Sex and Society by William I. Thomas

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In very low forms of life, as is well known, there is no development
of brain or special organs of sense; but the organism is pushed and
pulled about by light, heat, gravity, and acid and other chemical
forces, and is unable to decline to act on any stimulus reaching it.
It reacts in certain characteristic, habitual, and adequate ways,
because it responds uniformly to the same stimulation; but it has
no choice, and is controlled by the environment. The object of brain
development is to reverse these conditions and control the actions of
the organism, and of the outside world as well, from within. With the
development of the special organs of sense, memory, and consequent
ability to compare present experiences with past, with inhibition
or the ability to decline to act on a stimulus, and, finally, with
abstraction or the power of separating general from particular
aspects, we have a condition where the organism sits still, as it
were, and picks and chooses its reactions to the outer world; and, by
working in certain lines to the exclusion of others, it gains in its
turn control of the environment, and begins to reshape it.

All the higher animals possess in some degree the powers of memory,
judgment, and choice; but in man nature followed the plan of
developing enormously the memory, on which depend abstraction, or
the power of general ideas, and the reason. In order to secure this
result, the brain, or surface for recording experience, was developed
out of all proportion with the body. In the average European the brain
weighs about 1,360 grams, or 3 per cent. of the body weight, while
the average brain weight of some of the great anthropoid apes is only
about 360 grams, or, in the orangoutang, one-half of 1 per cent. of
the body weight. In point of fact, nature seems to have reached the
limit of her materials in creating the human species. The development
of hands freed from locomotion and a brain out of proportion to bodily
weight are _tours de force_, and, so to speak, an afterthought, which
put the heaviest strain possible on the materials employed, and even
diverted some organs from their original design. A number of ailments
like hernia, appendicitis, and uterine displacement, are due to the
fact that the erect posture assumed when the hands were diverted from
locomotion to prehensile uses put a strain not originally contemplated
on certain tissues and organs. Similarly, the proportion of idiocy and
insanity in the human species shows that nature had reached the limit
of elasticity in her materials and began to take great risks. The
brain is a delicate and elaborate organ on the structural side, and
in these cases it is not put together properly, or it gets hopelessly
out of order. This strain on the materials is evident in all races
and in both sexes, and indicates that the same general structural
ground-pattern has been followed in all members of the species.

Viewed from the standpoint of brain weight, all races are, broadly
speaking, in the same class. For while the relatively small series of
brains from the black race examined by anthropologists shows a slight
inferiority in weight--about 45 grams in negroes--when compared
with white brains, the yellow race shows more than a corresponding
superiority to the white; in the Chinese about 70 grams. There is
also apparently no superiority in brain weight in modern over ancient
times. The cranial capacity of Europeans between the eleventh and
eighteenth centuries, as shown by the cemeteries of Paris, is not
appreciably different from that of Frenchmen of today, and the
Egyptian mummies show larger cranial capacity than the modern
Egyptians. Furthermore, the limits of variation between individuals in
the same race are wider than the average difference between races.
In a series of 500 white brains, the lowest and highest brains will
differ, in fact, as much as 650 grams in weight.

There is also no ground for the assumption that the brain of woman
is inferior to that of man; for, while the average brain of woman is
smaller, the average body weight is also smaller, and it is open
to question whether the average brain weight of woman is smaller in
proportion to body weight.[257] The importance of brain weight in
relation to intelligence, moreover, has usually been much exaggerated
by anthropologists; for intelligence depends on the rapidity and range
of the acts of associative memory, and this in turn on the complexity
of the neural processes. Brains are, in fact, like timepieces in this
respect, that the small ones work "excellent well" if they are good
material and well put together. Although brains occasionally run above
2,000 grams in weight (that of the Russian novelist Turgenieff weighed
2,012), the brains of many eminent men are not distinguished for their
great size. That of the French statesman Gambetta weighed only 1,160
grams. It must be borne in mind also that there are many individuals
among the lower races and among women having brain weight much in
excess of that of that of the average male white.

