380 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



in theoretical interests ; for these are only manifested in any 

 strength among civilized nations, and even among them it is 

 not so much the desire of knowledge, but the striving after 

 honour and power. Then comes the habit of mental exertion in 

 solving the questions conducive to the progress of knowledge. 

 There is no impulse among rude or primitive peoples to ob- 

 tain knowledge, which, according to Aristotle, is innate in 

 human nature. It is the practical wants and misery which 

 overcome the natural psychical indolence of man, and induce 

 him to overpower the natural forces. In the course of our in- 

 vestigation, we have had frequent occasion to insist upon this 

 point, and it has always been shown that in the primitive man 

 there is no tendency to progress. The modern idealistic 

 doctrine of the necessary development of the human mind out 

 of itself, is a fiction, which may natter man's vanity, but which 

 is contradicted by actual facts. There can be no doubt that it 

 is man's thought which produces and preserves civilization ; 

 this thought, however, does not originate by itself, nor does 

 it move by itself, nor is it the function of one mind, but is 

 the combined activity of all individuals living together, pro- 

 duced by surrounding media, and nourished and matured by 

 the historical events which befall them. 



We are far from pretending to have given a history of the de- 

 velopment of mankind from the primitive state to that of civiliza- 

 tion, or even a general outline of what may be termed the natural 

 history of human society. The attempt to solve this interest- 

 ing problem would only lead to the same result as obtained 

 by the so-called philosophy of history, namely, the establish- 

 ment of a model theory, which, considering the great variety 

 and manifold concatenation of the conditions on which the 

 civilization of nations depends, can have no claim to general 

 application. We have therefore confined ourselves to investi- 

 gating the general motives which lie at the foundation of, and 

 promote culture. Whether the result of such investigation, 

 for the elucidation of the psychological causal connexion as 

 regards civilization, be great or small, this much has been 



