260 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



known to us, it is still more difficult to estimate the psy- 

 chical capacity of whole nations or races : the judgment is, in 

 such cases, generally subjective. Individual nations occupy at 

 different periods, different scales of development ; and though 

 from the actual performances we may arrive at an estimation 

 of the faculties which produced them, they would seem to 

 vary at times. In addition to these difficulties, there is the 

 circumstance, that the external and internal causes, which in 

 one people effect the transition from a primitive to a civilized 

 state, are as much hidden from us as the causes which pre- 

 vented the development of another people and apparently 

 fixed it in the position which it once occupied. All this pro- 

 duces an inclination to cut the matter short, by assuming a 

 different endowment for individual races, an assumption ren- 

 dered probable by the description of the chief features of the 

 thoughtless Negro, the restless nomadic American, the cannibal 

 south-islander. The primitive man stands in such striking 

 contrast to the civilized man, that the latter in his vanity con- 

 siders the former as specifically different ; that he himself once 

 occupied a similar position, he does not seem to take into any 

 serious consideration . 



The reports we possess of the mental condition of uncultured 

 nations are numerous enough, but far from sufficient to enable 

 us to form a correct estimate of their inner life. Fragmentary 

 as these reports are, we derive from them no information as to 

 the mode of thinking and feeling peculiar to these nations, nor 

 as to the intellect manifested in many ways which, super- 

 ficially considered, appear frivolous or atrocious. Hence, re- 

 ligion, customs, and legends of such peoples, have hitherto 

 been treated as mere curiosities ; but no pains have been taken 

 to understand them so as to deduce from them proper infer- 

 ences with regard to psychical peculiarities, or a proper charac- 

 teristic of the uncivilized man. 



There is another circumstance which deserves notice, namely, 

 that hitherto the problem of unity of species has been almost 

 exclusively treated by naturalists, who considered the psycho- 

 logical side of the question either as foreign to the main sub- 

 ject, or as of secondary consideration. If the question was 



