratuitous multiplication of incongruities already sufficiently great; and is not accounted for by the alleged necessary personalization of abstract and collective nouns. As looked at from our present stand-point, however, such traditions become quite natural—nay, it is clear that they will necessarily arise. When a nickname has become a tribal name, it thereby ceases to be individually distinctive; and, as already said, the process of nicknaming inevitably continues. It commences afresh with each child; and the nickname of each child is both an individual name and a potential tribal name, which may become an actual tribal name if the individual is sufficiently celebrated. Usually, then, there is a double set of distinctions; under one of which the individual is known by his ancestral name, and under the other of which he is known by a name suggestive of something peculiar to himself: just as we have seen happens among the Scotch clans. Consider, now, what will result when language has reached a stage of development such that it can convey the notion of naming, and is able, therefore, to preserve traditions of human ancestry. It will result that the individual will be known both as the son of such and such a man by a mother whose name was so and so, and also as "the Crab", or "the Bear", or "the Whirlwind"—supposing one of these to be his nickname. Such joint use of nicknames and proper names occurs in every school. Now, clearly, in advancing from the early state in which ancestors become identified with the objects they are nicknamed after, to the state in which there are proper names that have lost their metaphorical meanings, there must be passed through a state in which proper names, partially settled only, may or may not be preserved, and in which the new nicknames are still liable to be mistaken for actual names. Under such conditions there will arise (especially in the case of a distinguished man) this seemingly-impossible combination of human parentage with the possession of the non-human, or superhuman, attributes of the thing which gave the nickname. Another anomaly simultaneously disappears. The warrior may have, and often will have, a variety of complimentary nicknames—"the powerful one," "the destroyer," etc. Supposing his leading nickname has been "the Sun"; then when he comes to be identified by tradition with the sun, it will happen that the sun will acquire his alternative descriptive titles—the swift one, the lion, the wolf—titles not obviously appropriate to the sun, but quite appropriate to the warrior. Then there comes, too, an explanation of the remaining trait of such myths. When this identification of conspicuous persons, male and female, with conspicuous natural agents, has become settled, there will in due course arise interpretations of the actions of these agents in anthropomorphic terms. Suppose, for instance, that Endymion and Selene, metaphorically named, the one after the setting sun, the other after the moon, have had their human individualities merged in those of the sun and moon, through misinterpretation of metaphors; what will happen? The legend of their loves having to be reconciled with their celestial appearances and motions, these will be spoken of as results of feeling and will; so that when the sun is going down in the west, while the moon in mid-heaven is following him, the fact will be expressed by saying: "Selene loves and watches Endymion." Thus we obtain a consistent explanation of the myth without distorting it; and without assuming that it contains gratuitous fictions. We are enabled to accept the biographical part of it, if not as literal fact, still as having had fact for its root. We are helped to see how, by an inevitable misinterpretation, there grew out of a more or less true tradition, this strange identification of its personages, with objects and powers totally non-human in their aspects. And then we are shown how, from the attempt to reconcile in thought these contradictory elements of the myth, there arose the habit of ascribing the actions of these non-human things to human motives.

One further verification may be drawn from facts which are obstacles to the converse hypothesis. These objects and powers, celestial and terrestrial, which force themselves most on men's attention, have some of them several proper names, identified with those of different individuals, born at different places, and having different sets of adventures. Thus we have the sun variously known as Apollo, Endymion, Helios, Tithonos, etc.—personages having irreconcilable genealogies. Such anomalies Prof. Max Mueller apparently ascribes to the untrustworthiness of traditions, which are "careless about contradictions, or ready to solve them sometimes by the most atrocious expedients." (Chips, vol. ii., p. 84.) But if the evolution of the myth has been that above indicated, there exists no anomalies to be got rid of: these diverse genealogies become parts of the evidence. For we have abundant proof that the same objects furnish metaphorical names of men in different tribes. There are Duck tribes in Australia, in South America, in North America. The eagle is still a totem among the North Americans, as Mr. McLennan shows reason to conclude that it was among the Egyptians, among the Jews, and among the Romans. Obviously, for reasons already assigned, it naturally happened in the early stages of the ancient races, that complimentary comparisons of their heroes to the Sun were frequently made. What resulted? The Sun having furnished names for sundry chiefs and early founders of tribes, and local traditions having severally identified them with the Sun, these tribes, when they grew, spread, conquered, or came otherwise into partial union, originated a combined mythology, which necessarily contained conflicting stories about the Sun-god, as about its other leading personages. If the North-American tribes, among several of which there are traditions of a Sun-god, had developed a combined civilization, there would similarly have arisen among them a mythology which ascribed to the Sun several different proper names and genealogies.

* * * * *

Let me briefly set down the leading characters of this hypothesis which give it probability.

True interpretations of all the natural processes, organic and inorganic, that have gone on in past times, habitually trace them to causes still in action. It is thus in Geology; it is thus in Biology; it is thus in Philology. Here we find this characteristic repeated. Nicknaming, the inheritance of nicknames, and to some extent, the misinterpretation of nicknames, go on among us still; and were surnames absent, language imperfect, and knowledge as rudimentary as of old, it is tolerably manifest that results would arise like those we have contemplated.

A further characteristic of a true cause is that it accounts not only for the particular group of phenomena to be interpreted, but also for other groups. The cause here alleged does this. It equally well explains the worship of animals, of plants, of mountains, of winds, of celestial bodies, and even of appearances too vague to be considered entities. It gives us an intelligible genesis of fetichistic conceptions in general. It furnishes us with a reason for the practice, otherwise so unaccountable, of moulding the words applied to inanimate objects in such ways as to imply masculine and feminine genders. It shows us how there naturally arose the worship of compound animals, and of monsters half man, half brute. And it shows us why the worship of purely anthropomorphic deities came later, when language had so far developed that it could preserve in tradition the distinction between proper names and nicknames.

A further verification of this view is, that it conforms to the general law of evolution: showing us how, out of one simple, vague, aboriginal form of belief, there have arisen, by continuous differentiations, the many heterogeneous forms of belief which have existed and do exist. The desire to propitiate the other self of the dead ancestor, displayed among savage tribes, dominantly manifested by the early historic races, by the Peruvians and Mexicans, by the Chinese at the present time, and to a considerable degree by ourselves (for what else is the wish to do that which a lately-deceased parent was known to have desired?) has been the universal first form of religious belief; and from it have grown up the many divergent beliefs which have been referred to.

Let me add, as a further reason for adopting this view, that it immensely diminishes the apparently-great contrast between early modes of thought and our own mode of thought. Doubtless the aboriginal man differs considerably from us, both in intellect and feeling. But such an interpretation of the facts as helps us to bridge over the gap, derives additional likelihood from doing this. The hypothesis I have sketched out enables us to see that primitive ideas are not so gratuitously absurd as we suppose, and also enables us to rehabilitate the ancient myth with far less distortion than at first sight appears possible.

