Robert Harry Lowie

“ Now, why did this idea develop in the Old World and never take root among the American Indians? We are here face to face with one of those ultimate data that must simply be accepted like the physicist’s fact that water expands in freezing while other substances contract. So far as we can see, the invention might have been made in America as well as not; and for all we know it would never have been made there until the end of time. This introduces a very important consideration. A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique phenomenon. ”

“ What seems more natural than that culture in its highest forms should develop only in temperate regions, that the gloomy forests of the North be reflected in a mythology of ogres and trolls, that liberty should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and languish in the tepid plain, or that islanders should be expert mariners? ”

“ In a subject that is constantly confused by partisanship it is important to make no greater claims for an argument than the facts absolutely warrant. Accordingly, I hasten to explain what has really been shown and what I have failed to show hitherto. It is, I think, fair to say that culture cannot be adequately explained by race, and that the same race varies extraordinarily in culture even within a very narrow space of time. ”

“ Recently I completed an investigation of Plains Indian societies begun on the most rigorous of historical principles, with a distinct bias in favor of the unique character of cultural data. But after smiting hip and thigh the assumption that the North American societies were akin to analogous institutions in Africa and elsewhere, I came face to face with the fact that, after all, among the Plains Indians, as among other tribes, the tendency of age-mates to flock together had formed social organizations and thus acted as a cultural determinant. ”

“ An equally striking illustration is furnished by the Arabs. Here, too, we have a people of crude civilization suddenly emerging from an unimportant position in the world’s affairs to blossom forth not only as a military and political, but a cultural power as well, deriving from Persia and Babylonia the impulse to philological and historical studies, from Byzantium the technique of naval warfare, the art of paper-manufacture from the Chinese, Euclid from the Syrian outposts of Greek culture, and from India the decimal notation. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ However, there is not merely discontinuity and diversity but also stability and agreement in the sphere of culture. The discrete steps that mark culture history may not determine one another, but each may involve as a necessary or at least probable consequence other phenomena which in many instances are simply new aspects of the same phenomenon, and in so far forth one cultural element as isolated in description is the determinant or correlate of another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In short, the possessors of a culture are not necessarily its originators; often they are demonstrably borrowers of specific elements of the greatest significance. The same culture may thus become the property of distinct races, as is rapidly becoming the case in modern times. Owing to the very extensive occurrence of diffusion the question what a particular people or race has originated becomes extremely complicated; while it is an established fact that important additions to human civilization have been made by diverse stocks. ”

“ When we shall have examined how such an institution as the inheritance of a maternal uncle’s wife affects the systems of the Tlingit of northwestern America, of the Banks Islands in Melanesia, and the Thonga of South Africa, and know the action of whatever coexisting institutions may occur, we shall have gained considerably more insight into a very suggestive problem. It is fairly clear that a form of marriage does not determine nomenclature univocally, as the facts relating to the levirate indicate. To ascertain in how far parallelism actually occurs, is a matter of great moment. ”

“ Psychology, racial differences, geographical environment, have all proved inadequate for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. The inference is obvious. Culture is a thing sui generis which can be explained only in terms of itself. This is not mysticism but sound scientific method. The biologist, whatever metaphysical speculations he may indulge in as to the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his workaday mood from the principle that every cell is derived from some other cell. So the ethnologist will do well to postulate the principle, Omnis cultura ex cultura. ”

“ Even if an ultimate investigation should definitely fix the cultural limits to which a given race is hereditarily subject, such information could not solve the far more specific problem why the same people a few hundred years earlier were a horde of barbarians and a few hundred years later formed a highly civilized community. The supposed explanation by racial potentialities would be far too general to interpret the actual happenings. Racial psychology, no less than general psychology, thus fails to solve the problems of culture. ”

“ It is obvious that this insistence on contact of peoples as a condition of cultural evolution does not solve the ultimate problem of the origin of culture. The question naturally obtrudes itself: If the Scandinavians obtained their civilization from the Southeast, how did the Oriental cultures themselves originate? Nevertheless, when we examine these higher civilizations of the Old World, we are again met with indubitable evidence that one of the conditions of development is the contact of peoples and the consequent diffusion of cultural elements. ”

“ In thus investigating the relations between race and civilization we may fruitfully employ the method of variation. Making the racial factor a constant, we may inquire whether culture, too, is thereby made a constant, and whether a change in racial propinquity is correlated with a proportionate change of culture. On the other hand, we may start with culture as a constant and inquire whether each form or grade of culture is the concomitant of definite racial characteristics and whether a change in culture is accompanied by a corresponding change of race. ”

