Configurations of Culture Growth

By A.L. Kroeber

"This handsome volume, one of a group commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the University of California, caps the prolific and extraordinarily varied publications of the most distinguished of living American anthropologists.... In this book [Kroeber] demonstrates his control over amazing ranges of world history. Kroeber's versatility and intellectual robustness are all the more refreshing when viewed against the background of the narrowness and overspecialization, the relative isolation from the main currents of contemporary thought, and the inbred parochialism which have, on the whole, characterized twentieth-century anthropology. Configurations of Culture Growth deserves those abused adjectives 'great' and 'monumental.' "   From: Clyde Kluckhohn 1946 review of "Configurations of Culture Growth." American Journal of Sociology, vol. 51, no. 4, p. 336-341.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1944.
"This handsome volume, one of a group commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the University of California, caps the prolific and extraordinarily varied publications of the most distinguished of living American anthropologists.... In this book [Kro

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520341753

A.L. Kroeber

Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

Book preview

CONFIGURATIONS OF

CULTURE GROWTH

CONFIGURATIONS OF

CULTURE GROWTH

By

A. L. KROEBER

University of California Press

BERKELEY, AND LOS ANGELES

I944

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES

CALIFORNIA

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON,ENGLAND

(OPYRIGHT, I944, BY

THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN IHE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Photo-Lithoprnt Reproduction

EDWARDS BROTHERS, INC.

Lithopnnters

ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

This Book, A mong Others Thus Specially Designated, is

Published in Commemoration of the

SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

of the Founding of the University of California

PREFACE

ONE OF the recognized characteristics of human culture is the tendency of its successes or highest values to occur close together in relatively brief periods within nations or limited areas. While reasons have been adduced for the phenomenon, no systematic examination of the facts seems ever to have been made. I present here the more readily datable facts—for time lapse seems an essential factor of the phenomenon—in an orderly arrangement, as basis for an inductive comparison. The purpose is not so much to offer a final explanation as to make the most pertinent data readily available for those who wish to search farther for a causality. I am convinced that, the phenomenon being cultur/il, the explanation must first of all be made in cultural terms, even if it be essentially only a descriptive interpretation. The underlying psychology may ultimately be discoverable; but that will necessarily be later. I have offered an adumbration of an explanation in terms of cultural patterns. This will perhaps be considered insufficient. It does not wholly satisfy me. While we know a good deal in detail about some specific culture patterns, we are only in the beginning of understanding of the nature of such patterns; even their theoretical recognition is recent. How some sharply marked patterns in civilization have actually behaved, historically, seems worth knowing as a first empirical step toward understanding;.and my main endeavor has been to present organized materials on this behavior.

That this book dealing with data from history should have been written by an anthropologist will perhaps seem fitting to those interested in the development of the two studies. The aim of the work is obviously more or less sociological. The principal current of anthropology, and its soundest findings until now, I believe to be culture-historical. Nevertheless, if we can also generalize validly, it will be most important.

viii PREFACE

I worked on this book, as time was available, from 1931 to 1938. It is a pleasure to remember that the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of California combined to free two half-years of my time for the work. In view of the Foundation’s interest in furthering interdisciplinary researches, I trust that they too are satisfied. The plan formed itself some years before 1931; its theme I have been exercised over as far back as I can remember. Many years of specifically anthropological preoccupation seemed for a time to have led me away, but eventually they brought me back to it. A I K

