454 THE MIND OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 



expressing high numbers. Although these numeral systems are very 

 slightly developed as compared with our own, we must not forget that 

 the abstract idea of number must be present among these people, 

 I x'causc without it no method of counting is possible. It may be worth 

 while to mention one or two other facts taken from the grammars of 

 primitive people, which will make it clear that all grammar presup- 

 poses abstractions. The three personal pronouns — 1, thou, and he — 

 occur in all human languages. The underlying idea of these pronouns 

 is the clear distinction between the self as speaker, the person or object 

 spoken to, and that spoken of. We also find that nouns are classified 

 in a great many ways in different languages. While all the older 

 Indo-European languages classify nouns according to sex, other lan- 

 guages classify nouns as animate or inanimate, or as human and not 

 human, etc. Activities are also classified in many different wa}\s. It 

 is at once clear that every classification of this kind involves the forma- 

 tion of an abstract idea. The processes of abstraction are the same in 

 all languages, and they do not need any further discussion, except in 

 so far as we may be inclined to value differently the systems of classi- 

 fication and the results of abstraction. 



The question whether the power to inhibit impulses is the same in 

 all races of man is not so easily answered. It is an impression 

 obtained by many travelers, and also based upon experiences gained 

 in our own country, that primitive man and the less educated have in 

 common a lack of control of emotions; that they give way more read- 

 ily to an impulse than civilized man and the highly educated. I 

 believe that this conception is based largely upon the neglect to con- 

 sider the occasions on which a strong control of impulses is demanded 

 in various forms of society. What I mean will become clear when I 

 call your attention to the often described power of endurance exhib- 

 ited by Indian captives who undergo torture at the hands of their 

 enemies. When we want to gain a true estimate of the power of 

 primitive man to control impulses, we must not compare the control 

 required on certain occasions among ourselves with the control exerted 

 by primitive man on tin 1 same occasions. If, for instance, our social 

 etiquette forbids the expression of feelings of personal discomfort and 

 of anxiety, we must remember that personal etiquette among primi- 

 tive men may not require any inhibition of the same kind. We must 

 rather look for those occasions on which inhibition is required by the 

 customs of primitive man. Such are, for instance, the numerous cases 

 of taboo — that is, of prohibitions of the use of certain foods, or of the 

 performance of certain kinds of work, which sometimes require a con- 

 siderable amount of self-control. When an Eskimo community is on 

 the point of starvation and their religious proscriptions forbid them to 

 make use of the seals that are basking on the ice, the amount of self- 

 control of the whole community which restrains them from killing 

 these seals is certainly very great. Cases of this kind are very nu- 



