tive peoples.

It will be said that although the European peasant may not in the main
think more logically and abstractly, he has, nevertheless, the
potentiality for such thought, should only the conditions for its
manifestations--education and the like--ever be given. From such as he
have been produced the geniuses of Europe--the long line of artists and
inventors who have risen from the lowest ranks.

I will consider this objection later. At present it is sufficient for my
purpose to have secured the admission that the peasants of Europe do not
as a whole use their mental powers in a much more logical or abstract
manner than do primitive people. I maintain that such superiority as
they have is due to differences (1) of environment and (2) of
variability.

We must remember that the European peasant grows up in a (more or less)
civilized environment; he learns a (more or less) well-developed and
written language, which serves as an easier instrument and a stronger
inducement for abstract thought; he is born into a (more or less)
advanced religion. All these advantages and the advantage of a more
complex education the European peasant owes to his superiors in ability
and civilization. Rob the peasant of these opportunities, plunge him
into the social environment of present primitive man, and what
difference in thinking power will be left between them?

The answer to this question brings me to the second point of difference
which I have mentioned--the difference in variability. I have already
alluded to the divergencies in temperament to be found among the members
of every primitive community. But well marked as are these and other
individual differences, I suspect that they are less prominent among
primitive than among more advanced peoples. This difference in
variability, if really existent, is probably the outcome of more
frequent racial admixture and more complex social environment in
civilized communities. In another sense, the variability of the savage
is indicated by the comparative data afforded by certain psychological
investigations. A civilized community may not differ much from a
primitive one in the mean or average of a given character, but the
extreme deviations which it shows from that mean will be more numerous
and more pronounced. This kind of variability has probably another
source. The members of a primitive community behave toward the applied
test in the simplest manner, by the use of a mental proc