The Basis of Social Relations: a Study in Ethnic Psychology

CHAPTER I. _the Unity of the Human Mind_

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN MIND

In a treatise on psychology we have to do with the Mind; and what is Mind? So far as we can define it, it is the sum of those activities which distinguish living from dead matter, the organism from the inorganic mass.

So broad a definition would include both the vegetable and the animal worlds; and this is not an error; but for the present purpose, which is the consideration of the mind of man, it is enough if we recognise that this mind of his is a development of that of the brute; the same in most of its traits, contrasted to it in a few. It is profitable, in truth indispensable, to scrutinise both closely.

Identities and Differences of the Human and the Brute Mind.—There is a branch of science called “comparative psychology.” Its province is to trace the evolution of human mental powers to their earlier phases in the inferior animals. So successfully has it been pursued that not a few of its teachers claim that there is nothing left as the private property of man in this connection; that he has no powers or faculties which are peculiarly his own; that all his endowments differ in degree only from those evinced by some one or other of the lower species.

The brute has his fine senses, as acute as, often acuter than, ours; no one can deny him emotions of love and fear, hate and affection, sorrow and joy, as poignant as ours, and often expressed in strangely similar modes; his memory is retentive, his will strong, his self-control remarkable; he has a lively curiosity, a love of imitation, a sense of the beautiful, and it is acknowledged that we cannot deny him either imagination or reason. Mental progress is not unknown in the brute, and it is well to remember that it is not universal among men.

What, then, is man’s proud prerogative? What the gift which has given him the world and all that therein is? The answer is in one word,—ideation. The last efforts of modern science can but paraphrase the words which the philosopher Locke penned nigh two centuries ago: “The having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction between man and brute.” The latest American writer on the subject merely repeats this when he phrases it “the ability to think in general terms by using symbols (words) which summarise systems of association.”

Let us avoid the metaphysical snares which have been spread around this simple statement. No matter about such words as “concepts,” “notions,” “apperceptions,” “abstractions,” and the like. Let us fix in mind the formula of Romanes: “Distinctively human faculty belongs with distinctively human ideation.” This, the power to form general ideas,—which are necessarily abstract,—is the one prerogative which lifts man above brute. By it he can compare what he learns and thus develop an intellectual life for comparison; to borrow the metaphor of a famous student of his kind, it is the magic wand, the diamond-hilted sword, by which man will conquer his salvation through learning the truth. We exclaim, with Pascal, “It is Thought which makes Man.”

Outside of this and its developments, all that man has of soul-life is in common with the brute. Why should he be ashamed of it? What folly to pretend, as the common phrase goes, to “get rid of the brute in man”! Parental love, social instincts, fidelity, friendship, courage,—these are parts of his heritage from his four-footed ancestor. What would he become, dispossessed of them?

Already, in that long alienation from his brethren which made man the one species of his genus and the one genus of his class, has he lost certain strange powers of mind which excite our special wonder when we see their manifestations in his remote relations. The chief of these is Instinct. We are all familiar with its extraordinary exhibitions in bees, ants, and higher animals, and its seeming total absence in ourselves. What can we make of it?

Instinct and Intelligence.—Throughout all nature there is an unceasing eternal conflict between the old and the new, between motion and rest, between the fixed and the variable, between the individual and the universe. This cosmic contest is reflected within the realm of animal life in the contrast between Instinct and Intelligence.

Instinct is hereditary; it belongs to the species; its performance is unconscious, resulting from internal impulse; its tendency is endless repetition, not improvement; it is petrified, inherited habit. Intelligence belongs to the individual; it is neither inherited nor transmissible by blood; its tendency is toward advancement, progress. It is the source of all knowledge not purely empirical, and of all development not of chance.

Habits which are forced upon organisms by the environment under penalty of extinction become hereditary modes of procedure. They are persisted in because vitally beneficial. Comparative anatomy shows us that those organs and structures which are most persistent have their functions most instinctive; and conversely, as individual freedom of action increases, instinct retires and intelligence takes its place, accompanied by higher plasticity in the structures involved in the action.

Intelligent action is personal initiative from compared experiences. It is not merely repetition, as in the tricks of animals, but deduction; therefore it introduces new tendencies into life, which instinct never does; and these tendencies are not the direct sequences of external stimuli, as are instincts, but are psychic in origin, proceeding from the mental conclusion reached.

No more interesting comparison between instinct and intelligence can be found than that offered by the social communities of the lower animals,—the bees, ants, beavers, and the like. Their well-regulated activities excite our surprise and admiration. Each member of the little state has his duty and performs it, with the result that all are thereby benefited and the species successfully perpetuated.

But much of the admiration expended on these societies in the lower life has been misplaced. Their perfect organisation is due to narrower development of mental powers. The one object at which they aim is species-continuation, and to this all else is subordinated. They are in no sense comparable to the reflective purpose which is at the base of human society, whose real, though oft unacknowledged, and ever unsuccessful, aim is to insure to each individual the full development of his various powers. Hence it is that human society is and must be ever changing with individual aspirations, and can never be iron-bound in one form.

Imagination.—There is another faculty of mind, which, if not exclusively human, is so in all its higher manifestations, and indeed is, in its development, perhaps the best mental criterion we could select to measure the evolution of races, nations, and individuals. I refer to Imagination, Fancy, the source of our noblest enthusiasms, of our loftiest sentiments, of poetic rapture, and artistic inspiration. These spiritual sentiments are wholly absent in the brute, and are rare in inferior personalities. They arise from the vivid presentation to the mind of real or fancied experiences directed to some end in view. But this is just the definition of active imagination. It is a rehearsal of our perceptions, real, or those analogous to reality. Though not a collation of ideas, its processes are closely akin to those of logical thought; and, as an eminent analyst says, “The principle of an organic division according to an end in view governs all processes of active imagination.”

In this phrase we see why imagination ranks as a criterion of mental development. Ruled chiefly by unconscious instinct the brute has no other aims than to feed and sleep and reproduce his kind; men of low degree add to these, perhaps, the lust of power or of gold or of amusement, or other such vain and paltry ambitions; but the soul that seeks the highest has aims beyond all fulfilment, but which by their glory stimulate its activities to the utmost and lift it into a life above all mundane satisfactions.

The Ideal.—By the plastic power of the active imagination is formed the Ideal, the most potent of all the stimulants of the higher culture. Based on reality and experience, it transcends the possibilities of both, and lifts the soul into realms whose light is not on sea or land, and whose activities aim at results beyond any present power of human nature to achieve. But it is only by striving for that which is beyond reach that the utmost effort possible can be called forth.

The ideal, some ideal, is present in every human heart. It is the goal toward which each strives in seeking pleasure and in avoiding pain. Through the unity of the human mind, the same ideals, few in number, have directed the energies of men in all times and climes. Around them have concentrated the labours of nations, and as one or the other became more prominent, national character partook of its inspiration, and national history fell under its sway. Constantly in the history of culture do we see such general devotion to an ideal lead groups toward or away from the avenue to progress and vitality.

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