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The Point of View toward Primitive Races Author(s): G. Stanley Hall Source: The Journal of Race Development, Vol.

1, No. 1 (Jul., 1910), pp. 5-11 Published by: Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737843 . Accessed: 04/10/2013 02:05
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THE POINT OF VIEW TOWARD PRIMITIVE RACES.


By G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University. From the standpoint of evolution the differences between savage and civilized man are very slight indeed compared
with those between ancestors over anthropoid of civilized the average aborigines man from which man as and sprang. less have than the remote Leading we have

anthropologists

like Franz Boas to-day regard the superiority


uncivilized The best far races

been wont to think it, and as perhaps offset by still greater


disadvantages. retentive and sometimes primitive acute senses, very capacious memories, splendid bodies, fit for an artist's model, in enduring great powers even

hunger, cold and fatigue; they often have a large fund of folklore, myth, and tradition; each individual understands
more or less of the complex tribal customs, has more or less

proficiency not only in the arts of war but a number of those of peace; and if unspoiled by contact with so-called higher
races, without pose are usually frank, good-natured, and many of them

honest and virtuous.

Indeed

it would

be possible to-day

of savagery, to com? idealization any Rousseau-like from the life of many tribes a curriculum of conduct, and culture a splendid en? that would constitute regimen for any boy at the gang if only age. Now a tribe, and not stirp de?

vironment travail

or race of mankind
long

is the most precious product of all the


it is ascendant

of evolution,

cadent, for then it always contains possibilities

of historic

It is hard to draw the larger development along new lines. lessons of history. in the days of the glory of Rome Who have would dreamed of a time when the Teutons, Gauls and Angles would have ruled Europe centuries after the once last man who revered of father and Jove, men, gods was dead? How different would have been the course of events had Rome exacted from her colonies such pro

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6 tracted taxation as

G. STANLEY HALL the have enforced for one

English

hundred and fifty years in India or such partial enslave? ment as Belgium has enforced in the vast basin of the
Congo ! How fortunate, to turn to a more modern instance,

that in 1840 the powers could not agree upon the terms of partitioning Japan!
In fact, from prehistoric times, man has been the great

exterminator. Very long is the list of the animal species that he has swept off the face of the earth. Unique races of mankind too like the Boethuks and Tasmanians have
been their or exterminated fate. Every and new is too these left not even an Ossian to bemoan of weapons in the way advantage those to be turned prone against lines of development. So primitive

organization next lower along

and so strong is this instinct that many believe that it accounts at least in part for the fact of the missing link,
and that man because has he come has now to seem down eminent thrown so unique and and destroyed pre? the

ladder up which he climbed through the long early stages of his development. Modern colonial policies tend by
many their races for or subordinate inferior exploit own benefit, and their lands often primitives treating as preserves What to be administered for their own gain. more can to be than commit sin unpardonable aborigines motives to discovered The time valuable living on territory containing in our judgment, has now, fully come should teach us that primitives with should resources! when not

merely philanthropy
economy

but science and even a broadly based


have certain that have

inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi?


interference ness, and that ruthless races for indigenous worked well Our own country, in the struggle that of the last century all the remnants ought to lead that has culminated customs cease. in the a competitor later nineties become

so lately

perhaps to parcel out among the leading nations of the unappropriated of the world, territory

in this more Our humane and larger policy. in with Indians and the the record, alas, dealing Negroes is not, however, But we have made very reassuring. great and since the Freedman's progress emancipation days

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VIEW

TOWARD PRIMITIVE

EACES

Bureau and its carpet-baggers in our efforts to develop the the innumerable modes of extortion and Negro,?despite that private greed is still allowed to misrepresentation in many parts of our land. We ought him upon practice
to have in Washington an African Bureau wherein should

be presented in the form of exhibits and literature the memorials and the best things that the African has achieved in the past and is accomplishing in the present. We should
strive to make representative colored men self-respecting,

give them a just measure of pride in their race, and give in studying its history not only their leaders motivation in this country but in their fatherland, teach them, to un?
derstand the magnificent emotional endowments nature has

given them that has kept their spirits more or less buoyant under infinite hardships, teach them to love their rich and unique folklore, to be proud of and to develop it,?in a word, to study and bring out the best that is in their blood,
and race man tion to mitigate if ever so slowly, the handicap of surely, can for these alone the black prejudice, things give true freedom. As to the Indian, here, too, the situa? races have been more is most Few unique. carefully

studied and the Bureau of Ethnology has a wonderful record in the expense and talent that have been devoted
to preserving the songs, traditions, religion, social and

other customs of the red man. All this knowledge, however, has remained unutilized by the Indian Bureau, which deals with the red man in all practical matters. It is still
trying to make a pinch-back white man instead who their of a noble are

Indian.
taught

Even
the

at Hampton
and or by the best have youths

and Carlisle,
and maidens from

the last thing


people, segre? is to

Indian

gated, voluntarily know or respect or industries. We native

constraint, in their things not even had

own history, culture the wit to see that

basket-making, are germs of art, that of

work with beads and skins, pottery, these noblest of all the representatives

of the Stone Age


potency Indian ments

contain

in themselves

the promise and

from within; are the and many development lost or decaying which have in them ele? arts, either of unique culture value for the red man himself and

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G. STANLEY HALL

for us.
everywhere and often guished it.

