24 JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS PSYCHOLOGY 



&quot;an intense and restless curiosity is one of the peculiar characteristics 

 of these people. If confronted with a package containing various sup 

 plies unknown to them, they will not rest until they have examined every 

 article of the lot, touched it, turned it over, and even tasted it.&quot; An old 

 woman walked a hundred miles to see a white woman (Mrs. Peary). 

 (48: 45.) 



The same authority attributes to them a * marked capacity for 

 imitation.&quot; (48:61.) They very soon master the use of the 

 tools and mechanical arts of civilized people, and readily adopt 

 such as serve their purposes, as for instance, the rifle. Their 

 ability &quot;to do the white man s work with the white man s tools,&quot; 

 as Peary puts it, has been an indispensable factor in Arctic ex 

 ploration. (48:62, see also 30:181; 42:41.) Dewey s words, 

 concerning the mind of a hunting people, can be applied literally 

 to the Eskimo: 



1 Their attention is mobile and fluid as is their life ; they are eager 

 to the point of greed for anything which will fit into their dramatic 

 situations so as to intensify skill and increase emotion.&quot; (18: 225.) 



Hutton speaks of their imitativeness as 



&quot;a peg to hang things on in teaching them new ways.&quot; He exclaims, 

 4 Imitate ! I have never seen any one to equal them, and they imitate 

 so thoroughly too.&quot; (33: 313.) 



Indeed, there appears to be more danger from too ready 

 imitation of the not always desirable traits of the white men 

 than from too great adherence to their own time-honored ways. 

 (See 30:172; 1. 2:62, 91.) 



That the Eskimo manifest not only imitativeness, but inventive 

 ness, no one will question who is familiar with their remarkable 

 triumphs in that line, an inventiveness no less, when their 

 environment and resources are considered, than that of our own 

 branch of mankind. They are even experimenters in theoretical 

 problems, as is evidenced by an account given by Mason. 



&quot;They often make invention a part of their sport. They go out to 

 certain difficult places, and having imagined themselves in certain straits, 

 they compare notes as to what each one would do. They actually make 

 experiments, setting one another problems in invention.&quot; (40: 23). 



Our position that it is environment and not heredity, to use 

 that much overworked antithesis, which accounts for their con 

 servatism, especially in matters of religious belief and practice, 

 where it is most pronounced, is strikingly supported by Ras- 



