With the beginning of the European war the word ‘culture’ acquired a sense in popular English usage which had long prevailed in ethnological literature. Culture is, indeed, the sole and exclusive subject-matter of ethnology, as consciousness is the subject-matter of psychology, life of biology, electricity of a branch of physics. Culture shares with these other fundamental concepts the peculiarity that it can be properly understood only by an enlarged familiarity with the facts it summarizes. There is no royal shortcut to a comprehension of culture as a whole by definition any more than to a comprehension of consciousness; but as every analysis and explanation of particular conscious states adds to our knowledge of what consciousness is, so every explanation of particular cultural phenomena adds to our insight into the nature of culture. We must, however, start with some proximate notion of what we are to discuss, and for this purpose Tylor’s definition in the opening sentence of his Primitive Culture will do as well as any: “Culture ... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

For purely practical reasons, connected with the minute division of labor that has become imperative with modern specialization, ethnology has in practice concerned itself with the cruder cultures of peoples without a knowledge of writing. But this division is an illogical and artificial one. As the biologist can study life as manifested in the human organism as well as in the amoeba, so the ethnologist might examine and describe the usages of modern America as well as those of the Hopi Indians. In these lectures I shall therefore not hesitate to draw upon illustrations from the higher civilizations where these seem most appropriate.

Indeed, it may be best for pedagogical reasons to commence with an enumeration of instances of cultural activity in our own midst. And since there is a persistent tendency to associate with culture the more impressive phenomena of art, science, and technology, it is well to insist at the outset that these loftier phases are by no means necessary to the concept of culture. The fact that your boy plays ‘button, button, who has the button?’ is just as much an element of our culture as the fact that a room is lighted by electricity. So is the baseball enthusiasm of our grown-up population, so are moving picture shows, thÉs dansants, Thanksgiving Day masquerades, bar-rooms, Ziegfeld Midnight Follies, evening schools, the Hearst papers, woman suffrage clubs, the single-tax movement, Riker drug stores, touring-sedans, and Tammany Hall.

These, then, represent the type of phenomena comprised under the caption of culture. They exist, and science, as a complete view of reality, cannot ignore them. But a question ominous for the worker who derives his bread and butter from ethnological investigation arises. All the phenomena mentioned and the rest of the same order relate to man, and they relate to man not as an animal but as an organism endowed with a higher mentality. Tylor’s definition expressly speaks of ‘capabilities and habits’. But there is a science that deals with capabilities and habits, to wit, psychology. Is it, then, necessary to have a distinct branch of knowledge, or can we not simply merge the cultural phenomena in those of the older science of psychology? It is this question that concerns us here. On the answer must depend our conception of culture and our attitude towards a science purporting to deal with cultural phenomena as something distinct from other data of reality.

In seeking light on this subject we must understand what sort of problems arise from the contemplation of cultural facts and attempt to connect them with the established principles of psychology. A few concrete examples will illustrate the situation.

One of the striking characteristics of our civilization, a trait of our material culture that is nevertheless an invaluable, nay indispensable, means for the propagation of knowledge under modern conditions, is the existence of paper, that is, of a cheap, readily manufactured material for writing and printing. The obvious problem that develops from this fact is, How did we get the art of paper-manufacture? Now we shall search in vain our psychological literature in quest of an explanation. HÖffding and James, Wundt and Titchener have no answer to offer. An answer, nevertheless, exists. Europe learnt the art of paper-making from the Arabs, who as early as 795 A. D. had established a paper factory in Bagdad. These in turn got their knowledge from the Chinese, who must be regarded as the originators of the technique. The answer is a perfectly satisfactory one, but it is obviously not couched in psychological terms: its nature is purely historical.