Methods
take

of

development
over those

from within

should

precedence culture upon unwilling because under its influence

an alien of foisting have lan? those who were not ripe for

they

This is not ignoring the fact that primitives need and often want also the very best we can teach them; but they must conserve, cherish and develop all the best things they
have. a great knew, mother this country Educationally has Hull house the light: but tend has in late endeavored seen years to conserve

the household
who

arts and home industries that immigrants

and unique had made both

The Irish grand? to forget upon our shores. who do fine weaves the linen, Hungarians or their families lace which make embroidery centuries, own acquire and self-respect us better when they do

for

this to teach us and tomake products that will sell; and they
love their people and are more

respected by their own grandchildren if all they know and can do is not swept into oblivion when they land here.
The same results dances are and seen the in the revival even and of the and the with the various other same national customs language. pageants, to revive and in the attempts same the principle, Upon festivals

old Gallic

beneficent in Uganda
method children are

results, are the efforts being made by Joumet to educate the native Africans by the following
lower

the for from four to six years, grades own save or their little tongue, nothing taught etc. communal They duties, customs, traditions, folklore, The are often beneficent. ideal and very very complex is to first make them

: In the

andnot cheap pinch-back good Kaffirs, men. In the later grades for those who white imitation the to go on as a kind of secondary show aptitude course, rudiments of science the and customs, language, English are as a kind of higher for the few fit. dispensation taught a soon to pronounce final too It is perhaps upon judgment can no be there but doubt of this particular experiment; the ment fundamental Years soundness of the tried it is based. ago Lindner in the Punjab of founding upon principles the interesting of indigenous which experi? cul

schools

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VIEW

TOWARD PRIMITIVE

RACES

ture where the old Pundits, who had withdrawn in dignity and with dismay from English influences, were invited to tell to the rising generation the stories of their own classics and to revive and transmit a helpful interest in
their one of own culture. His interesting however, effects were voluminous of all his method blue educational was book the most report documents. too early is

Unfortunately, so that of its

a little

and did not commend


Duncan's some remarkable these ideals has lieh

itself to the East

India Company,

obliterated. Even in Mr. largely work with the Metacotla Indians, were embodied. I do not know of a ever been made fascinating and method seem attempts Buddhism, religions to revered to acquaint contents, scholars the native e. g., of of an

single effort Indian with

that the are

and

the reports of the Ethnological


antiquities race. alien The same preserved

Bureau, wherein
by

his own

revolutionary Mus?e Guimet are to live medism, and

pedagogical as it may in Paris other

is applicable some. The to acquaint prevail, Confucianism, with

to missions, work of ths students who Moham the deepest

in lands where great

and best that is in these faiths, so that they may be both intelligent and sympathetic toward them. Most of these faiths in most lands, like all religions, have yielded to the tendency, inevitable in this field, to decay; but some are bold enough often to say that the first task of the missionary
of the future and will even be fucianists, and that Con good Buddhists, or pagans fetich-worshippers generally, a veritable renaissance of their inherited into In his Jesus live the to make men

only when that and

beliefs and cults has been achieved will they be ripe for a
religion "Love Hebrew most and be condensed may serve God and man." rites, illustrations and was cult only and simple treatment phrase, of the

Scriptures of all splendid faith which of the

the gave of how to make

decadent

dispensation problem become

and again the psychological the of future the

the an ancient a new achieve unfoldment

world

of the forces that lay concealed


the missionary of scholar and apostle

and hidden
will of faith

in it.
be

The

to first

the people

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10

G. STANLEY HALL

among whom he lives. He should aim at the revival of all that is best in it, if possible raise up a generation of
native when reformers this has and been of of it, and then only, propagandists should be to make done, his endeavor

it blossom
mankind?that

into what

is surely the ultimate


and service. The

religion of all
new dispensa?

love

tions thus evoked will be different


some major features, This must tianity. from be current expected.

in detail, perhaps
of Chris? years

in

interpretations one in recent No

has appealed more strongly to this principle than the late Cuthbert Hall in his remarkable lecture to learned Hindus, inwhich he invoked them to reanimate their own faith, which he felt certain would result in the development of a new and distinctly Oriental type of Christianity which the world
has not yet seen. of interpretation have treated, what religion when sionary was from the Religion it; and all, is far vaster even any single its baser manifestations, our races views where of it than

are based upon psychological

principles which, when rightly

for enlarging great possibilities means can and is, do, among

is still the main


abrupt endeavors of

theme of education.
transformations must them. be

The

time has come

sought by earlier mis? laid aside, and when we must

realize that they have accomplished


expected certain of the great lesson hard

in slight degree what


to learn in this need to

a great have deal We lines of endeavor Catholic civilized white men

field.
The learn general is a very as which one in this day of mechanical invention, and commercial yet, expansion; are, they that do not begin certain has to represent

wholesale glorious

productivity these things It

all

the possibilities

of the race. We
already The world

are not

the
lately

beati
been

possedentes. toward decay rather

is possible are manifest.

tendencies

a single to realize startled that, without exception, of Europe the great nations and this country show a marked in the rate of fertility. There could be no better decline test than that The this is evidence wrong. something of domestication constituted that in animals they will is whether breed well can be so captivity under its conditions.

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VIEW

TOWARD PRIMITIVE

RACES

11

Civilization is man's attempt to domesticate himself; and failure in this involves failure in all. The demoralization that has begun with the rapid urbanization of the world, the intense and strenuous life of competition, the fact
that with all our hygienic endeavors, we have not yet been

able to lower by a single point the mortality of infants during the first year of life, make problems which demand
a larger statesmanship than the world has yet evolved to

deal with it adequately. Whether the nations that now rule the world will be able to indefinitely wield the accumu?
lated It may resources be that of civilization stocks some now is by no means obscure may established. a few cen?

turies hence take up the torch that falls from our hand and develop other culture types very distinct from ours; and that to them and not to us will be appointed the task of ushering in the kingdom of the superman. This perhaps will serve to roughly indicate the general attitude from which the editors of this Journal regard the duties of the higher
to the so-called lower races.

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