THE MIND OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 455 



morons, and prove that primitive man has the ability to control his 

 impulses, !>nt that this control is exerted on occasions which depend 

 upon the character of the social Life of the people, and which do not 

 coincide with the occasions on which we expect and require control of 

 impulses. 



The third point in which the mind of primitive man seems to differ 

 from that of civilized man is in its power of choosing between percep- 

 tions and actions according to their value. On this power rests the 

 whole domain of art and of ethics. An object or an action becomes of 

 artistic value only when it is chosen from among- other perceptions or 

 other actions on account of its beauty. An action becomes moral onlj r 

 when it is chosen from among other possible actions on account of its 

 ethical value. No matter how crude the standards of primitive man 

 may be in regard to these two points, we recognize that all of them 

 possess an art, and that all of them possess ethical standards. It may 

 be that their art is quite contrary to our artistic feeling. It ma}^ be 

 that their ethical standards outrage our moral code. We must clearly 

 distinguish between the aesthetic and ethical codes and the existence of 

 an aesthetic and ethical standard. 



Our brief consideration of the phenomena of abstraction, of inhibi- 

 tion and of choice, leads, then, to the conclusion that these functions of 

 the human mind are common to the whole of humanity. It may be well 

 to state here that, according to our present method of considering bio- 

 logical and pyschological phenomena, we must assume that these func- 

 tions of the human mind have developed from lower conditions existing 

 at a previous time, and that at one time there certainly must have 

 been races and tribes in which the properties here described were not 

 at all, or only slightly, developed; but it is also true that among the 

 present races of man, no matter how primitive they may be in com- 

 parison with ourselves, these faculties are highly developed. 



It is not impossible that the degree of development of these func- 

 tions may differ somewhat among different types of man; but 1 do not 

 believe that we are able at the present time to form a just valuation of 

 the power of abstraction, of control, and of choice among different 

 races. A comparison of their languages, customs, and activities 

 suggests that these faculties may be unequally developed; but the 

 differences are not sufficient to justify us in ascribing materially lower 

 stages to some peoples and higher stages to others. The conclusions 

 icached from these considerations are therefore, on the whole, nega- 

 tive. We are not inclined to consider the mental organization of 

 different races of man as differing in fundamental points. 



We next turn to a consideration of the second question propounded 

 here, namely, to an investigation of the influence of the contents of 

 the mind upon the formation of thoughts and actions. W T e will take 

 these up in the same order in which we considered the previous ques- 

 tion. We will first direct our attention to the phenomena of percep- 