Of all the possible ways of treating the brain for the purpose of
testing its intelligence, that of weighing is the least satisfactory,
and has been most indefatigably practiced. A better method, that of
counting the nerve cells, has been lately introduced, but to treat a
single brain in this way is a work of years, and no series of results
exists. In the meantime Miss Thompson, in co-operation with Professor
Angell, has completed a study of the mental traits of men and women
on what is perhaps the best available principle--that of a series
of laboratory tests which eliminate or take into consideration
differences due to the characteristic habits of the two sexes. Her
findings are probably the most important contribution in this field,
and her general conclusion on differences of sex will, I think, hold
also for differences of race:

The point to be emphasized as the outcome of this study
is that, according to our present light, the psychological
differences of sex seem to be largely due, not to difference
of average capacity, nor to difference in type of mental
activity, but to differences in the social influences brought
to bear on the developing individual from early infancy to
adult years. The question of the future development of the
intellectual life of women is one of social necessities and
ideals rather than of the inborn psychological characteristics
of sex.[258]

There is certainly great difference in the mental ability of
individuals, and there are probably less marked differences in the
average ability of different races; but difference in natural ability
is, in the main, a characteristic of the individual, not of race or
of sex. It is probable that brain efficiency (speaking from the
biological standpoint) has been, on the average, approximately the
same in all races and in both sexes since nature first made up a good
working-model, and that differences in intellectual expression are
mainly social rather than biological, dependent on the fact that
different stages of culture present different experiences to the
mind, and adventitious circumstances direct the attention to different
fields of interest.

II

In approaching the question of the parity or disparity of the mental
ability of the white and the lower races, we bring to it a fixed and
instinctive prejudice. No race views another race with that generosity
with which it views itself. It may even be said that the existence of
a social group depends on its taking an exaggerated view of its own
importance; and in a state of nature, at least, the same is true of
the individual. If self-preservation is the first law of nature, there
must be on the mental side an acute consciousness of self, and a habit
of regarding the self as of more importance than the world at large.
The value of this standpoint lies in the fact that, while a wholesome
fear of the enemy is important, a wholesome contempt is even more so.
Praising one's self and dispraising an antagonist creates a confidence
and a mental superiority in the way of confidence. The vituperative
recriminations of modern prize-fighters, the boastings of the Homeric
heroes, and the _bogan_ of the old Germans, like the back-talk of the
small boy, were calculated to screw the courage up; and the Indians of
America usually gave a dance before going on the war-path, in which
by pantomime and boasting they magnified themselves and their past,
and so stimulated their self-esteem that they felt invincible. In
race-prejudice we see the same tendency to exalt the self and the
group at the expense of outsiders. The alien group is belittled by
attaching contempt to its peculiarities and habits--its color, speech,
dress, and all the signs of its personality. This is not a laudable
attitude, but it has been valuable to the group, because a bitter and
contemptuous feeling is an aid to good fighting.

No race or nation has yet freed itself from this tendency to exalt
and idealize itself. It is very difficult for a member of western
civilization to understand that the orientals regard us with a
contempt in comparison with which our contempt for them is feeble. Our
bloodiness, our newness, our lack of reverence, our land-greed, our
break-neck speed and lack of appreciation of leisure make Vandals
of us. On the other hand, we are very stupid about recognizing the
intelligence of orientals. We have been accustomed to think that there
is a great gulf between ourselves and other races; and this persists
in an undefinable way after scores of Japanese have taken high rank in
our schools, and after Hindus have repeatedly been among the wranglers
in mathematics at Cambridge. It is only when one of the far eastern
nations has come bodily to the front that we begin to ask ourselves
whether there is not an error in our reckoning.

The instinct to belittle outsiders is perhaps at the bottom of our
delusion that the white race has one order of mind and the black
and yellow races have another. But, while a prejudice--a matter of
instinct and emotion--may well be at the beginning of an error of this
kind, it could not sustain itself in the face of our logical habits
unless reinforced by an error of the judgment. And this error is found
in the fact that in a naive way we assume that our steps in progress
from time to time are due to our mental superiority as a race over
other races, and to the mental superiority of one generation of
ourselves over the preceding.

