864 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 



ment and the formation of habits suitable to social life, steps are 

 taken in the development of consciousness as well as of institu- 

 tions. The maternal system of control, and the steps by which 

 filiation through descent as a basis of association gives way to as- 

 sociation based on common activities and interests and the occupa- 

 tion of a common territory; the psychology of the blood-feud, 

 its weakness as an agent of control, the steps in its break-down, 

 and the substitution of control based on law; blood-brotherhood 

 and tribal marks as signs of community of interest; totemism as 

 an agent of control; initiatory ceremonies as an attempt to edu- 

 cate the young in the traditions of the tribe; tabu and fetishism 

 as police agencies; secret societies and their influence in bringing 

 about solidarity; property and its influence on association and 

 habit; popular assemblies among the natural races and their in- 

 fluence in promoting association; offense and punishment, par- 

 ticularly the consideration of why an act is offensive and the pro- 

 cess by which a punishment is selected to fit the offense these 

 are materials^ furnishing a concrete approach to a psychological 

 study of association. In the play of attention about these practices 

 we are able to trace steps in the development of the conscious- 

 ness of the race. 



Ethnology and the kindred sciences have already established 

 the fact that human nature, the external world, and the funda- 

 mental needs of life are everywhere much alike, and that there 

 is, roughly speaking, a parallelism of development in all groups, or 

 a tendency in every group which advances at all to take the same 

 steps as those taken by other groups. Such phenomena as spirit- 

 belief and accompanying ecclesiastical institutions, blood- vengeance 

 preceding juridical institutions, a maternal system preceding 

 patriarchal control, ecclesiastical and political despotism preceding 

 democracy, and artistic, inventive, and mythical products of the 

 same general ground-pattern, show a general law of uniformity 

 in progress; and it is one of the tasks of social psychology to work 

 out from the standpoint of habit, attention, and stimulation what 

 conditions have contributed to make differences in the progress 

 of different groups; whether steps in progress, if taken at all, are 

 invariably taken in the same order by all groups; and why stimu- 

 lation or opportunity is so lacking in some groups that old habits 

 are not broken up at all, and the groups remain in consequence 

 non-progressive. The study of parallelism in development not 

 only throws light on social development, but the fact of a common 

 possession of language, myth, religion, number-, time-, and space- 

 conceptions, political and legal organization under conditions 

 where the possibility of borrowing is precluded, indicates that 

 the same general type of mind is a possession of all races, both 



