Abstract
IT is a commonplace of anthropological study that, in investigating the customs of primitive races, the difference in level of culture between observer and observed entails a difference in mentality and outlook which it is one of the aims of anthropological training to overcome. But it is also a matter of common observation that this same difference exists, if in a lesser degree, between peoples at the same stage of civilisation, and even between individuals or groups of individuals forming part of the same people or nation. The works of travellers, geographers and historians, both ancient and modern, abound' in characterisations of the mental qualities oi /the various peoples of the world, both civilised and uncivilised; but when the ethnologist comes to the investigation of the problem of racial differences in mental qualities, he is confronted with a two-fold difficulty. On one hand he is, at present, for the most part, dependent upon empirical observation from which it is difficult to eliminate the personal factor, and, on the other hand, it is not clear how far, if at all, mental characters can be correlated with the physical characters upon which the ethnologist bases his classification of races. In the solution of this problem it is essential that the anthropologist should secure the co-operation of the psychologist, and it was with this object that a discussion on “Mental Character and Race “was held in a joint session of the Anthropological and Psychological Sections at the meeting of the British Association at Hull in September last.
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Mental Character and Race. Nature 111, 164–165 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111164a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111164a0