The basis of social relations : a study in ethnic psychology / by Daniel G. Brinton ; edited by Livingston Farrand.

  • Daniel Garrison Brinton
Date:
1902
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The basis of social relations : a study in ethnic psychology / by Daniel G. Brinton ; edited by Livingston Farrand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    psychology is already mainly occupied by general ethnology, or else by the philosophy of history. Yet he did not deny that in a sphere strictly limited to the subjects of language, custom, and myth such a “ discipline ” might do useful work. In his later writings, however, Wundt seems to have modified these strictures, and in the last edition of his excellent text-book acknowledges that there is no antagonism between experimental and ethnic psycho¬ logy, as has been sometimes supposed ; that they do not occupy different, but parts of the same fields, and are distinguished mainly by difference of method, the one resting on experiment, the other on observ¬ ation. The recognition of ethnic psychology by pro¬ fessed psychologists is, therefore, an accomplished fact; and this was long since anticipated by the gen¬ eral literature of history and ethnography. Who, for instance, has denied that there is such a thing as “ racial” or “ national ” character ? Did any¬ one take it into his head to denounce as meaningless Emerson’s title, English Traits ? Does not every treatise on ethnography assume that there are certain psychical characteristics of races, tribes, and peoples, quite sharply dividing them from their neighbours ? Take, for instance, Letourneau’s popular work, and we find him expressly claiming that the races and