These views I hope to develop in the first part of The Principles of Sociology. The large mass of evidence which I shall be able to give in support of the hypothesis, joined with the solutions it will be shown to yield of many minor problems which I have passed over, will, I think, then give to it a still greater probability than it seems now to have.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: A critical reader may raise an objection. If animal-worship is to be rationally interpreted, how can the interpretation set out by assuming a belief in the spirits of dead ancestors—a belief which just as much requires explanation? Doubtless there is here a wide gap in the argument. I hope eventually to fill it up. Here, out of many experiences which conspire to generate this belief, I can but briefly indicate the leading ones: 1. It is not impossible that his shadow, following him everywhere, and moving as he moves, may have some small share in giving to the savage a vague idea of his duality. It needs but to watch a child's interest in the movements of its shadow, and to remember that at first a shadow cannot be interpreted as a negation of light, but is looked upon as an entity, to perceive that the savage may very possibly consider it as a specific something which forms part of him. 2. A much more decided suggestion of the same kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face and figure in water: imitating him as it does in his form, colours, motions, grimaces. When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in some way belonging to him. 3. Echoes must greatly tend to confirm the idea of duality otherwise arrived at. Incapable as he is of understanding their natural origin, the primitive man necessarily ascribes them to living beings—beings who mock him and elude his search. 4. The suggestions resulting from these and other physical phenomena are, however, secondary in importance. The root of this belief in another self lies in the experience of dreams. The distinction so easily made by us between our life in dreams and our real life, is one which the savage recognizes in but a vague way; and he cannot express even that distinction which he perceives. When he awakes, and to those who have seen him lying quietly asleep, describes where he has been, and what he has done, his rude language fails to state the difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it not only results that he cannot truly represent this difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent it to himself. Hence, in the absence of an alternative interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells his adventures, is that his other self has been away, and came back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the traditions of the early civilized races. 5. The conception of another self capable of going away and returning, receives what to the savage must seem conclusive verifications from the abnormal suspensions of consciousness, and derangements of consciousness, that occasionally occur in members of his tribe. One who has fainted, and cannot be immediately brought back to himself (note the significance of our own phrases "returning to himself," etc.) as a sleeper can, shows him a state in which the other self has been away for a time beyond recall. Still more is this prolonged absence of the other self shown him in cases of apoplexy, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation. Here for hours the other self persists in remaining away, and on returning refuses to say where he has been. Further verification is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen that the other self, on returning, denies all knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this supposition that the body has been "possessed" by some other being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and insanity. 6. What, then, is the interpretation inevitably put upon death? The other self has habitually returned after sleep, which simulates death. It has returned, too, after fainting, which simulates death much more. It has even returned after the rigid state of catalepsy, which simulates death very greatly. Will it not return also after this still more prolonged quiescence and rigidity? Clearly it is quite possible—quite probable even. The dead man's other self is gone away for a long time, but it still exists somewhere, far or near, and may at any moment come back to do all he said he would do. Hence the various burial-rites—the placing of weapons and valuables along with the body, the daily bringing of food to it, etc. I hope hereafter to show that, with such knowledge of the facts as he has, this interpretation is the most reasonable the savage can arrive at. Let me here, however, by way of showing how clearly the facts bear out this view, give one illustration out of many. "The ceremonies with which they [the Veddahs] invoke them [the shades of the dead] are few as they are simple. The most common is the following. An arrow is fixed upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:"

"Ma miya, ma miy, ma deya, Topang koyihetti mittigan yandah?"

"My departed one, my departed one, my God! Where art thou wandering?"

"This invocation appears to be used on all occasions when the intervention of the guardian spirits is required, in sickness, preparatory to hunting, etc. Sometimes, in the latter case, a portion of the flesh of the game is promised as a votive offering, in the event of the chase being successful; and they believe that the spirits will appear to them in dreams and tell them where to hunt. Sometimes they cook food and place it in the dry bed of a river, or some other secluded spot, and then call on their deceased ancestors by name. 'Come and partake of this! Give us maintenance as you did when living! Come, wheresoever you may be; on a tree, on a rock, in the forest, come!' And they dance round the food, half chanting, half shouting, the invocation."—Bailey, in Transactions of the Ethnological Society, London, N. S., ii., p. 301-2.]

[Footnote 30: Since the foregoing pages were written, my attention has been drawn by Sir John Lubbock to a passage in the appendix to the second edition of Prehistoric Times, in which he has indicated this derivation of tribal names. He says: "In endeavouring to account for the worship of animals, we must remember that names are very frequently taken from them. The children and followers of a man called the Bear or the Lion would make that a tribal name. Hence the animal itself would be first respected, at last worshipped." Of the genesis of this worship, however, Sir John Lubbock does not give any specific explanation. Apparently he inclines to the belief, tacitly adopted also by Mr. McLennan, that animal-worship is derived from an original Fetichism, of which it is a more developed form. As will shortly be seen, I take a different view of its origin.]

[Footnote 31: Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, iii., p. 280-81.]

[Footnote 32: I have since found, however, that the name Dawn, which occurs in various places, seems more frequently a birth-name, given because the birth took place at dawn.]



MORALS AND MORAL SENTIMENTS.

[First published in The Fortnightly Review for April, 1871.]

If a writer who discusses unsettled questions takes up every gauntlet thrown down to him, polemical writing will absorb much of his energy. Having a power of work which unfortunately does not suffice for executing with anything like due rapidity the task I have undertaken, I have made it a policy to avoid controversy as much as possible, even at the cost of being seriously misunderstood. Hence it resulted that when in Macmillan's Magazine, for July, 1869, Mr. Richard Hutton published, under the title "A Questionable Parentage for Morals," a criticism on a doctrine of mine, I decided to let his misrepresentations pass unnoticed until, in the course of my work, I arrived at the stage where, by a full exposition of this doctrine, they would be set aside. It did not occur to me that, in the meantime, these erroneous statements, accepted as true statements, would be repeated by other writers, and my views commented upon as untenable. This, however, has happened. In more periodicals than one, I have seen it asserted that Mr. Hutton has effectually disposed of my hypothesis. Supposing that this hypothesis has been rightly expressed by Mr. Hutton, Sir John Lubbock, in his Origin of Civilisation, &c., has been led to express a partial dissent; which I think he would not have expressed had my own exposition been before him. Mr. Mivart, too, in his recent Genesis of Species, has been similarly betrayed into misapprehensions. And now Sir Alexander Grant, following the same lead, has conveyed to the readers of the Fortnightly Review another of these conceptions, which is but very partially true. Thus I find myself compelled to say as much as will serve to prevent further spread of the mischief.

* * * * *

If a general doctrine concerning a highly-involved class of phenomena could be adequately presented in a single paragraph of a letter, the writing of books would be superfluous. In the brief exposition of certain ethical doctrines held by me, which is given in Professor Bain's Mental and Moral Science, it is stated that they are—

"as yet, nowhere fully expressed. They form part of the more general doctrine of Evolution which he is engaged in working out; and they are at present to be gathered only from scattered passages. It is true that, in his first work, Social Statics, he presented what he then regarded as a tolerably complete view of one division of Morals. But without abandoning this view, he now regards it as inadequate—more especially in respect of its basis."

Mr. Hutton, however, taking the bare enunciation of one part of this basis, deals with it critically; and, in the absence of any exposition by me, sets forth what he supposes to be my grounds for it, and proceeds to show that they are unsatisfactory.

If, in his anxiety to suppress what he doubtless regards as a pernicious doctrine, Mr. Hutton could not wait until I had explained myself, it might have been expected that he would use whatever information was to be had concerning it. So far from seeking out such information, however, he has, in a way for which I cannot account, ignored the information immediately before him.

The title which Mr. Hutton has chosen for his criticism is, "A Questionable Parentage for Morals." Now he has ample means of knowing that I allege a primary basis of Morals, quite independent of that which he describes and rejects. I do not refer merely to the fact that having, when he reviewed Social Statics,[33] expressed his very decided dissent from this primary basis, he must have been aware that I alleged it; for he may say that in the many years which have since elapsed he had forgotten all about it. But I refer to the distinct enunciation of this primary basis in that letter to Mr. Mill from which he quotes. In a preceding paragraph of the letter, I have explained that, while I accept utilitarianism in the abstract, I do not accept that current utilitarianism which recognizes for the guidance of conduct nothing beyond empirical generalizations; and I have contended that—

"Morality, properly so-called—the science of right conduct—has for its object to determine how and why certain modes of conduct are detrimental, and certain other modes beneficial. These good and bad results cannot be accidental, but must be necessary consequences of the constitution of things; and I conceive it to be the business of Moral Science to deduce, from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct; and are to be conformed to irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery."

Nor is this the only enunciation of what I conceive to be the primary basis of morals, contained in this same letter. A subsequent paragraph separated by four lines only from that which Mr. Hutton extracts, commences thus:—

"Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual re-adjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social arrangements: to which end, both elements of the compromise must be kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system of things far too good for men as they are, it is not less true that mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into Utopian absurdities, expediency is indebted to absolute morality for all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is relatively right, it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other."