Nevertheless, an objection may plausibly be raised here. Though an explanation has certainly been given, it does not account for all aspects of the phenomena we are considering. There is a psychological basis for each and every one of the events in our historical series. This series we may subdivide into three stages—the invention by the Chinese, the borrowing of this invention by the Arabs, and its transmission from Arab to European. Now the two last-named processes of transmission may not suggest the necessity of a special explanation at all. One may think that all that was required was for the Europeans to watch the Arabs and for the Arabs to watch the Chinese, and presto! the thing was done. This indeed, seems to be the view of an influential school of modern ethnologists. But the case is far from being so simple. We know of many instances, in the higher no less than in the lower cultures, corresponding to what the biologist calls symbiosis—a condition where distinct communities or countries persist in a division of labor for mutual benefit, each trading some of its intellectual or material products for equivalents secured from the other. In many parts of Africa there are fixed markets in which negroes from fairly remote localities congregate for the barter of wares, which are thus diffused far from their source of origin; but it is the finished products, not the arts, that are diffused. In New Guinea trading-vessels carry such objects as pottery hundreds of miles from the area of manufacture to natives who remain as ignorant of the ceramic technique as before. In northern Arizona the Hopi Indians occupying three eminences not more than eight miles distant from one another have no perfect uniformity of industrial knowledge. Pottery, which flourishes on the eastern Mesa, is wholly unknown as an art, though constantly used in its specimens, by the people of the central Mesa; a certain type of basketry plaque is made only at Oraibi village; another type is manufactured exclusively on the central Mesa. Conditions more ideal a priori for a transfer of knowledge than among the practically homogeneous neighboring Hopi groups could not be conceived. Nevertheless, it has not taken place. Cultural diffusion, therefore, cannot be taken for granted. We cannot take one people, place it alongside of another, and effect a cultural osmosis in the same way in which we produce a chemical reaction when two substances are brought together under proper conditions of temperature. We are face to face with a selective, with a psychological condition. But when we turn once more to our text-books of psychology, we again find nothing that fits the case. About choice in general we get ample information. But we may rummage all the psychological seminar rooms in the world and yet shall find no reason why the Arabs learned the technique of paper-making from the Chinese instead of ignoring it or only importing Chinese paper.

Nor are we more fortunate when we turn to psychology for an account of how the original Chinese inventor came to conceive his epoch-making idea. This fact, of course, falls under the heading of ‘imagination’, and about imagination psychologists have much to tell us. But what, after all, does their interpretation amount to? We learn that imagination, as distinguished from the power of abstract thought, is the power of forming new concrete ideas. Since even the concrete individual idea is complex, being a product of association, its elements may be linked differently so as to produce new combinations. “The inventor of a new mechanism,” says HÖffding, “combines given elements, the laws of whose activity he knows, into a totality and a connection which has no complete parallel in experience.” The scientist tries all possible combinations among his elements of experiences, forming a succession of individual ideas, which are rejected until the one appears that adequately represents reality.

We need hardly go farther to realize the impotence of psychological science for illuminating the psychology as well as the history of the paper-making art. The formulation of psychological science is admirable, but it is too general. It explains the invention of the steam-engine and the phonograph, the sewing-machine and the harvester no less than the origin of paper-making. We, however, do not want to know merely what ultimate psychological processes the invention of paper-making shares with all other inventions whatsoever, but also the differential conditions that produced this one and unique result under the given circumstances. It is as though we asked about a man’s character and were told that he was a vertebrate. The type of psychological explanation we want is by no means unknown; however, we shall find its illustrations not in text-books of psychology, but in histories of literature, science, and art. When Taine raises the question how such a bore as Dr. Samuel Johnson could conceivably have attained his position in English literature and answers that it is because of the English predilection for sermons, he is giving the type of solution—whether right or wrong—that we want to secure for our cultural problem; it explains why the average Englishman, as a member of English society, acquires the habit of regarding Johnson in a certain way. When we inquire why Newton closes his treatise on optics with a statement as to the vanity of human things, our curiosity is satisfied when this expression appears as only one instance of the blending of theological and scientific thought current in his day. It is nonsense to say that these explanations are purely historical; they are psychological, for they take fully into account the subjective attitudes involved in the phenomena studied; and it is hopeless to expect this sort of explanation from psychological science, which deals with a quite distinct and far more generalized form of mental activity.