Kishamish, Napa Valley, California

August 1, 1938

Final reading in type. August, 1944

CONTENTS 1

CONTENTS 1

Chapter I PROBLEM AND PROCEDURE

Chapter I PROBLEM AND PROCEDURE § 1. The Undertaking

§2. Genius

§3. The Problem

§4. Procedure

Chapter II PHILOSOPHY

Chapter II PHILOSOPHY §5. The History of Philosophy

§6. Greek Philosophy

§7. Later Mediterranean Philosophy

§8. Arab-Muslim Philosophy

§9. Occidental Philosophy

MEDIAEVAL

MODERN

§10 . Indian Philosophy

§11 . Chinese Philosophy

§12. Discussion

Chapter III SCIENCE

Chapter III SCIENCE §13 . General

§14 . Greek Science

§15 . Roman Science

§16 . Greek and Roman Relations

§17 . Arab-Mohammedan Science

EASTERN ARABIC SCIENCE

WESTERN ARABIC SCIENCE

§18. Occidental Science

ITALY

SWITZERLAND

FRANCE

THE NETHERLANDS

GREAT BRITAIN

GERMANY

MARGINAL NATIONS

§19. The General European Course

§ 20. Egyptian and Mesopotamian Science

§21 . Indian Science

§22 . Chinese Science

§23. Japanese Science

§24. Conclusions

Chapter IV PHILOLOGY

ChapterIV PHILOLOGY §25 . The Nature of Philology

§26 . Indian Philology

§27 . Greek Philology

§28 . Latin Philology

§29 . Chinese Philology

§30 . Japanese Philology

§31 . Arabic Philology

§32 . Hebrew Philology

§33. Linguistics and Comparative Philology

§34. Summary

Chapter V SCULPTURE

Chapter V SCULPTURE

§35- Egyptian Sculpture

§36 . Mesopotamian Sculpture

§37 . Sculpture in the Greek World

§38 . Roman Sculpture

§39 . Byzantine Sculpture

§40 . Indian Sculpture

COLONIAL INDIAN SCULPTURE

§41. Chinese Sculpture

§42. Japanese Sculpture

§43 . Middle American Sculpture

§44 . Occidental Sculpture

MODERN PERIPHERAL COUNTRIES

§45 . Summary for the West

§46 . Discussion

Chapter VI PAINTING

§47 . Egyptian Painting

§48 . Greek Painting

VASE PAINTING

§49 . Indian Painting

§50 . Chinese Painting

§51 . Japanese Painting

§52 . Occidental Painting

§53 . Italian Painting

§54. Netherlands Painting

§55- German Painting

§56. French Painting

§58 . English Painting

§59 . Nineteenth-Century Painting in Marginal Countries

§60. The Occident as a Whole

Chapter VII DRAMA §61 . The Nature of Drama

§62 . Greek Drama

§63 . Latin Drama

§64 . Sanskrit Drama

§65 . Chinese Drama

§66 . Japanese Drama

§67. Occidental Dramas ITALY

SPAIN

ENGLAND

FRANCE

GERMANY

MARGINAL LATE EUROPE

§68. Discussion

Chapter VIII LITERATURE §69 . General Considerations

§70 . Chinese Literature

§71. Japanese Literature

§72. Sanskrit Literature

§73. Literature of the Ancient Near East

§74 . Greek Literature

§75 . Latin Literature

§ 76. Arabic Literature

877. Persian Literature

§78. Occidental Literatures

§ 79. French Literature

§ 80. Provençal Literature

§ 81. German Literature

§82. Italian Literature

§83. Spanish Literature

§ 84. Portuguese Literature

§85. English Literature

§ 86. Dutch Literature

§87. Scandinavian Literatures

§88. Polish Literature

§ 89. Russian Literature

§ 90. American English Literature

§91. European Literature as a Whole

§92. Historical Summary

Chapter IX MUSIC

Chapter IX MUSIC §93 . European Music

§94 . Netherlandish Music

§95 . Italian Music

§96 . German Music

§97. French Music

§98 . English Music

§99 . Marginal Developments

§100 . Review and Conclusions

Chapter X THE GROWTH OF NATIONS

Chapter X THE GROWTH OF NATIONS

§101. Egypt

§102 . China

§103 . Japan

§104 . India

§105 . The Ancient Mediterranean

§106 . Islam

§107 . The Occident: Nuclear Nations

FRANCE

ITALY

SPAIN

ENGLAND

GERMANY

THE NETHERLANDS

SWITZERLAND

§108 . The Occident: America

§109 . The Occident: Peripheral Europe

§110. The Jews

§111. The West as a Whole

Chapter XI REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS -

Chapter X REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS §112 . Universals in History

§113 . Cultural Patterns and Growths

§114 . Pulses and Lulls in Growth

§115 . Types of Growth Configurations

§116 . The Question of Growth Curves

§117 . Interrelation of Cultural Activities

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

§118 . Special Problems of Growth Interrelation

§119 . Relation of Culture Content and Climax

§120 . Religion

§121 . Durations of Growths

§122 . Retarded and Insular Growths

§123 . Growth at the Peripheries

§124 . The Question of Cultural Death

§125 . Spengler

§126. Exceptional Isolated Genius

§127. Conclusions

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

INDEX

Chapter I

PROBLEM AND PROCEDURE

§ 1, The Undertaking, 3. §2, Genius, 7.

§3, The Problem, 16. §4, Procedure, 21.