I do not see how there could well be a more emphatic assertion that there exists a primary basis of morals independent of, and in a sense antecedent to, that which is furnished by experiences of utility; and consequently, independent of, and, in a sense antecedent to, those moral sentiments which I conceive to be generated by such experiences. Yet no one could gather from Mr. Hutton's article that I assert this; or would even find reasons for a faint suspicion that I do so. From the reference made to my further views, he would infer my acceptance of that empirical utilitarianism which I have expressly repudiated. And the title which Mr. Hutton gives to his paper clearly asserts, by implication, that I recognize no "parentage for morals" beyond that of the accumulation and organization of the effects of experience. I cannot believe that Mr. Hutton intended to convey this erroneous impression. He was, I suppose, too much absorbed in contemplating the proposition he combats to observe, or, at least, to attach any weight to, the propositions which accompany it. But I am sorry he did not perceive the mischief he was likely to do me by spreading this one-sided statement.

* * * * *

I pass now to the particular question at issue—not the "parentage for morals," but the parentage of moral sentiments. In describing my view on this more special doctrine, Mr. Hutton has similarly, I regret to say, neglected the data which would have helped him to draw an approximately true outline of it. It cannot well be that the existence of such data was unknown to him. They are contained in the Principles of Psychology; and Mr. Hutton reviewed that work when it was first published.[34] In a chapter on the Feelings, which occurs near the end of it, there is sketched out a process of evolution by no means like that which Mr. Hutton indicates; and had he turned to that chapter he would have seen that his description of the genesis of moral sentiments out of organized experiences is not such a one as I should have given. Let me quote a passage from that chapter.

"Not only are those emotions which form the immediate stimuli to actions, thus explicable; but the like explanation applies to the emotions that leave the subject of them comparatively passive: as, for instance, the emotion produced by beautiful scenery. The gradually increasing complexity in the groups of sensations and ideas co-ordinated, ends in the co-ordination of those vast aggregations of them which a grand landscape excites and suggests. The infant taken into the midst of mountains, is totally unaffected by them; but is delighted with the small group of attributes and relations presented in a toy. The child can appreciate, and be pleased with, the more complicated relations of household objects and localities, the garden, the field, and the street. But it is only in youth and mature age, when individual things and small assemblages of them have become familiar and automatically cognizable, that those immense assemblages which landscapes present can be adequately grasped, and the highly aggregated states of consciousness produced by them, experienced. Then, however, the various minor groups of states that have been in earlier days severally produced by trees, by fields, by streams, by cascades, by rocks, by precipices, by mountains, by clouds, are aroused together. Along with the sensations immediately received, there are partially excited the myriads of sensations that have been in times past received from objects such as those presented; further, there are partially excited the various incidental feelings that were experienced on all these countless past occasions; and there are probably also excited certain deeper, but now vague combinations of states, that were organized in the race during barbarous times, when its pleasurable activities were chiefly among the woods and waters. And out of all these excitations, some of them actual but most of them nascent, is composed the emotion which a fine landscape produces in us."

It is, I think, amply manifest that the processes here indicated are not to be taken as intellectual processes—not as processes in which recognized relations between pleasures and their antecedents, or intelligent adaptations of means to ends, form the dominant elements. The state of mind produced by an aggregate of picturesque objects is not one resolvable into propositions. The sentiment does not contain within itself any consciousness of causes and consequences of happiness. The vague recollections of other beautiful scenes and other delightful days which it dimly rouses, are not aroused because of any rational co-ordinations of ideas that have been formed in bygone years. Mr. Hutton, however, assumes that in speaking of the genesis of moral feelings as due to inherited experiences of the pleasures and pains caused by certain modes of conduct, I am speaking of reasoned-out experiences—experiences consciously accumulated and generalized. He overlooks the fact that the genesis of emotions is distinguished from the genesis of ideas in this; that whereas the ideas are composed of elements that are simple, definitely related, and (in the case of general ideas) constantly related, emotions are composed of enormously complex aggregates of elements that are never twice alike, and which stand in relations that are never twice alike. The difference in the resulting modes of consciousness is this:—In the genesis of an idea the successive experiences, be they of sounds, colours, touches, tastes, or be they of the special objects which combine many of these into groups, have so much in common that each, when it occurs, can be definitely thought of as like those which preceded it. But in the genesis of an emotion the successive experiences so far differ that each of them, when it occurs, suggests past experiences which are not specifically similar, but have only a general similarity; and, at the same time, it suggests benefits or evils in past experience which likewise are various in their special natures, though they have a certain community in general nature. Hence it results that the consciousness aroused is a multitudinous, confused consciousness, in which, along with a certain kind of combination among the impressions received from without, there is a vague cloud of ideal combinations akin to them, and a vague mass of ideal feelings of pleasure or pain which were associated with these. We have abundant proof that feelings grow up without reference to recognized causes and consequences, and without the possessor of them being able to say why they have grown up; though analysis, nevertheless, shows that they have been formed out of connected experiences. The familiar fact that a kind of jam which was, during childhood, repeatedly taken after medicine, may become, by simple association of sensations, so nauseous that it cannot be tolerated in after-life, illustrates clearly the way in which repugnances may be established by habitual association of feelings, without any belief in causal connexion; or rather, in spite of the knowledge that there is no causal connexion. Similarly with pleasurable emotions. The cawing of rooks is not in itself an agreeable sound: musically considered, it is very much the contrary. Yet the cawing of rooks usually produces in people feelings of a grateful kind—feelings which most of them suppose to result from the quality of the sound itself. Only the few who are given to self-analysis are aware that the cawing of rooks is agreeable to them because it has been connected with countless of their greatest gratifications—with the gathering of wild flowers in childhood; with Saturday-afternoon excursions in school-boy days; with midsummer holidays in the country, when books were thrown aside and lessons were replaced by games and adventures in the fields; with fresh, sunny mornings in after-years, when a walking excursion was an immense relief from toil. As it is, this sound, though not causally related to all these multitudinous and varied past delights, but only often associated with them, can no more be heard without rousing a dim consciousness of these delights, than the voice of an old friend unexpectedly coming into the house can be heard without suddenly raising a wave of that feeling that has resulted from the pleasures of past companionship. If we are to understand the genesis of emotions, either in the individual or in the race, we must take account of this all-important process. Mr. Hutton, however, apparently overlooking it, and not having reminded himself, by referring to the Principles of Psychology, that I insist upon it, represents my hypothesis to be that a certain sentiment results from the consolidation of intellectual conclusions! He speaks of me as believing that "what seems to us now the 'necessary' intuitions and a priori assumptions of human nature, are likely to prove, when scientifically analysed, nothing but a similar conglomeration of our ancestors' best observations and most useful empirical rules." He supposes me to think that men having, in past times, come to see that truthfulness was useful, "the habit of approving truth-speaking and fidelity to engagements, which was first based on this ground of utility, became so rooted, that the utilitarian ground of it was forgotten, and we find ourselves springing to the belief in truth-speaking and fidelity to engagements from an inherited tendency." Similarly throughout, Mr. Hutton has so used the word "utility," and so interpreted it on my behalf, as to make me appear to mean that moral sentiment is formed out of conscious generalizations respecting what is beneficial and what detrimental. Were such my hypothesis, his criticisms would be very much to the point; but as such is not my hypothesis, they fall to the ground. The experiences of utility I refer to are those which become registered, not as distinctly recognized connexions between certain kinds of acts and certain kinds of remote results, but those which become registered in the shape of associations between groups of feelings that have often recurred together, though the relation between them has not been consciously generalized—associations the origin of which may be as little perceived as is the origin of the pleasure given by the sounds of a rookery; but which, nevertheless, have arisen in the course of daily converse with things, and serve as incentives or deterrents.

In the paragraph which Mr. Hutton has extracted from my letter to Mr. Mill, I have indicated an analogy between those effects of emotional experiences out of which I believe moral sentiments have been developed, and those effects of intellectual experiences out of which I believe space-intuitions have been developed. Rightly considering that the first of these hypotheses cannot stand if the last is disproved, Mr. Hutton has directed part of his attack against this last. But would it not have been well if he had referred to the Principles of Psychology, where this last hypothesis is set forth at length, before criticising it? Would it not have been well to give an abstract of my own description of the process, instead of substituting what he supposes my description must be? Any one who turns to the Principles of Psychology (first edition, pp. 218-245), and reads the two chapters, "The Perception of Body as presenting Statical Attributes", and "The Perception of Space", will find that Mr. Hutton's account of my view on this matter has given him no notion of the view as it is expressed by me; and will, perhaps, be less inclined to smile than he was when he read Mr. Hutton's account. I cannot here do more than thus imply the invalidity of such part of Mr. Hutton's argument as proceeds upon this incorrect representation. The pages which would be required for properly explaining the doctrine that space-intuitions result from organized experiences may be better used for explaining this analogous doctrine at present before us. This I will now endeavour to do; not indirectly by correcting misapprehensions, but directly by an exposition which shall be as brief as the extremely involved nature of the process allows.

