80< [AL 



knowledge, belief, and custom to be acquired or as- 

 similat. -d. Whereas animal species have advanced from 

 lower to higher levels of mental life by the improve- 

 ment of the innate mental constitution of the species, 

 man, since he became man, has progressed in the main 

 by means of tin- increase in volume and improve- 

 in Duality of ill.- sum of knowledge, belief, and cus- 

 toin, which constitutes tin- tradition of any go 



to the Hiiperior'r i- moral and intellectual 



: of his xiciety that the E rity of civili/.ed 



man over existing savages and over his savage fore- 

 fathers i '>. if not wholly, due. This increase and 



nient of tradition has been effected by countless 

 steps, each relatively small and unimportant, initiated 

 l'\ the few original minds of the successive generations 

 and incorporated in the social tradition through the ac- 

 ceptance or imitation of thorn by the mass of men. All 

 that constitutes culture and civilization, all, or nearly all, 

 that nishes the highly cultured European i 



.ally and morally from th m'ii of the stone age of 

 Europe, is thm summed up in the word 'tradition, 9 and 

 all tradition exists only in virtu.- of imitation; for it is 

 only l.\ imitation that cadi generation takes up and 

 n the tradition of the preceding generation; 

 and it is only )>y imitation that any improvement, con- 



d by any mind endowed witli that rarest of all things, 

 a spark of originality, can become embodied within the 



tion of his society. M8e 



SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS. 

 BOAS, F.Tke Mi*d of /Vm.,f,Yr 



Coounr, C. U. Social Organization. 



N McDougmU. of. f ., pp. 7 