To turn from the technique of paper manufacture to a very different cultural feature in order to test the possibility of merging the observed phenomena in the principles of psychology. In several parts of the globe, and most prominently in parts of South America, the aborigines practise a custom known as the ‘couvade’, which forces the father of a new-born child to subject himself to a period of inactive confinement and a series of rigorously observed dietary and other regulations. Let us, for the sake of bringing out the point in high relief, ignore all historical considerations and concentrate exclusively on the subjective elements involved. Whence, then, this strange and wholly irrational association of ideas between fatherhood and a group of taboos? Now the subject of the association of ideas occupies hundreds of pages in psychological literature, yet all this, in itself valuable enough, material has no bearing on our problem, because it is again far too general. We do not doubt for a moment that the association we desire to have illuminated is due either to contiguity or to a perceived similarity of ideas, but why have we this particular association instead of the limitless multitude of associations that would be equally intelligible by the same formulae?

Again, many aboriginal tribes of Australia are subdivided into two halves, membership in which is inherited through the father, in some cases, through the mother in others. These moieties are what is technically called ‘exogamous’, i.e., marriage with a fellow-member is strictly forbidden. The regulation is, indeed, so stringent, the feeling of horror evoked by a transgression so violent, that in former times offenders were promptly put to death. This sentiment is so strong that even when visiting a remote tribe, perhaps a hundred miles away, where there is no possibility of blood-kinship, an Australian will avoid marriage with a member of the moiety bearing the same name as his own. Here, surely, there is matter for psychology. An Australian has a violent emotional reaction akin to our aversion to incest, and may translate his feelings into the most violent action. Or, looking at the matter from another angle, the Australian exercises an admirable self-control, eschewing on principle marital relations with half the women of his community. Yet all that psychologists tell us of the ethical feelings and the will leaves the problem before us wholly untouched. Why this particular curious feeling developed, what place it occupies in mental life, the psychologist fails to explain. We get, again, simply general formulÆ about feeling and will that are equally applicable to the case of a man’s beating his wife or a boy’s resisting the temptations of a lollypop. And this, it must be noted, is dealing with the distinctively psychological aspect of the data. Whether the rule in question originated in a common center and thence spread to other tribes, is also a cultural question of great importance, and this historical phase of the subject psychology is avowedly incompetent to deal with. Psychology, then, fails throughout to supply us with the interpretation we want. It is as impotent to reduce to really interpretative psychological principles the subjective aspect of cultural phenomena as it is to explain the historical sequence of events.

It is not necessary to multiply examples to establish the point. It is clear that cultural phenomena contain elements that cannot be reduced to psychological principles. The reason for the insufficiency is already embodied in Tylor’s definition of culture as embracing ‘capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. The science of psychology, even in its most modern ramifications of abnormal psychology and the study of individual variations, does not grapple with acquired mental traits nor with the influence of society on individual thought, feeling and will. It deals on principle exclusively with innate traits of the individual. Now, whether the sharp separation assumed here between the innate and the acquired, between individual activity as determined by uniquely individual potentialities and as determined by social environment, can be made in practice or not, one thing is clear: there are phenomena that are acquired and in no sense innate, that are socially and not individually determined. When a Christian reacts in a definite way to the perception of a cross, it is clearly not because of an individual psychic peculiarity, for other Christians react in the same way. On the other hand, we are not dealing with a general human trait since the reactions of a Mohammedan or a Buddhist will be quite different. Innumerable instances of this sort show that individual thought, feeling and volition are co-determined by social influences. In so far forth as the potency of these social factors extends we have culture; in so far forth as knowledge, emotion, and will are neither the result of natural endowment shared with other members of the species nor rest on an individual organic basis, we have a thing sui generis that demands for its investigation a distinct science.

Does it follow from the foregoing that there is no possible relation between psychology and culture, that psychological results are a matter of utter indifference to the ethnologist? In their desire to vindicate for their own branch of knowledge a place in the sun, some ethnologists have come very near, if they have not actually reached such a conclusion. To me the case appears in a somewhat different light. Whatever division of labor may be desirable for the economy of scientific work, knowledge as a whole knows nothing of watertight compartments. Further, the nominally distinct sciences are not subordinated to one another, but coexist in a condition of democratic equality and coÖperativeness. We cannot reduce cultural to psychological phenomena any more than we can reduce biology to mechanics or chemistry, because in either case the very facts we desire to have explained are ignored in the more generalized formulation. But for specific purposes, the student of culture can call for aid upon each and all of the other branches of learning. It is a very important cultural problem whether the natives of South America knew the bronze technique, i.e., whether they consciously produced the observed alloy of copper and tin. But how can the ethnologist solve this problem? Only by requisitioning the services of the chemist.