An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. The smile disappears, the features contract into an expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it turns away its head, and makes such movements of escape as are possible. What is the meaning of these facts? Why does not the frown make it smile, and the mother's laugh make it weep? There is but one answer. Already in its developing brain there is coming into play the structure through which one cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites pleasurable feelings, and the structure through which another cluster of visual and auditory impressions excites painful feelings. The infant knows no more about the relation existing between a ferocious expression of face, and the evils which may follow perception of it, than the young bird just out of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may be inflicted by a man coming towards it; and as certainly in the one case as in the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially-established nervous structure. Why does this partially-established nervous structure betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because, in the past experiences of the human race, smiles and gentle tones in those around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable feelings; while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote, have been continually associated with the impressions received from knit brows, and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of these connexions. The appearances and sounds which excite in the infant a vague dread, indicate danger; and do so because they are the physiological accompaniments of destructive action—some of them common to man and inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior mammals, as every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of anger, is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation, down to that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance, are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call amicable feeling: this, too, has a physiological interpretation.[35]

Let us pass now from the infant in arms to the children in the nursery. What have the experiences of each been doing in aid of the emotional development we are considering? While its limbs have been growing more agile by exercise, its manipulative skill increasing by practice, its perceptions of objects growing by use quicker, more accurate, more comprehensive; the associations between these two sets of impressions received from those around, and the pleasures and pains received along with them, or after them, have been by frequent repetition made stronger, and their adjustments better. The dim sense of pain and the vague glow of delight which the infant felt, have, in the urchin, severally taken shapes that are more definite. The angry voice of a nursemaid no longer arouses only a formless feeling of dread, but also a specific idea of the slap that may follow. The frown on the face of a bigger brother, along with the primitive, indefinable sense of ill, brings the ideas of ills that are definable as kicks, and cuffs, and pullings of hair, and losses of toys. The faces of parents, looking now sunny, now gloomy, have grown to be respectively associated with multitudinous forms of gratification and multitudinous forms of discomfort or privation. Hence these appearances and sounds, which imply amity or enmity in those around, become symbolic of happiness and misery; so that eventually, perception of the one set or the other can scarcely occur without raising a wave of pleasurable feeling or of painful feeling. The body of this wave is still substantially of the same nature as it was at first; for though in each of these multitudinous experiences a special set of facial and vocal signs has been connected with a special set of pleasures or pains; yet since these pleasures or pains have been immensely varied in their kinds and combinations, and since the signs that preceded them were in no two cases quite alike, it results that even to the end the consciousness produced remains as vague as it is voluminous. The thousands of partially-aroused ideas resulting from past experiences are massed together and superposed, so as to form an aggregate in which nothing is distinct, but which has the character of being pleasurable or painful according to the nature of its original components: the chief difference between this developed feeling and the feeling aroused in the infant being, that on bright or dark background forming the body of it, may now be sketched out in thought the particular pleasures or pains which the particular circumstances suggest as likely.

What must be the working of this process under the conditions of aboriginal life? The emotions given to the young savage by the natural language of love and hate in the members of his tribe, gain first a partial definiteness in respect to his intercourse with his family and playmates; and he learns by experience the utility, in so far as his own ends are concerned, of avoiding courses which call from others manifestations of anger, and taking courses which call from them manifestations of pleasure. Not that he consciously generalizes. He does not at that age, probably not at any age, formulate his experiences in the general principle that it is well for him to do things which bring smiles, and to avoid doing things which bring frowns. What happens is that having, in the way shown, inherited this connexion between the perception of anger in others and the feeling of dread, and having discovered that certain acts of his bring on this anger, he cannot subsequently think of committing one of these acts without thinking of the resulting anger, and feeling more or less of the resulting dread. He has no thought of the utility or inutility of the act itself: the deterrent is the mainly vague, but partially definite, fear of evil that may follow. So understood, the deterring emotion is one which has grown out of experiences of utility, using that word in its ethical sense; and if we ask why this dreaded anger is called forth from others, we shall habitually find that it is because the forbidden act entails pain somewhere—is negatived by utility. On passing from domestic injunctions to injunctions current in the tribe, we see no less clearly how these emotions produced by approbation and reprobation come to be connected in experience with actions which are beneficial to the tribe, and actions which are detrimental to the tribe; and how there consequently grow up incentives to the one class of actions and prejudices against the other class. From early boyhood the young savage hears recounted the daring deeds of his chief—hears them in words of praise, and sees all faces glowing with admiration. From time to time also he listens while some one's cowardice is described in tones of scorn, and with contemptuous metaphors, and sees him meet with derision and insult whenever he appears. That is to say, one of the things that come to be associated in his mind with smiling faces, which are symbolical of pleasures in general, is courage; and one of the things that come to be associated in his mind with frowns and other marks of enmity, which form his symbol of unhappiness, is cowardice. These feelings are not formed in him because he has reasoned his way to the truth that courage is useful to the tribe, and, by implication, to himself, or to the truth that cowardice is a cause of evil. In adult life he may perhaps see this; but he certainly does not see it at the time when bravery is thus joined in his consciousness with all that is good, and cowardice with all that is bad. Similarly there are produced in him feelings of inclination or repugnance towards other lines of conduct that have become established or interdicted, because they are beneficial or injurious to the tribe; though neither the young nor the adults know why they have become established or interdicted. Instance the praiseworthiness of wife-stealing, and the viciousness of marrying within the tribe.

We may now ascend a stage to an order of incentives and restraints derived from these. The primitive belief is that every dead man becomes a demon, who is often somewhere at hand, may at any moment return, may give aid or do mischief, and has to be continually propitiated. Hence among other agents whose approbation or reprobation are contemplated by the savage as consequences of his conduct, are the spirits of his ancestors. When a child he is told of their deeds, now in triumphant tones, now in whispers of horror; and the instilled belief that they may inflict some vaguely-imagined but fearful evil, or give some great help, becomes a powerful incentive or deterrent. Especially does this happen when the story is of a chief, distinguished for his strength, his ferocity, his persistence in that revenge on enemies which the experiences of the savage make him regard as beneficial and virtuous. The consciousness that such a chief, dreaded by neighbouring tribes, and dreaded, too, by members of his own tribe, may reappear and punish those who have disregarded his injunctions, becomes a powerful motive. But it is clear, in the first place, that the imagined anger and the imagined satisfaction of this deified chief, are simply transfigured forms of the anger and satisfaction displayed by those around; and that the feelings accompanying such imaginations have the same original root in the experiences which have associated an average of painful results with the manifestation of another's anger, and an average of pleasurable results with the manifestation of another's satisfaction. And it is clear, in the second place, that the actions thus forbidden and encouraged must be mostly actions that are respectively detrimental and beneficial to the tribe; since the successful chief is usually a better judge than the rest, and has the preservation of the tribe at heart. Hence experiences of utility, consciously or unconsciously organized, underlie his injunctions; and the sentiments which prompt obedience are, though very indirectly and without the knowledge of those who feel them, referable to experiences of utility.

This transfigured form of restraint, differing at first but little from the original form, admits of immense development. Accumulating traditions, growing in grandeur as they are repeated from generation to generation, make more and more superhuman the early-recorded hero of the race. His powers of inflicting punishment and giving happiness become ever greater, more multitudinous, and more varied; so that the dread of divine displeasure, and the desire to obtain divine approbation, acquire a certain largeness and generality. Still the conceptions remain anthropomorphic. The revengeful deity continues to be thought of in terms of human emotions, and continues to be represented as displaying these emotions in human ways. Moreover, the sentiments of right and duty, so far as they have become developed, refer mainly to divine commands and interdicts; and have little reference to the natures of the acts commanded or interdicted. In the intended offering-up of Isaac, in the sacrifice of Jephthah's daughter, and in the hewing to pieces of Agag, as much as in the countless atrocities committed from religious motives by various early historic races, as by some existing savage races, we see that the morality and immorality of actions, as we understand them, are at first little recognized; and that the feelings, chiefly of dread, which serve in place of them, are feelings felt towards the unseen beings supposed to issue the commands and interdicts.