“ Culture, it seems, is a matter of exceedingly slow growth until a certain ‘threshold’ is passed, when it darts forward, gathering momentum at an unexpected rate. For this peculiarity of culture as a whole, many miniature parallels exist in special subdivisions of culture history. Natural science lay dormant until Kepler, Galileo and Newton stirred it into unexampled activity, and the same holds for applied science until about a century ago.
This discontinuity of development receives strong additional illustration from a survey of special subdivisions of ancient culture. ”

“ Beyond such interpretative principles for special phases of civilization, there are still broader generalizations of cultural phenomena. One has been repeatedly alluded to under the caption of cultural inertia, or survival—the irrational persistence of a feature when the context in which it had a place has vanished. But culture is not merely a passive phenomenon but a dynamic one as well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We cannot wholly isolate the racial factor from others, and we cannot give an ocular demonstration of what the several inferior races, so-called, are capable of achieving under the most favorable conditions. But with great confidence we can say that since the same race at different times or in different subdivisions at the same time represents vastly different cultural stages, there is obviously no direct proportional relation between culture and race. ”

“ Where relatives whom other people distinguish are grouped together, there is some likelihood that the natives regard them as representing the same relationship because they actually enjoy the same privileges or exercise the same functions in tribal life. Where relatives whom other peoples group together are distinguished, there is some probability that the distinction goes hand in hand with a difference in social function.
Lewis H. Morgan, the pioneer in this domain of knowledge, was keenly alive to the social implications of kinship nomenclature. ”

“ The development of a particular architectural style and the selection of a special material from among an indefinite number of possible styles and materials are what characterize a given culture. Since geography permits more than a single adjustment to the same conditions, it cannot give the interpretation sought by the student of culture. Culture can no more be built up of environmental blocks than can consciousness out of isolated ideas ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But in this, as in every other department of language, economy has been exercised and instead of a chaotic number of distinct terms for every possible relationship, there is always a limited series, many distinct individual relationships being always grouped together under a single head. Thus, in English we apply the word ‘brother’ to a number of individuals regardless of their age relatively to ourselves or to one another and irrespective of the sex of the speaker. ”

“ The environment, then, enters into culture, not as a formative but rather as an inert element ready to be selected from and molded. It is, of course, a matter of biological necessity for a people to establish some sort of adaptation to surrounding conditions, but such adaptation is no more spontaneously generated by the environment than are strictly biological adaptations. ”

“ If culture, even when uninfluenced by foreign contact, progresses by leaps and bounds, we should naturally like to ascertain the determinants of such ‘mutations.’ In this respect, the discontinuity of indigenous evolution differs somewhat from that connected with cultural development due to diffusion. It was absolutely impossible that Scandinavia should produce bronze in the absence of tin. But a priori it is conceivable that an undisturbed culture might necessarily develop by what biologists call ‘orthogenetic evolution’, i.e., in a definite direction through definite stages. ”

“ It may not be out of place to point out that not only the more tangible elements of culture, but very much subtler ingredients than those hitherto mentioned are shared by distinct groups of mankind. Thus, common to ourselves and the Chinese, though strikingly lacking among the Hindu, who, nevertheless, are racially nearer to us, is a marked sense for historical perspective. Common to the ancient Romans, the modern Germans, and the modern Japanese, is the talent for rationalistic organization of administrative affairs. ”

“ Only those who would derive each and every trait similar in different communities of human beings from a single geographical source can ignore such general characteristics of culture, which may, in a sense, be regarded as determinants of specific cultural data or rather, as the principles of which these are particular manifestations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The facts of domestication are unusually suggestive as regards our general problem for they show in an absolutely convincing manner that even where the same animals have been domesticated by different peoples the use to which they are put may differ widely and give a distinct aspect to this phase of culture. Thus, we find that of Siberian reindeer-breeders the Tungus and Lamut use their animals only for transportation, not for slaughter, and that many bands, unlike other Arctic populations, ride on their reindeer instead of harnessing them to sledges. ”

“ The very fact that primitive tribes frequently use terms of kinship as words of address where we should substitute personal names is a social practice of ethnological interest. But the essential point is that the terms used are often very definitely correlated with specific social usages. Generally speaking, the use of distinct words for two types of relatives is connected with a real difference in their social relations to the speaker. Thus, a majority of primitive tribes draw no distinction between the father’s sister’s daughter and the mother’s brother’s daughter. ”

“ 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 North America it occurs precisely in systems lacking the classificatory principle altogether. Apart from this, there is no manifest connection between the principles of grouping together relatives of alternate generations and the principle of classing under one head relatives of the same generation and side of the family. The mere fact that kinsfolk are united whom we happen to separate in nomenclature is a purely negative and insufficient reason for postulating an essential relationship between two modes of classification. ”