In this we are confusing advance in culture with brain improvement. If
we should assume a certain grade of intelligence, fixed and invariable
in all individuals, races, and times--an unwarranted assumption,
of course--progress would still be possible, provided we assumed a
characteristically human grade of intelligence to begin with. With
associative memory, abstraction, and speech men are able to compare
the present with the past, to deliberate and discuss, to invent, to
abandon old processes for new, to focus attention on special problems,
to encourage specialization, and to transmit to the younger generation
a more intelligent standpoint and a more advanced starting-point.
Culture is the accumulation of the results of activity, and culture
could go on improving for a certain time even if there were a
retrogression in intelligence. If all the chemists in class A
should stop work tomorrow, the chemists in class B would still make
discoveries. These would influence manufacture, and progress would
result. If a worker in any specialty acquaints himself with the
results of his predecessors and contemporaries and _works_, he will
add some results to the sum of knowledge in his line. And if a race
preserves by record or tradition the memory of what past generations
have done, and adds a little, progress is secured whether the brain
improves or stands still. In the same way, the fact that one race has
advanced farther in culture than another does not necessarily imply a
different order of brain, but may be due to the fact that in the one
case social arrangements have not taken the shape affording the most
favorable conditions for the operation of the mind.

If, then, we make due allowance for our instinctive tendency as a
white group to disparage outsiders, and, on the other hand, for our
tendency to confuse progress in culture and general intelligence with
biological modification of the brain, we shall have to reduce very
much our usual estimate of the difference in mental capacity between
ourselves and the lower races, if we do not eliminate it altogether;
and we shall perhaps have to abandon altogether the view that there
has been an increase in the mental capacity of the white race since
prehistoric times.

The first question arising in this connection is whether any of
the characteristic faculties of the human mind--perception, memory,
inhibition, abstraction--are absent or noticeably weak in the lower
races. If this is found to be true, we have reason to attribute the
superiority of the white race to biological causes; otherwise we
shall have to seek an explanation of white superiority in causes lying
outside the brain.

In examining this question we need not dwell on the acuteness of the
sense-perceptions, because these are not distinctively human. As a
matter of fact, they are usually better developed in animals and in
the lower races than in the civilized, because the lower mental life
is more perceptive than ratiocinative. The memory of the lower races
is also apparently quite as good as that of the higher. The memory of
the Australian native or the Eskimo is quite as good as that of our
"oldest inhabitant;" and probably no one would claim that the modern
scientist has a better memory than the bard of the Homeric period.

There is, however, a prevalent view, for the popularization of which
Herbert Spencer is largely responsible, that primitive man has feeble
powers of inhibition. Like the equally erroneous view that early
man is a free and unfettered creature, it arises from our habit of
assuming that, because his inhibitions and unfreedom do not correspond
with our own restraints, they do not exist. Sir John Lubbock pointed
out long ago that the savage is hedged about by conventions so minute
and so mandatory that he is actually the least free person in the
world. But, in spite of this, Spencer and others have insisted that
he is incapable of self-restraint, is carried away like a child by
the impulse of the moment, and is incapable of rejecting an immediate
gratification for a greater future one. Cases like the one mentioned
by Darwin of the Fuegian who struck and killed his little son when
the latter dropped a basket of fish into the water are cited without
regard to the fact that cases of sudden domestic violence and quick
repentance are common in any city today; and the failure of the
Australian blacks to throw back the small fry when seining is referred
to without pausing to consider that our practice of exterminating
game and denuding our forests shows an amazing lack of individual
self-restraint.

The truth is that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely
on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and, if we have
this in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of
inhibition. It is doubtful if modern society affords anything more
striking in the way of inhibition than is found in connection with
taboo, fetish, totemism, and ceremonial among the lower races. In the
great majority of the American Indian and Australian tribes a man
is strictly forbidden to kill or eat the animals whose name his clan
bears as a totem. The central Australian may not, in addition, eat
the flesh of any animal killed or even touched by persons standing
in certain relations of kinship to him. At certain times also he is
forbidden to eat the flesh of a number of animals and at all times he
must share all food secured with the tribal elders and some others.