Here it will be said that, as just admitted, these are not the moral sentiments properly so called. They are simply sentiments that precede and make possible those highest sentiments which do not refer either to personal benefits or evils to be expected from men, or to more remote rewards and punishments. Several comments are, however, called forth by this criticism. One is, that if we glance back at past beliefs and their correlative feelings, as shown in Dante's poem, in the mystery-plays of the middle ages, in St. Bartholomew massacres, in burnings for heresy, we get proof that in comparatively modern times right and wrong meant little else than subordination or insubordination—to a divine ruler primarily, and under him to a human ruler. Another is, that down to our own day this conception largely prevails, and is even embodied in elaborate ethical works—instance the Essays on the Principles of Morality, by Jonathan Dymond, which recognizes no ground of moral obligation save the will of God as expressed in the current creed. And yet a further is, that while in sermons the torments of the damned and the joys of the blessed are set forth as the dominant deterrents and incentives, and while we have prepared for us printed instructions "how to make the best of both worlds," it cannot be denied that the feelings which impel and restrain men are still largely composed of elements like those operative on the savage: the dread, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea of reprobation, human and divine, and the sense of satisfaction, partly vague, partly specific, associated with the idea of approbation, human and divine.

But during the growth of that civilization which has been made possible by these ego-altruistic sentiments, there have been slowly evolving the altruistic sentiments. Development of these has gone on only as fast as society has advanced to a state in which the activities are mainly peaceful. The root of all the altruistic sentiments is sympathy; and sympathy could become dominant only when the mode of life, instead of being one that habitually inflicted direct pain, became one which conferred direct and indirect benefits: the pains inflicted being mainly incidental and indirect. Adam Smith made a large step towards this truth when he recognized sympathy as giving rise to these superior controlling emotions. His Theory of Moral Sentiments, however, requires to be supplemented in two ways. The natural process by which sympathy becomes developed into a more and more important element of human nature has to be explained; and there has also to be explained the process by which sympathy produces the highest and most complex of the altruistic sentiments—that of justice. Respecting the first process, I can here do no more than say that sympathy may be proved, both inductively and deductively, to be the concomitant of gregariousness: the two having all along-increased by reciprocal aid. Multiplication has ever tended to force into an association, more or less close, all creatures having kinds of food and supplies of food that permit association; and established psychological laws warrant the inference that some sympathy will inevitably result from habitual manifestations of feelings in presence of one another, and that the gregariousness being augmented by the increase of sympathy, further facilitates the development of sympathy. But there are negative and positive checks upon this development—negative, because sympathy cannot advance faster than intelligence advances, since it presupposes the power of interpreting the natural language of the various feelings, and of mentally representing those feelings; positive, because the immediate needs of self-preservation are often at variance with its promptings, as, for example, during the predatory stages of human progress. For explanations of the second process, I must refer to the Principles of Psychology (Sec. 202, first edition, and Sec. 215, second edition) and to Social Statics, part ii. chapter v.[36] Asking that in default of space these explanations may be taken for granted, let me here point out in what sense even sympathy, and the sentiments that result from it, are due to experiences of utility. If we suppose all thought of rewards or punishments, immediate or remote, to be left out of consideration, it is clear that any one who hesitates to inflict a pain because of the vivid representation of that pain which rises in his consciousness, is restrained, not by any sense of obligation or by any formulated doctrine of utility, but by the painful association established in him. And it is clear that if, after repeated experiences of the moral discomfort he has felt from witnessing the unhappiness indirectly caused by some of his acts, he is led to check himself when again tempted to those acts, the restraint is of like nature. Conversely with the pleasure-giving acts: repetitions of kind deeds, and experiences of the sympathetic gratifications that follow, tend continually to make stronger the association between such deeds and feelings of happiness.

Eventually these experiences may be consciously generalized, and there may result a deliberate pursuit of sympathetic gratifications. There may also come to be distinctly recognized the truths that the remoter results, kind and unkind conduct, are respectively beneficial and detrimental—that due regard for others is conducive to ultimate personal welfare, and disregard of others to ultimate personal disaster; and then there may become current such summations of experience as "honesty is the best policy." But so far from regarding these intellectual recognitions of utility as preceding and causing the moral sentiment, I regard the moral sentiment as preceding such recognitions of utility, and making them possible. The pleasures and pains directly resulting in experience from sympathetic and unsympathetic actions, had first to be slowly associated with such actions, and the resulting incentives and deterrents frequently obeyed, before there could arise the perceptions that sympathetic and unsympathetic actions are remotely beneficial or detrimental to the actor; and they had to be obeyed still longer and more generally before there could arise the perceptions that they are socially beneficial or detrimental. When, however, the remote effects, personal and social, have gained general recognition, are expressed in current maxims, and lead to injunctions having the religious sanction, the sentiments that prompt sympathetic actions and check unsympathetic ones are immensely strengthened by their alliances. Approbation and reprobation, divine and human, come to be associated in thought with the sympathetic and unsympathetic actions respectively. The commands of the creed, the legal penalties, and the code of social conduct, unitedly enforce them; and every child as it grows up, daily has impressed on it by the words and faces and voices of those around the authority of these highest principles of conduct. And now we may see why there arises a belief in the special sacredness of these highest principles, and a sense of the supreme authority of the altruistic sentiments answering to them. Many of the actions which, in early social states, received the religious sanction and gained public approbation, had the drawback that such sympathies as existed were outraged, and there was hence an imperfect satisfaction. Whereas these altruistic actions, while similarly having the religious sanction and gaining public approbation, bring a sympathetic consciousness of pleasure given or of pain prevented; and, beyond this, bring a sympathetic consciousness of human welfare at large, as being furthered by making altruistic actions habitual. Both this special and this general sympathetic consciousness become stronger and wider in proportion as the power of mental representation increases, and the imagination of consequences, immediate and remote, grows more vivid and comprehensive. Until at length these altruistic sentiments begin to call in question the authority of those ego-altruistic sentiments which once ruled unchallenged. They prompt resistance to laws that do not fulfil the conception of justice, encourage men to brave the frowns of their fellows by pursuing a course at variance with customs that are perceived to be socially injurious, and even cause dissent from the current religion; either to the extent of disbelief in those alleged divine attributes and acts not approved by this supreme moral arbiter, or to the extent of entire rejection of a creed which ascribes such attributes and acts.

Much that is required to make this hypothesis complete must stand over until, at the close of the second volume of the Principles of Psychology, I have space for a full exposition. What I have said will make it sufficiently clear that two fundamental errors have been made in the interpretation put upon it. Both Utility and Experience have been construed in senses much too narrow. Utility, convenient a word as it is from its comprehensiveness, has very inconvenient and misleading implications. It vividly suggests uses, and means, and proximate ends, but very faintly suggests the pleasures, positive or negative, which are the ultimate ends, and which, in the ethical meaning of the word, are alone considered; and, further, it implies conscious recognition of means and ends—implies the deliberate taking of some course to gain a perceived benefit. Experience, too, in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as standing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the connexions formed in consciousness between states that recur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in their widest senses, however, that I habitually use these words, as will be manifest to every one who reads the Principles of Psychology; and it is in their widest senses that I have used them in the letter to Mr. Mill. I think I have shown above that, when they are so understood, the hypothesis briefly set forth in that letter is by no means so indefensible as is supposed. At any rate, I have shown—what seemed for the present needful to show—that Mr. Hutton's versions of my views must not be accepted as correct.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: See Prospective Review for January, 1852.]

[Footnote 34: His criticism will be found in the National Review for January, 1856, under the title "Atheism."]

[Footnote 35: Hereafter I hope to elucidate at length these phenomena of expression. For the present, I can refer only to such further indications as are contained in two essays on "The Physiology of Laughter" and "The Origin and Function of Music."]

[Footnote 36: I may add that in Social Statics, chap. xxx., I have indicated, in a general way, the causes of the development of sympathy and the restraints upon its development—confining the discussion, however, to the case of the human race, my subject limiting me to that. The accompanying teleology I now disclaim.]