Now very few would deny that services of the kind rendered by chemistry can also be rendered to the study of culture by psychology. Indeed, most people would at once admit that the relationship with psychology is a priori likely to be far more extensive and thorough-going. A few concrete examples will illustrate how this relationship may be conceived.

Among the quaint conceits with which primitive cultures abound is that of attaching to particular numbers a peculiar character of sanctity. “Everything in the universe,” a Crow Indian once told me, “goes by fours.” As a matter of fact, most things in Crow religious life are adjusted to this conception. An important ceremonial act is thrice feigned so as to be actually performed at the fourth attempt; religious processions halt four times; songs are sung in sets of four; in mythic tales it is the fourth trial that carries an heroic feat to a successful issue. Now this cultural fact very largely eludes psychological interpretation. The first thing that strikes us is that this feature is no peculiarity of the Crow, but is rather widely distributed among their immediate neighbors and even remote Indian tribes, though jointly occupying a continuous area. Since outside of this region other numbers figure as mystic, we cannot regard the view of the sacredness of Four as a general trait of human psychology but must assume that the concept was borrowed by most of the tribes now holding it. A wider survey teaches us that corresponding, though not identical, conceptions are very common. Seven figures in parts of Asia, Three in European folklore, Five in Oregon and northern Nevada, Six among the Ainu of Yezo, Nine among the Yakut, Ten among the Pythagorean philosophers of ancient Greece, very much as Four does among the Crow. Now the fact that a particular Crow Indian regards Four as a sacred number does not mean that this is an individual peculiarity of his any more than the Christian’s reaction to a cross is a proof of some psychological idiosyncrasy. Individually the Crow Indian may be quite indifferent to the number and yet he would view it as sacred because he has been taught so to regard it. This is, of course, the vital difference between ethnology and psychology which has already been emphasized. Nevertheless, the association must at one time have been formed in an individual mind, whether among the Crow or elsewhere, and the question arises as to what such an association means. Francis Galton showed some time ago that such associations of definite personal characteristics with numbers occur by no means infrequently among Europeans. The phenomenon we are dealing with is thus linked with a group of related phenomena and in so far forth is explained.

There are ethnologists who would not admit that such an explanation has anything to do with ethnology. They would contend that as soon as we cease to investigate the group as such we are passing from ethnology, the science of culture, to psychology, the science of individual minds. This seems an unnecessarily narrow doctrinaire view. Knowledge, as stated above, is not subdivided by hard-and-fast partitions. Interest certainly does not stop at an arbitrary point in the investigation but is centered on a comprehension of the whole phenomenon. Where that phenomenon is an alloy of tin and copper, a decision as to its nature is naturally left to chemistry; it seems not unreasonable that where it is a type of association we should turn for enlightenment to psychology.

Another field supplies an additional illustration. One of the important subjects for ethnographic study is artistic form. The ethnologist notes in a purely descriptive way the decorative patterns employed by various tribes, the fact that curvilinear motives are prominent among the Maori of New Zealand while the rawhide bags of Plains Indians are covered with angular paintings. Here, once more, it is clear that many of the problems that arise are purely cultural. There are, nevertheless, psychological elements involved that may be misunderstood without psychological knowledge. Let us assume, e.g., that a certain tribe is artistically characterized by a fondness for squares. What does this predilection signify? It is a psychological commonplace that through an optical illusion we exaggerate the height as compared with the width of a rectangle; accordingly, the geometrical square does not coincide with the psychological square. This simple piece of information enables us to understand what we are actually dealing with in the case of a square pattern. At the same time it sharpens our observation regarding such patterns. It is quite conceivable that in one place tribal taste should prefer the actual square while elsewhere the psychological square occupies the seat of honor. This would be a purely ethnographic fact, yet its discovery might be considerably expedited by some knowledge of experimental aesthetics.

