protected by it is safer
than under civilized laws. Food and palm wine are placed beside the
path with a piece of fetish suspended near by, and no one will touch
them without leaving the proper payment. The garden of a native may be
a mile from the house, unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by
the owner; but it is immune from depredations if protected by fetish.
Our proverb says, "A hungry belly has no ears," and it must be
admitted that the inhibition of food impulses implies no small power
of restraint.

Altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign of
mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species.
The well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing
stimulations of the kitchen. And it is also true that one race, at
least--the American Indian--makes inhibition of the most conspicuous
feature in its system of education. From the time the ice is broken to
give him a cold plunge and begin the toughening process on the day of
his birth, until he dies with out a groan under torture the Indian
is schooled in the restraint of his impulses. He does not, indeed,
practice our identical restraints, because his traditions and the run
of his attention are different; but he has a capacity for controlling
impulse equal to our own.

Another serious charge against the intelligence of the lower races is
lack of the power of abstraction. They certainly do not deal largely
in abstraction, and their languages are poor in abstract terms. But
there is a great difference between the habit of thinking in abstract
terms and the ability to do so.

The degree to which abstraction is employed in the activities of
a group depends on the complexity of the activities and on the
complexity of consciousness in the group. When science, philosophy,
and logic, and systems of reckoning time, space, and number are
taught in the schools; when the attention is not so much engaged in
perceptual as in deliberate acts; and when thought is a profession,
then abstract modes of thought are forced on the mind. This does not
argue absence of the power of abstraction in the lower races, or even
a low grade of ability, but lack of practice. To one skilled in any
line an unpracticed person seems very stupid; and this is apparently
the reason why travelers report that the black and yellow races have
feeble powers of abstraction. It is generally admitted, however, that
the use of speech involves the powe