THE COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY OF MAN.

[Originally read before the Anthropological Institute, and afterwards published in Mind, for January, 1876.]

While discussing with two members of the Anthropological Institute the work to be undertaken by its psychological section, I made certain suggestions which they requested me to put in writing. When reminded, some months after, of the promise I had made to do this, I failed to recall the particular suggestions referred to; but in the endeavour to remember them, I was led to glance over the whole subject of comparative human psychology. Hence resulted the following paper.

That making a general survey is useful as a preliminary to deliberate study, either of a whole or of any part, scarcely needs showing. Vagueness of thought accompanies the wandering about in a region without known bounds or landmarks. Attention devoted to some portion of a subject in ignorance of its connexion with the rest, leads to untrue conceptions. The whole cannot be rightly conceived without some knowledge of the parts; and no part can be rightly conceived out of relation to the whole.

To map out the Comparative Psychology of Man must also conduce to the more methodic carrying on of inquiries. In this, as in other things, division of labour will facilitate progress; and that there may be division of labour, the work itself must be systematically divided.

We may conveniently separate the entire subject into three main divisions, and may arrange them in the order of increasing speciality.

The first division will treat of the degrees of mental evolution of different human types, generally considered: taking account of both the mass of mental manifestation and the complexity of mental manifestation. This division will include the relations of these characters to physical characters—the bodily mass and structure, and the cerebral mass and structure. It will also include inquiries concerning the time taken in completing mental evolution, and the time during which adult mental power lasts; as well as certain most general traits of mental action, such as the greater or less persistence of emotions and of intellectual processes. The connexion between the general mental type and the general social type should also be here dealt with.

In the second division may be conveniently placed apart, inquiries concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race. Under it will come such questions as these:—What differences of mental mass and mental complexity, if any, existing between males and females, are common to all races? Do such differences vary in degree, or in kind, or in both? Are there reasons for thinking that they are liable to change by increase or decrease? What relations do they bear in each case to the habits of life, the domestic arrangements, and the social arrangements? This division should also include in its scope the sentiments of the sexes towards one another, considered as varying quantitatively and qualitatively; as well as their respective sentiments towards offspring, similarly varying.

For the third division of inquiries may be reserved the more special mental traits distinguishing different types of men. One class of such specialities results from differences of proportion among faculties possessed in common; and another class results from the presence in some races of faculties that are almost or quite absent from others. Each difference in each of these groups, when established by comparison, has to be studied in connexion with the stage of mental evolution reached, and has to be studied in connexion with the habits of life and the social development, regarding it as related to these both as cause and as consequence.

Such being the outlines of these several divisions, let us now consider in detail the subdivisions contained within each.

* * * * *

I.—Under the head of general mental evolution we may begin with the trait of—

1. Mental mass.—Daily experiences show us that human beings differ in volume of mental manifestation. Some there are whose intelligence, high though it may be, produces little impression on those around; while there are some who, when uttering even commonplaces, do it so as to affect listeners in a disproportionate degree. Comparison of two such, makes it manifest that, generally, the difference is due to the natural language of the emotions. Behind the intellectual quickness of the one there is not felt any power of character; while the other betrays a momentum capable of bearing down opposition—a potentiality of emotion that has something formidable about it. Obviously the varieties of mankind differ much in respect of this trait. Apart from kind of feeling, they are unlike in amount of feeling. The dominant races overrun the inferior races mainly in virtue of the greater quantity of energy in which this greater mental mass shows itself. Hence a series of inquiries, of which these are some:—(a) What is the relation between mental mass and bodily mass? Manifestly, the small races are deficient in it. But it also appears that races much upon a par in size—as, for instance, an Englishman and a Damara, differ considerably in mental mass. (b) What is its relation to mass of brain? and, bearing in mind the general law that in the same species, size of brain increases with size of body (though not in the same proportion), how far can we connect the extra mental mass of the higher races, with an extra mass of brain beyond that which is proper to their greater bodily mass? (c) What relation, if any, is there between mental mass and the physiological state expressed in vigour of circulation and richness of blood, as severally determined by mode of life and general nutrition? (d) What are the relations of this trait to the social state, as nomadic or settled, predatory or industrial?

2. Mental complexity.—How races differ in respect of the more or less involved structures of their minds, will best be understood on recalling the unlikeness between the juvenile mind and the adult mind among ourselves. In the child we see absorption in special facts. Generalities even of a low order are scarcely recognized, and there is no recognition of high generalities. We see interest in individuals, in personal adventures, in domestic affairs, but no interest in political or social matters. We see vanity about clothes and small achievements, but little sense of justice: witness the forcible appropriation of one another's toys. While there have come into play many of the simpler mental powers, there has not yet been reached that complication of mind which results from the addition of powers evolved out of these simpler ones. Kindred differences of complexity exist between the minds of lower and higher races; and comparisons should be made to ascertain their kinds and amounts. Here, too, there may be a subdivision of the inquiries. (a) What is the relation between mental complexity and mental mass? Do not the two habitually vary together? (b) What is the relation to the social state, as more or less complex? that is to say—Do not mental complexity and social complexity act and react on each other?

3. Rate of mental development.—In conformity with the biological law that the higher the organisms the longer they take to evolve, members of the inferior human races may be expected to complete their mental evolution sooner than members of the superior races; and we have evidence that they do this. Travellers from many regions comment, now on the great precocity of children among savage and semi-civilized peoples, and now on the early arrest of their mental progress. Though we scarcely need more proofs that this general contrast exists, there remains to be asked the question, whether it is consistently maintained throughout all groups of races, from the lowest to the highest—whether, say, the Australian differs in this respect from the Hindu, as much as the Hindu does from the European. Of secondary inquiries coming under this sub-head may be named several. (a) Is this more rapid evolution and earlier arrest always unequally shown by the two sexes; or, in other words, are there in lower types proportional differences in rate and degree of development, such as higher types show us? (b) Is there in many cases, as there appears to be in some cases, a traceable relation between the period of arrest and the period of puberty? (c) Is mental decay early in proportion as mental evolution is rapid? (d) Can we in other respects assert that where the type is low, the entire cycle of mental changes between birth and death—ascending, uniform, descending—comes within a shorter interval?

4. Relative plasticity.—Is there any relation between the degree of mental modifiability which remains in adult life, and the character of the mental evolution in respect of mass, complexity, and rapidity? The animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic nature. Lowly organized creatures, guided almost entirely by reflex actions, are in but small degrees changeable by individual experiences. As the nervous structure complicates, its actions become less rigorously confined within pre-established limits; and as we approach the highest creatures, individual experiences take larger and larger shares in moulding the conduct: there is an increasing ability to take in new impressions and to profit by the acquisitions. Inferior and superior human races are contrasted in this respect. Many travellers comment on the unchangeable habits of savages. The semi-civilized nations of the East, past and present, were, or are, characterized by a greater rigidity of custom than characterizes the more civilized nations of the West. The histories of the most civilized nations show us that in their earlier times, the modifiability of ideas and habits was less than it is at present. And if we contrast classes or individuals around us, we see that the most developed in mind are the most plastic. To inquiries respecting this trait of comparative plasticity, in its relations to precocity and early completion of mental development, may fitly be added inquiries respecting its relations to the social state, which it helps to determine, and which reacts upon it.

5. Variability.—To say of a mind that its actions are extremely inconstant, and at the same time to say that it is of relatively unchangeable nature, apparently implies a contradiction. When, however, the inconstancy is understood as referring to the manifestations which follow one another from minute to minute, and the unchangeableness to the average manifestations, extending over long periods, the apparent contradiction disappears; and it becomes comprehensible that the two traits may, and ordinarily do, co-exist. An infant, quickly wearied with each kind of perception, wanting ever a new object which it soon abandons for something else, and alternating a score times a day between smiles and tears, shows us a very small persistence in each kind of mental action: all its states, intellectual and emotional, are transient. Yet at the same time its mind cannot be easily changed in character. True, it changes spontaneously in due course; but it long remains incapable of receiving ideas or emotions beyond those of simple orders. The child exhibits less rapid variations, intellectual and emotional, while its educability is greater. Inferior human races show us this combination: great rigidity of general character with great irregularity in its passing manifestations. Speaking broadly, while they resist permanent modification, they lack intellectual persistence, and they lack emotional persistence. Of various low types we read that they cannot keep the attention fixed beyond a few minutes on anything requiring thought, even of a simple kind. Similarly with their feelings: these are less enduring than those of civilized men. There are, however, qualifications to be made in this statement; and comparisons are needed to ascertain how far these qualifications go. The savage shows great persistence in the action of the lower intellectual faculties. He is untiring in minute observation. He is untiring, also, in that kind of perceptive activity which accompanies the making of his weapons and ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, &c. Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting these small industries, but also in certain of his passions—especially in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of parts of the mind.