Let us turn from mystic numbers and decorative designs to another aspect of primitive life. The Turkish tribes of western Siberia have a form of religion based on the belief that certain individuals enjoy the hereditary privilege of acting as intermediaries between their ancestral spirits and the people at large. With the aid of his sacred drum the shaman, as such an intermediary is technically called, is able to summon the supernatural beings, cure the sick, foretell the future, separate his own soul from his body and send it to the upper realms of light or the nether regions of darkness. Now, although a particular individual inherits the shaman’s office from his father, he receives no formal instruction nor does he make any active preparation for his mission. His call comes in the form of a sudden paroxysm. He is seized with a feeling of languor and a fit of violent convulsions, with abnormal yawning, and a powerful pressure on the chest, which causes him to utter inarticulate screams. He begins to shiver with cold, rolls his eyes, suddenly leaps up and madly circles about until he falls down covered with perspiration and writhing in epileptic spasms on the ground. His members are devoid of sensation, his hands grasp without discrimination red-hot iron, knives, pins; he swallows such objects without suffering the slightest injury, and again ejects them from his mouth. Finally, the prospective seer seizes a shaman’s drum and assumes the shaman’s office. Disobedience to the spirit’s call would spell disaster, madness and death amidst the most horrible tortures.[2-i]

The naÏve reaction to this narrative on the part of common sense in the familiar form of common ignorance will probably be that the European traveler who is our authority is a very gullible individual if he believed his native informant’s statements. How can an individual be seized with such a spasm as that described? How is it possible for him to become devoid of sensation? Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that the account given is substantially correct. It is simply a particular form of nervous affliction very common throughout Siberia and attested by dozens of trustworthy eyewitnesses.[3-i] This Arctic hysteria, as it has been misnamed (for there is nothing distinctively Arctic about it), manifests itself principally in two ways. Either the individual falls victim to an indiscriminate mania for mimicking the acts of others; or he is seized with the sort of paroxysm described for the Turkish shaman. Nothing is clearer than that in neither case is there usually conscious deception. Sometimes the imitation mania subjects the sufferer to ridicule and pain, as when an old woman in imitation of a Cossack, seized a salmon with her teeth, ran up a hill and down again, unable to prevent herself from plunging into the water, though normally she was barely able to walk. Similarly, the numerous hysterical individuals of the other type who do not become inspired shamans cannot possibly derive any benefit from their fits.

Abnormal psychology here steps in and teaches us that such trances are involuntary and not the result of fraud, that they occur in our own civilization and are accompanied with extraordinary lack of sensibility to pain, in short, psychiatry classifies the observed phenomena and tells us what we are really dealing with. It prevents a misconception alike of the shaman’s activities and of the attitude of his people towards him.

When, however, abnormal psychology has so far enlightened us, it has by no means exhausted even the purely subjective aspect of the case. How does the prospective shaman seized with his fit know about the shamanistic drum that forms a necessary accessory of his office? How does he know what mode of activity is expected from him? These are not things which he can get directly from his trance for we shall hardly accept the aboriginal theory that he is inspired by the ancestral spirits. He can derive his knowledge, however informally, only as the member of a group holding certain definite views as to the shamanistic office. The cultural phenomenon, then, even on its psychological side, comprises a very appreciable plus over and above the facts that psychology can explain, and these additional data accordingly require treatment by another science.

My conclusions as to the relation of psychology to culture are, accordingly, the following: The cultural facts, even in their subjective aspect, are not merged in psychological facts. They must not, indeed, contravene psychological principles, but the same applies to all other principles of the universe; culture cannot construct houses contrary to the laws of gravitation nor produce bread out of stones. But the principles of psychology are as incapable of accounting for the phenomena of culture as is gravitation to account for architectural styles. Over and above the interpretations given by psychology, there is an irreducible residuum of huge magnitude that calls for special treatment and by its very existence vindicates the raison d’Être of ethnology. We need not eschew any help given by scientific psychology for the comprehension of specifically psychological components of cultural phenomena; but as no one dreams of saying that these phenomena are reduced to chemical principles when chemistry furnishes us with an analysis of Peruvian bronze implements, so no one can dare assert that they are reduced to psychological principles when we call upon psychology to elucidate specific features of cultural complexes. The ‘capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ constitute a distinct aspect of reality that must be the field of a distinct science autonomous with reference to psychology.