A native of Queensland will put his mark on an unripe zamia fruit, and
may be sure that it will be untouched and that when it is ripe he has
only to go and get it. The Eskimos, though starving, will not molest
the sacred seal basking before their huts. Similarly in social
intercourse the inhibitions are numerous. To some of his sisters,
blood and tribal, the Australian may not speak at all; to others only
at certain distances, according to the degree of kinship. The west
African fetish acts as a police, and property protected by it is safer
than under civilized laws. Food and palm wine are placed beside the
path with a piece of fetish suspended near by, and no one will touch
them without leaving the proper payment. The garden of a native may be
a mile from the house, unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by
the owner; but it is immune from depredations if protected by fetish.
Our proverb says, "A hungry belly has no ears," and it must be
admitted that the inhibition of food impulses implies no small power
of restraint.

Altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign of
mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species.
The well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing
stimulations of the kitchen. And it is also true that one race, at
least--the American Indian--makes inhibition of the most conspicuous
feature in its system of education. From the time the ice is broken to
give him a cold plunge and begin the toughening process on the day of
his birth, until he dies with out a groan under torture the Indian
is schooled in the restraint of his impulses. He does not, indeed,
practice our identical restraints, because his traditions and the run
of his attention are different; but he has a capacity for controlling
impulse equal to our own.

Another serious charge against the intelligence of the lower races is
lack of the power of abstraction. They certainly do not deal largely
in abstraction, and their languages are poor in abstract terms. But
there is a great difference between the habit of thinking in abstract
terms and the ability to do so.

The degree to which abstraction is employed in the activities of
a group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the
complexity of consciousness in the group. When science, philosophy,
and logic, and systems of reckoning time, space, and number are
taught in the schools; when the attention is not so much engaged in
perceptual as in deliberate acts; and when thought is a profession,
then abstract modes of thought are forced on the mind. This does not
argue absence of the power of abstraction in the lower races, or even
a low grade of ability, but lack of practice. To one skilled in any
line an unpracticed person seems very stupid; and this is apparently
the reason why travelers report that the black and yellow races have
feeble powers of abstraction. It is generally admitted, however, that
the use of speech involves the power of abstraction, so that all races
have the power in some degree. When we come further to examine the
degree in which they possess it, we find that they compare favorably
with ourselves in any test which involves a fair comparison.

The proverb is a form of abstraction practiced by all races, and
is perhaps the best test of the natural bent of the mind in this
direction, because, like ballad poetry, and slang, proverbial sayings
do not originate with the educated class, but are of popular origin.
At the same time, proverbs compare favorably with the _mots_ of
literature, and many proverbs have, in fact, drifted into literature
and become connected with the names of great writers. Indeed, the
saying that there is nothing new under the sun applies with such force
and fidelity to literature that, if we should strip Hesiod and Homer
and Chaucer of such phrases as "The half is greater than the whole,"
"It is a wise son that knows his own father" (which Shakespeare quotes
the other end about), and "To make a virtue of necessity," and if we
should further eliminate from literature the motives and sentiments
also in ballad poetry and in popular thought, little would remain but
form.

If we assume, then, that the popular mind--let us say the peasant
mind--in the white race is as capable of abstraction as the mind of
the higher classes, but not so specialized in this direction--and
no one can doubt this in view of the academic record of country-bred
boys--the following comparison of our proverbs with those of the
Africans of the Guinea coast (the latter reported by the late Sir A.B.
Ellis[259]) is significant:

_African._ Stone in the water-hole does not feel the cold.
_English._ Habit is second nature.

_A._ One tree does not make a forest.
_E._ One swallow does not make a summer.

_A._ "I nearly killed the bird." No one can eat nearly in a stew.
_E._ First catch your hare.

_A._ Full-belly child says to hungry-belly child, "Keep good cheer."
_E._ We can all endure the misfortunes of others.

_A._ Distant firewood is good firewood.
_E._ Distance lends enchantment to the view.

_A._ Ashes fly back in the face of him who throws them.
_E._ Curses come home to roost.

_A._ If the boy says he wants to tie the water with a string, ask
him whether he means the water in the pot or the water in
the lagoon.
_E._ Answer a fool according to his folly.