6. Impulsiveness.—This trait is closely allied with the last: unenduring emotions are emotions which sway the conduct now this way and now that, without any consistency. The trait of impulsiveness may, however, be fitly dealt with separately, because it has other implications than mere lack of persistence. Comparisons of the lower human races with the higher, appear generally to show that, along with brevity of the passions, there goes violence. The sudden gusts of feeling which men of inferior types display, are excessive in degree as they are short in duration; and there is probably a connexion between these two traits: intensity sooner producing exhaustion. Observing that the passions of childhood illustrate this connexion, let us turn to certain interesting questions concerning the decrease of impulsiveness which accompanies advance in evolution. The nervous processes of an impulsive being, are less remote from reflex actions than are those of an unimpulsive being. In reflex actions we see a simple stimulus passing suddenly into movement: little or no control being exercised by other parts of the nervous system. As we ascend to higher actions, guided by more and more complicated combinations of stimuli, there is not the same instantaneous discharge in simple motions; but there is a comparatively deliberate and more variable adjustment of compound motions, duly restrained and proportioned. It is thus with the passions and sentiments in the less developed natures and in the more developed natures. Where there is but little emotional complexity, an emotion, when excited by some occurrence, explodes in action before the other emotions have been called into play; and each of these, from time to time, does the like. But the more complex emotional structure is one in which these simpler emotions are so co-ordinated that they do not act independently. Before excitement of any one has had time to cause action, some excitement has been communicated to others—often antagonistic ones; and the conduct becomes modified in adjustment to the combined dictates. Hence results a decreased impulsiveness, and also a greater persistence. The conduct pursued, being prompted by several emotions co-operating in degrees which do not exhaust them, acquires a greater continuity; and while spasmodic force becomes less conspicuous, there is an increase in the total energy. Examining the facts from this point of view, there are sundry questions of interest to be put respecting the different races of men. (a) To what other traits than degree of mental evolution is impulsiveness related? Apart from difference in elevation of type, the New-World races seem to be less impulsive than the Old-World races. Is this due to constitutional apathy? Can there be traced (other things equal) a relation between physical vivacity and mental impulsiveness? (b) What connexion is there between this trait and the social state? Clearly a very explosive nature—such as that of the Bushman—is unfit for social union; and, commonly, social union, when by any means established, checks impulsiveness. (c) What respective shares in checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state fosters—such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of sociality, the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings, the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more or less distant; and thus imply checks upon the promptings of the simpler passions. Hence arise the questions—In what order, in what degrees, and in what combinations, do they come into play?

7. One further general inquiry of a different kind may be added. What effect is produced on mental nature by mixture of races? There is reason for believing that throughout the animal kingdom, the union of varieties which have become widely divergent is physically injurious; while the union of slightly divergent varieties is physically beneficial. Does the like hold with the mental nature? Some facts seem to show that mixture of human races extremely unlike, produces a worthless type of mind—a mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two races, nor for that led by the lower—a mind out of adjustment to all conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same stock, slightly differentiated by lives carried on in unlike circumstances for many generations, produce by mixture a mental type having certain superiorities. In his work on The Huguenots, Mr. Smiles points out how large a number of distinguished men among us have descended from Flemish and French refugees; and M. Alphonse de Candolle, in his Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Siecles, shows that the descendants of French refugees in Switzerland have produced an unusually great proportion of scientific men. Though, in part, this result may be ascribed to the original natures of such refugees, who must have had that independence which is a chief factor in originality, yet it is probably in part due to mixtures of races. For thinking this, we have evidence which is not open to two interpretations. Prof. Morley draws attention to the fact that, during seven hundred years of our early history "the best genius of England sprang up on the line of country in which Celts and Anglo-Saxons came together." In like manner Mr. Galton, in his English Men of Science, shows that in recent days these have mostly come from an inland region, running generally from north to south, which we may reasonably presume contains more mixed blood than do the regions east and west of it. Such a result seems probable a priori. Two natures respectively adapted to slightly unlike sets of social conditions, may be expected by their union to produce a nature somewhat more plastic than either—a nature more impressible by the new circumstances of advancing social life, and therefore more likely to originate new ideas and display modified sentiments. The Comparative Psychology of Man may, then, fitly include the mental effects of mixture; and among derivative inquiries we may ask—How far the conquest of race by race has been instrumental in advancing civilization by aiding mixture, as well as in other ways.

II.—The second of the three leading divisions named at the outset is less extensive. Still, concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race, questions of much interest and importance may be raised.

1. Degree of difference between the sexes.—It is an established fact that, physically considered, the contrast between males and females is not equally great in all types of mankind. The bearded races, for instance, show us a greater unlikeness between the two than do the beardless races. Among South American tribes, men and women have a greater general resemblance in form, &c., than is usual elsewhere. The question, then, suggests itself—Do the mental natures of the sexes differ in a constant or in a variable degree? The difference is unlikely to be a constant one; and, looking for variation, we may ask what is its amount, and under what conditions does it occur?

2. Difference in mass and in complexity.—The comparisons between the sexes, of course, admit of subdivisions parallel to those made in the comparisons between races. Relative mental mass and relative mental complexity have chiefly to be observed. Assuming that the great inequality in the cost of reproduction to the two sexes, is the cause of unlikeness in mental mass, as in physical mass, this difference may be studied in connexion with reproductive differences presented by the various races, in respect of the ages at which reproduction commences, and the periods over which it lasts. An allied inquiry may be joined with this; namely, how far the mental developments of the two sexes are affected by their relative habits in respect to food and physical exertion? In many of the lower races, the women, treated with great brutality, are, physically, much inferior to the men: excess of labour and defect of nutrition being apparently the combined causes. Is any arrest of mental development simultaneously caused?

3. Variation of the differences.—If the unlikeness, physical and mental, of the sexes is not constant, then, supposing all races have diverged from one original stock, it follows that there must have been transmission of accumulated differences to those of the same sex in posterity. If, for instance, the prehistoric type of man was beardless, then the production of a bearded variety implies that within that variety the males continued to transmit an increasing amount of beard to descendants of the same sex. This limitation of heredity by sex, shown us in multitudinous ways throughout the animal kingdom, probably applies to the cerebral structures as much as to other structures. Hence the question—Do not the mental natures of the sexes in alien types of Man diverge in unlike ways and degrees?

4. Causes of the differences.—Are any relations to be traced between these variable differences and the variable parts the sexes play in the business of life? Assuming the cumulative effects of habit on function and structure, as well as the limitation of heredity by sex, it is to be expected that if, in any society, the activities of one sex, generation after generation, differ from those of the other, there will arise sexual adaptations of mind. Some instances in illustration may be named. Among the Africans of Loango and other districts, as also among some of the Indian Hill-tribes, the men and women are strongly contrasted as respectively inert and energetic: the industry of the women having apparently become so natural to them that no coercion is needed. Of course, such facts suggest an extensive series of questions. Limitation of heredity by sex may account both for those sexual differences of mind which distinguish men and women in all races, and for those which distinguish them in each race, or each society. An interesting subordinate inquiry may be, how far such mental differences are inverted in cases where there is inversion of social and domestic relations; as among those Khasi Hill-tribes, whose women have so far the upper hand that they turn off their husbands in a summary way if they displease them.

