BOAS] HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 67 



Thus it would seem that the obstacles to generalized thought inher- 

 ent in the form of a language are of minor importance only, and that 

 presumably the language alone would not prevent a people from 

 advancing to more generalized forms of thinking if the general state 

 of their culture should require expression of such thought; that under 

 these conditions the language would be moulded rather by the cultural 

 state. It does not seem likely, therefore, that there is any direct rela- 

 tion between the culture of a tribe and the language they speak, 

 except in so far as the form of the language will be moulded by the 

 state of culture, but not in so far as a certain state of culture is 

 conditioned by morphological traits of the language. 



Unconscious Character of Linguistic JPhenoinena 



Of greater positive importance is the question of the relation of the 

 unconscious character of linguistic phenomena to the more conscious 

 ethnological phenomena. It seems to my mind that this contrast is 

 only apparent, and that the very fact of the unconsciousness of lin- 

 guistic processes helps us to gain a clearer understanding of the ethno- 

 logical phenomena, a point the importance of which can not be under- 

 rated. It has been mentioned before that in all languages certain 

 classifications of concepts occur. To mention only a few: we find 

 objects classified according to sex, or as animate and inanimate, or 

 according to form. We find actions determined according to time 

 and place, etc. The behavior of primitive man makes it perfectly clear 

 that all these concepts, although they are in constant use, have never 

 risen into consciousness, and that consequently their origin must be 

 sought, not in rational, but in entirely unconscious, we may perhaps 

 say instinctive, processes of the mind . They must be due to a group- 

 ing of sense-impressions and of concepts which is not in any sense of 

 the term voluntary, but which develops from quite different psycholog- 

 ical causes. It would seem that the essential difference between lin- 

 guistic phenomena and other ethnological phenomena is, that the lin- 

 guistic classifications never rise into consciousness, while in other 

 ethnological phenomena, although the same unconscious origin pre- 

 vails, these often rise into consciousness, and thus give rise to secondary 

 reasoning and to re-interpretations. It would, for instance, seem 

 very plausible that the fundamental religious notions — like the idea of 

 the voluntary power of inanimate objects, or of the anthropomorphic 



