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The psychical attitudes and traits of the savage are more than stages through which mind has passed, leaving them behind. They are outgrowths which have entered decisively into further evolution, and as such form an integral part of the framework of present mental organization. Such positive significance is commonly attributed, in theory at least, to animal mind; but the mental structure of the savage, which presumably has an even greater relevancy for genetic psychology, is strangely neglected. The cause of this neglect I believe lies in the scant results so far secured, because of the abuse of the comparative method-which abuse in turn is due to the lack of a proper method of interpretation. Comparison as currently employed is defective-even perversein at least three respects. In the first place, it is used indiscriminately and arbitrarily. Facts are torn loose from their context in social and natural environment and heaped miscellaneously together, because they have impressed the observer as alike in some respect. Upon a single page of Spencer,l which I chanced to open in looking for an illustration of this point, appear Kamschadales, Kirghiz, Bedouins , East Africans, Bechuanas, Damaras, Hottentots , Malays, Papuans, Fijians, Andamanese -all cited in reference to establishing a certain common property of primitive minds. What would we think of a biologist who appealed successively to some external characteristic of say snake, butterfly, elephant, oyster and robin in support of a statement? And yet the peoples mentioned present widely remote cultural resources, varied environments and distinctive institutions. What is the scientific value of a proposition thus arrived at? In the second place, this haphazard, uncontrollable selection yields only static factsfacts which lack the dynamic quality necessary to a genetic consideration. The following is a summary of Mr. Spencer's characterizations of primitive man, emotional and intellectual: He is explosive and chaotic in feeling, improvident , childishly mirthful, intolerant of restraint, with but small flow of altruistic feeling ,2 attentive to meaningless detail and incapable of selecting the facts from which conclusions may be drawn, with feeble grasp of Interpretation of Savage Mind (1902) II thought, incapable of rational surprise, incurious , lacking in ingenuity and constructive imagination? Even the one quality which is stated positively; namely, keenness of perception , is interpreted in a purely negative way, as a character antagonistic to reflective development . "In proportion as the mental energies go out in restless perception, they cannot go out in deliberate thought."4And this from asensationalist in psychology! Such descriptions as these also bear out my first point. Mr. Spencer himself admits frequent and marked discrepancies (e.g., Sociology , I, 56, 59,62,65, etc.), and it would not be difficult to bring together a considerable mass of proof-texts to support the exact opposite of each of his assertions. But my point here is that present civilized mind is virtually taken as a standard, and savage mind is measured off on this fixed scale. It is no wonder that the outcome is negative ; that primitive mind is described in terms of "lack," "absence": its traits are incapacities. Qualities defined in such fashion are surely useless in suggesting, to say nothing of determining , progress, and are correspondingly infertile for genetic psychology, which is interested in becoming, growth, development. The third remark is that the results thus reached, even passing them as correct, yield only loose aggregates of unrelated traits-not a coherent scheme of mind. We do not escape from an inorganic conglomerate conception of mind by just abusing the "faculty" psychology Our standpoint must be more positive. We must recognize that mind has a pattern, a scheme of arrangement in its constituent elements , and that it is the business of a serious comparative psychology to exhibit these patterns , forms or types in detail. By such terms, I do not mean anything metaphysical; I mean to indicate the necessity of a conception such as is a commonplace with the zoologist. Terms like articulate or vertebrate, carnivor or herbivor, are "pattern" terms of the sort intended . They imply that an animal is something more than a random composite of isolated parts, made by taking an eye here, an ear there, a set of teeth somevvhere else. They signify that the constituent elements are arranged in a certain way; that in being co12 adapted to the dominant functions of the organism they are of necessity co-related with one another. Genetic psychology of mind will advance only as it discovers and specifies generic forms or patterns of this sort in...

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