5. Mental modifiability in the two sexes.—Along with comparisons of races in respect of mental plasticity may go parallel comparisons of the sexes in each race. Is it true always, as it appears to be generally true, that women are less modifiable than men? The relative conservatism of women—their greater adhesion to established ideas and practices—is manifest in many civilized and semi-civilized societies. Is it so among the uncivilized? A curious instance of stronger attachment to custom in women than in men is given by Dalton, as occurring among the Juangs, one of the lowest wild tribes of Bengal. Until recently the only dress of both sexes was something less than that which the Hebrew legend gives to Adam and Eve. Years ago the men were led to adopt a cloth bandage round the loins, in place of the bunch of leaves; but the women adhered to the aboriginal habit: a conservatism shown where it might have been least expected.

6. The sexual sentiment.—Results of value may be looked for from comparisons of races made to determine the amounts and characters of the higher feelings to which the relation of the sexes gives rise. The lowest varieties of mankind have but small endowments of these feelings. Among varieties of higher types, such as the Malayo-Polynesians, these feelings seem considerably developed: the Dyaks, for instance, sometimes display them in great strength. Speaking generally, they appear to become stronger with the advance of civilization. Several subordinate inquiries may be named. (a) How far is development of the sexual sentiment dependent upon intellectual advance—upon growth of imaginative power? (b) How far is it related to emotional advance; and especially to evolution of those emotions which originate from sympathy? What are its relations to polyandry and polygyny? (c) Does it not tend towards, and is it not fostered by, monogamy? (d) What connexion has it with maintenance of the family bond, and the consequent better rearing of children?

III.—Under the third head, to which we may now pass come the more special traits of the different races.

1. Imitativeness.—One of the characteristics in which the lower types of men show us a smaller departure from reflex action than do the higher types, is their strong tendency to mimic the motions and sounds made by others—an almost involuntary habit which travellers find it difficult to check. This meaningless repetition, which seems to imply that the idea of an observed action cannot be framed in the mind of the observer without tending forthwith to discharge itself in the action conceived (and every ideal action is a nascent form of the 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 sceptical tendencies: so maintaining habits for which no reasons 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 marvelling 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 connexion with the co-operative intellectual conceptions; (c) in connexion 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, &c., orders, and abstractions similarly ascending. Blue is an abstraction referring to one class of impressions derived from visible objects; colour is a higher abstraction referring to many such classes of visual impressions; property is a still higher abstraction referring to classes of impressions received not through the eyes alone, but through other sense-organs. If generalities and abstractions were arranged in the order of their extensiveness and in the order of their grades, tests would be obtained which, applied to the vocabularies of the uncivilized, would yield definite evidence of the intellectual stages reached.

4. Peculiar aptitudes.—To such specialities of intelligence as mark different degrees of evolution, have to be added minor ones related to modes of life: the kinds and degrees of faculty which have become organized in adaptation to daily habits—skill in the use of weapons, powers of tracking, quick discrimination of individual objects. And under this head may fitly come inquiries concerning some race-peculiarities of the aesthetic class, not at present explicable. While the remains from the Dordogne caves show us that their inhabitants, low as we must suppose them to have been, could represent animals, both by drawing and carving, with some degree of fidelity; there are existing races, probably higher in other respects, who seem scarcely capable of recognizing pictorial representations. Similarly with the musical faculty. Almost or quite wanting in some inferior races, we find it in other races not of high grade, developed to an unexpected degree: instance the Negroes, some of whom are so innately musical, that, as I have been told by a missionary among them, the children in native schools when taught European psalm-tunes, spontaneously sing seconds to them. Whether any causes can be discovered for race peculiarities of this kind, is a question of interest.

5. Specialities of emotional nature.—These are worthy of careful study, as being intimately related to social phenomena—to the possibility of social progress, and to the nature of the social structure. Among others to be noted there are—(a) Gregariousness or sociality—a trait in the strength of which races differ widely: some, as the Mantras, being almost indifferent to social intercourse; some being unable to dispense with it. Obviously the degree of this desire for the presence of fellow-men, affects greatly the formation of social groups, and consequently influences social progress. (b) Intolerance of restraint. Men of some inferior types, as the Mapuche, are ungovernable; while those of other types, no higher in grade, not only submit to restraint, but admire the persons exercising it. These contrasted natures have to be observed in connexion with social evolution; to the early stages of which they are respectively antagonistic and favourable. (c) The desire for praise is a trait which, common to all races, high and low, varies considerably in degree. There are quite inferior races, as some of those in the Pacific States, whose members sacrifice without stint to gain the applause which lavish generosity brings; while, elsewhere, applause is sought with less eagerness. Notice should be taken of the connexion between this love of approbation and the social restraints; since it plays an important part in the maintenance of them. (d) The acquisitive propensity. This, too, is a character the degrees of which, and the relations of which to the social state, have to be especially noted. The desire for property grows along with the possibility of gratifying it; and this, extremely small among the lowest men, increases as social development goes on. With the advance from tribal property to family property and individual property, the notion of private right of possession gains definiteness, and the love of acquisition strengthens. Each step towards an orderly social state makes larger accumulations possible, and the pleasures achievable by them more sure; while the resulting encouragement to accumulate, leads to increase of capital and to further progress. This action and re-action of the sentiment and the social state, should be in every case observed.

6. The altruistic sentiments.—Coming last, these are also highest. The evolution of them in the course of civilization, shows us clearly the reciprocal influences of the social unit and the social organism. On the one hand, there can be no sympathy, nor any of the sentiments which sympathy generates, unless there are fellow-beings around. On the other hand, maintenance of union with fellow-beings depends in part on the presence of sympathy, and the resulting restraints on conduct. Gregariousness or sociality favours the growth of sympathy; increased sympathy conduces to closer sociality and a more stable social state; and so, continuously, each increment of the one makes possible a further increment of the other. Comparisons of the altruistic sentiments resulting from sympathy, as exhibited in different types of men and different social states, may be conveniently arranged under three heads—(a) Pity, which should be observed as displayed towards offspring, towards the sick and aged, and towards enemies. (b) Generosity (duly discriminated from the love of display) as shown in giving; as shown in the relinquishment of pleasures for the sake of others; as shown by active efforts on others' behalf. The manifestations of this sentiment, too, are to be noted in respect of their range—whether they are limited to relatives; whether they extend only to those of the same society; whether they extend to those of other societies; and they are also to be noted in connexion with the degree of providence—whether they result from sudden impulses obeyed without counting the cost, or go along with clear foresight of the future sacrifices entailed. (c) Justice. This most abstract of the altruistic sentiments is to be considered under aspects like those just named, as well as under many other aspects—how far it is shown in regard to the lives of others; how far in regard to their freedom; how far in regard to their property; how far in regard to their various minor claims. And comparisons concerning this highest sentiment should, beyond all others, be carried on along with comparisons of the accompanying social states, which it largely determines—the forms and actions of governments; the characters of laws; the relations of classes.

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Such, stated as briefly as consists with clearness, are the leading divisions and subdivisions under which the Comparative Psychology of Man may be arranged. In going rapidly over so wide a field, I have doubtless overlooked much that should be included. Doubtless, too, various of the inquiries named will branch out into subordinate inquiries well worth pursuing. Even as it is, however, the programme is extensive enough to occupy numerous investigators, who may with advantage take separate divisions.

Though, after occupying themselves with primitive arts and products, anthropologists have devoted their attention mainly to the physical characters of the human races; it must, I think, be admitted that the study of these yields in importance to the study of their psychical characters. The general conclusions to which the first set of inquiries may lead, cannot so much affect our views respecting the highest classes of phenomena as can the general conclusions to which the second set may lead. A true theory of the human mind vitally concerns us; and systematic comparisons of human minds, differing in their kinds and grades, will help us in forming a true theory. Knowledge of the reciprocal relations between the characters of men and the characters of the societies they form, must influence profoundly our ideas of political arrangements. When the inter-dependence of individual natures and social structures is understood, our conceptions of the changes now taking place, and hereafter to take place, will be rectified. A comprehension of mental development as a process of adaptation to social conditions, which are continually remoulding the mind and are again remoulded by it, will conduce to a salutary consciousness of the remoter effects produced by institutions upon character; and will check the grave mischiefs which ignorant legislation now causes. Lastly, a right theory of mental evolution as exhibited by humanity at large, giving a key, as it does, to the evolution of the individual mind, must help to rationalize our perverse methods of education; and so to raise intellectual power and moral nature.