_A._ Cowries are men.
_E._ Money makes the man.

_A._ Cocoanut is not good for bird to eat.
_E._ Sour grapes.

_A._ He runs away from the sword and hides himself in the scabbard.
_E._ Out of the frying-pan into the fire.

_A._ A fool of Ika and an idiot of Iluka meet together to make
friends.
_E._ Birds of a feather flock together.

_A._ The ground-pig [bandicoot] said: "I do not feel so angry with
the man who killed me as with the man who dashed me on the
ground afterward."
_E._ Adding insult to injury.

_A._ Quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman.
_E._ Married in haste we repent at leisure.

_A._ Three elders cannot all fail to pronounce the word _ekulu_
[an antelope]: one may say _ekulu_, another _ekulu_, but
the third will say _ekulu_.
_E._ In a multitude of counselors there is safety.

_A._ If the stomach is not strong, do not eat cockroaches.
_E._ Milk for babes.

_A._ No one should draw water from the spring in order to supply
the river.
_E._ Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

_A._ The elephant makes a dust and the buffalo makes a dust, but
the dust of the buffalo is lost in the dust of the
elephant.
_E._ _Duo cum faciunt idem non est idem._

_A._ Ear, hear the other before you decide.
_E._ _Audi alteram partem._

On the side of number we have another test of the power of
abstraction; and while the lower races show lack of practice in this,
they show no lack of power. It is true that tribes have been found
with no names for numbers beyond two, three, or five; but these are
isolated groups, like the Veddahs and Bushmen, who have no trade or
commerce, and lead a miserable existence, with little or nothing to
count. The directions of attention and the simplicity or complexity
of mental processes depend on the character of the external situation
which the mind has to manipulate. If the activities are simple, the
mind is simple, and if the activities were nil, the mind would be nil.
The mind is nothing but a means of manipulating the outside world.
Number, time, and space conceptions and systems become more complex
and accurate, not as the human mind grows in capacity, but as
activities become more varied and call for more extended and accurate
systems of notation and measurement. Trade and commerce, machinery
and manufacture, and all the processes of civilization involve
specialization in the apprehension of series as such. Under these
conditions the number technique becomes elaborate and requires time
and instruction for its mastery. The advance which mathematics has
made within a brief historical time is strikingly illustrated by the
words with which the celebrated mathematician, Sir Henry Savile, who
died in 1662, closed his career as a professor at Oxford:

By the grace of God, gentlemen hearers, I have performed
my promise. I have redeemed my pledge. I have explained,
according to my ability, the definitions, postulates, axioms,
and the first eight propositions of the _Elements_ of Euclid.
Here, sinking under the weight of years, I lay down my art and
my instruments.[260]

From the standpoint of modern mathematics, Sir Henry Savile and the
Bushman are both woefully backward; and in both cases the backwardness
is not a matter of mental incapacity, but of the state of the science.

In respect, then, to brain structure and the more important mental
faculties we find that no race is radically unlike the others. Still,
it might happen that the mental activities and products of two groups
were so different as to place them in different classes. But precisely
the contrary is true. There is in force a principle called the law of
parallelism in development, according to which any group takes much
the same steps in development as any other. The group may be belated,
indeed, and not reach certain stages, but the ground patterns of
life are the same in the lower races and in the higher. Mechanical
inventions, textile industries, rude painting, poetry, sculpture, and
song, marriage and family life, organization under leaders, belief
in spirits, a mythology, and some form of church and state exist
universally. At one time students of mankind, when they found a myth
in Hawaii corresponding to the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, or
an Aztec poem of tender longing in absence, or a story of the deluge,
were wont to conjecture how these could have been carried over from
Greek or Elizabethan or Hebraic sources, or whether they did not
afford evidence of a time when all branches of the human race dwelt
together with a common fund of sentiment and tradition. But this
standpoint has been abandoned, and it is recognized that the human
mind and the outside world are essentially alike the world over; that
the mind everywhere acts on the same principles; and that, ignoring
the local, incidental, and eccentric, we find similar laws of growth
among all peoples.

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