THE PROSPECTS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 



cultivates in the group a strong sentiment of superiority 

 and partly because it tends to become a homogeneous 

 whole. Alien elements, therefore, set up cultural conflicts 

 which tend to affect all parts of the cultural scheme. Iso- 

 lation deepens cultural homogeneity, fixity, and dis- 

 tinctiveness. For this reason, certain primitive peoples may 

 well have lived for thousands of years with little or no 

 cultural change. The mores set the patterns of approved 

 thought, of "right thinking," at all times and places; few, 

 even among modern well-educated persons, ever think or 

 feel except in those terms inculcated in them by their 

 mores. 



If these reflections are sound, one seems warranted in 

 drawing two inferences. One is that age is not a useful 

 criterion of the validity of a doctrine or belief. The more 

 ancient such tenets are, the closer they approach the origi- 

 nal innocence and ignorance of the race. The other is that 

 the doctrine of relativity applies to all that relates to 

 human institutions. Ethical rules relating to sex, family, 

 property, public agencies, and private rights and duties 

 are all relative to time and place and must be judged, not 

 by absolute principles, or by the light and darkness of 

 our own culture, but by their fitness as means of adaptation 

 in the culture where they are found. 



Slow as cultural change has been during most of human 

 history, there nevertheless has been change. It results from 

 whatever produces an internal crisis or external contact 

 or conflict of one group or its customs with another. 

 Those eight or ten periods which have produced so-called 

 civilizations since the first arose in the ancient east have 

 all been periods of contacts multiplied through 

 trade, immigration, and travel, and conflicts in the form 

 of war and conquest. Such conditions set up processes of 

 selection, elimination, and recasting in the whole cultural 

 scheme. Probably the basic changes are those in industry 



[49] 



