FEBRUARY 22, 1901.] 
ethical standards. It may be that their art 
is quite contrary to our artistic feeling. It 
may be that their ethical standards outrage 
our moral code. We must clearly distin- 
guish between the esthetic and ethical 
codes and the existence of an esthetic and 
ethical standard. 
Our brief consideration of the phenomena 
of abstraction, of inhibition 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 biological and psy- 
chological phenomena, we must assume that 
these functions 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 
bein comparison with ourselves, these facul- 
ties are highly developed. 
It is not impossible that the degree of 
development of these functions may differ 
somewhat among different types of man ; but 
Ido 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 compari- 
son of their languages, customs, and activi- 
ties 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 
reached from these considerations are 
therefore, on the whole, negative. We are 
not inclined to consider the mental organi- 
zation 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 
SCIENCE. 
285 
contents of the mind upon the formation of 
thoughts and actions. We will take these 
up in the same order in which we consid- 
ered the previous question. We will first 
direct our attention to the phenomena of 
perception. It has been observed by many 
travelers that the senses of primitive man 
are remarkably well trained, that he is an 
excellent observer. The adeptness of the 
experienced hunter, who finds the tracks of 
his game where the eye of a European 
would not see the faintest indication, is an 
instance of this kind. While the power of 
perception of primitive man is excellent, it 
would seem that his power of logical inter- 
pretation of perceptions is deficient. I 
think if can be shown that the reason for 
this fact is not founded on any fundamental 
peculiarity of the mind of primitive man, 
but lies, rather, in the character of 
the ideas with which the new perception 
associates itself. In our own community 
a mass of observations and of thoughts is 
transmitted to the child. ‘These thoughts 
are the result of careful observation and 
speculation of our present and of past gen- 
erations ; but they are transmitted to most 
individuals as traditional matter, much the 
same as folk-lore. The child associates 
new perceptions with this whole mass of 
traditional material, and interprets his ob- 
servations by its means. I believe itis a 
mistake to assume that the interpretation 
made by each civilized individual is a com- 
plete logical progess. We associate a phe- 
nomenon with a number of known facts, 
the interpretations of which are assumed 
as known, and we are satisfied with the re- 
duction of a new fact to these previously 
known facts. For instance, if the average 
individual hears of the explosion of a pre- 
viously unknown chemical, he is satisfied 
to reason that certain materials are known 
to have the property of exploding under 
proper conditions, and that consequently 
the unknown substance has the same qual- 
