266 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



consciousness accompanying performance of such action), evidently 

 diverges but little from the automatic; and decrease of it is to be ex- 

 pected 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 eacli generation from the last, without thought or inquiry, 

 imply a tendency to imitate which overmasters critical and skeptical 

 tendencies : so maintaining habits for which no reason can be given. 

 The decrease of this irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest sav- 

 age 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 w^hich a society cannot 

 survive ; a hindrance in so far as it offers resistance to changes of 

 social organization that have become desirable. 



2. Incuriosity. Projecting our own natures into the circumstances 

 of the savage, we imagine ourselves as marveling greatly on first 

 seeing the products and appliances of civilized life. But we err in 

 supposing that the savage has feelings such as we should have in 

 his place. Want of rational curiosity respecting these incomprehen- 

 sible novelties is a trait remarked of the lowest races wherever found ; 

 and the partially-civilized races are distinguished from them as ex- 

 hibiting rational curiosity. The relation of this trait to the intel- 

 lectual 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 as- 

 sume them to be the common property of all minds, are no more pos- 

 sessed 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 uiider each 

 head has to be observed : (a.) Independently in its successive stages ; 

 (6.) In connection with the cooperative intellectual conceptions; (c.) In 

 connection with the progress of language, of the arts, and of social 

 organization. Already linguistic phenomena have been used in aid 

 of such inquiries ; and more systematic use of them should be made. 

 Not only the number of general words, and the, number of abstract 

 words, in a people's vocabulary should be taken as evidence, but also 

 their degrees of generality and abstractness ; for there are generalities 

 of tlie first, second, third, etc., orders and abstractions similarly as- 

 cending in degree. Blue is an abstraction referring to one class of 



