Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane.

  • Augustus Henry Keane
Date:
1896
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ethnology : in two parts, I. Fundamental ethnical problems. II. The primary ethnical groups / by A.H. Keane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    improve is practically uncircumscribed, and in this direction a corresponding expansion of the mental faculties may be hoped for'. Ethnology properly understood affords no ground for the current pessimism, the disease of the age. By improved social institutions, more rapid progress may be made towards the ideal standard expressed by the formula, mens sana in corpore sano. Unless we take our stand on this firm ground of the simul- taneous upward growth of organ and function, gr?e^iy from ^^^^^'^ ^^^t guarantee of further upward growth, those of the we fall back either with Romanes on mysticism lower orders. / n ^ 7 {Metital Evolution in Man), or with Mivart on supernatural intervention at the psychological moment (^Origin of Human Reason). Separate brain from cerebration, and we are lost in the a priori reasonings of Noire' and Max Miiller, ulti- mately rooted in the Kantian philosophy. The difficulties that all these evolutionists, and quasi-evolutionists, conjure up and leave unsolved, arise from the radical mistake of comparing the mind in its highest evolved state with that of the brute order, where the gap is so vast as to seem impassable without the extraneous aid of the supernatural or of metaphysics. They find in man, not merely sensation and receptivity, with perhaps a modicum of consciousness as in the brute, but true self-consciousness, which enables a mind not only to know, but to know that it knows ; not only to receive knowledge, but also to conceive it...; not only to state a ti'uth, but also to state the truth as true (Romanes, p. 192). But in point of fact in the Fuegian, Tasmanian or Negrito mind there are the merest glimmerings of con- Time alone sciousncss, and of self-consciousness next to nothing, bridge the gap. The Fucgian self-consciousness, for instance, may be gauged by the Fuegiap conscience, which in stormy weather flings wife and children overboard, to lighten the overladen craft of so much freight, not, as has been said, to propitiate gods (or demons) of whom it knows nothing*. These ^ Topinard, UHomme dans la Nature. Chap. xxil. 2 Lovisato, who has made a careful and most sympathetic study of these aborigines, denies them retentive memory, and compares their intelligence to the stationary instincts of animals: I Fueghini hanno poca intelligenza, pochissima memoria, nessuna ritentiva. La loro abilita [mental capacity] puo essere per alcuni rispetti comparata agli istinti degli animali, perche non e
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