Chapter I

PROBLEM AND PROCEDURE

§ 1. The Undertaking

EDUARD MEYER, by some considered the greatest historian of our time, assigns to anthropology the task of determin- ing the generic or universal features in human history. He accepts, of course, like all historians, what have been called the principles of the continuity or unity and of the uniqueness of history. That is to say, he holds as primary assumptions that every historical phenomenon has antecedents which in turn have antecedents; that it never originates out of nothing; that every effect also becomes a cause or influence; that exact repetition of phenomena is therefore impossible; in short, that all historic events possess individuality or uniqueness while occurring in an interconnected continuum. Beyond this there seem to lie certain forms of happenings which are more or less recurrent or generic, perhaps necessary and universal. These are no longer the province of the historian as such. Formerly, concern with them was left to what was called the philosophy of history—a field of inquiry on the margin of philosophy proper, somewhat sociological in intent but readier than sociology to deal primarily with historical data as such. The significance of Meyer’s allocation of the study of the generic or repetitive forms in history to anthropology rather than to Geschichtsphilosophie lies in the facts that anthropology is not a philosophical science, but an empirical one; that it has been rather freely admitted by scientists to fall within the domain of natural science; and that its bent, as compared with that of sociology, has been overwhelmingly investigatory and not practical or ameliorative.

On the other side, anthropologists have prevailingly been inclined to construe their discipline as a historical science; at any rate, since about 1890, the majority have come to avow explicitly that the cultural phenomena with which they deal are properly intelligible only in a historic context.

These remarks are made in justification, if such be needed, of an anthropologist’s dealing with wholly historical data. The two approaches are closely related. However, they are also indubitably distinct; and the differentiation is of moment—precisely because it is historically founded.

The immediately available data of history normally are records of events, acts performed by persons. From these, plus surviving monuments, works of literature, and the like, the institutions and manners or cultures of the past are inferred and reconstructed; and these reconstructions are again used in helping to explain why particular events happened. The historian may make pauses in which he depicts the culture of an area in a period. On the whole, however, these static sections tend to be incidents or interludes. Ordinarily the business of history is the narration of a sequential series of events in their connections or coherences, with culture as a context.

The anthropologist’s situation is essentially the reverse: he deals with culture as such, in a context of history. Concerned, not in principle but usually de facto, with recordless peoples, the primitives, he can learn relatively little of particular events among them, and concentrates on the facts and forms of their culture. Are the Dayaks archers, headhunters, weavers, matrilineal, totemic; were the Magdalenians archers, potters, weavers, fishermen? These are the kinds of data which he has developed methods for collecting more or less competently. In what spot or year, and by what individual, pots were first made among a certain tribe, is usually beyond his power of ascertaining; or even the name of the chief who led in a victory over a neighboring tribe, or the date of the fight, unless it occurred within the memory of the living.

True, these differences intergrade. Even the avowedly biographic historian brings in much culture by implication; and an anthropologist who disregarded such historical events as he might learn of would be considered a deficient workman. There is archaeology, of Egypt for instance, from which history with names, acts, dates, and places is reconstructed. There are historians who debate each other’s interpretations or reconstructions of the socioeconomic pattern of the typical early mediaeval town very much as anthropologists debate whether pyramids and kingship and calendar were or were not imported from Asia into Central America, or whether matrilineal or patrilineal institutions, or totems or moieties, were the earlier in Australia. Nevertheless, using culture as an instrument to infer or understand the sequence of events, or using events to understand culture, are diverse processes of intelligence. Events are specific facts; culture by comparison is a generalized abstraction. History is therefore particular, and scarcely ever has detached itself wholly from individual persons. Anthropology often becomes technically detailed, but it can operate successfully without any knowledge of particular persons. The cultures which it depicts or analyzes are summaries or averages of a large number of individual acts.

It will accordingly be clear why Meyer leaves to anthropology the task of investigating the general or universal forms of human history: such forms are cultural.

The problem I have set myself in this book is an investigation of one of the forms which culture takes. This form is the frequent habit of societies to develop their cultures to their highest levels spasmodically: especially in their intellectual and aesthetic aspects, but also in more material and practical respects. The cultures grow, prosper, and decline, in the opinion of the world. How far they tend to be successful in their several activities simultaneously, or close together, or far apart in time, and how much variation in this regard is of record, is part of the problem. The type of phenomenon has been frequently noted, or has been widely taken for granted; it has not been systematically investigated, so far as I know, by a comparison of all available facts; that is to say, investigated empirically instead of intuitively or a priori.

The first question is whether such clusterings or spurts of higher cultural productivity are real or are perhaps only illusions of our minds. Then arises a series of more specific ques tions. Is there a tendency toward a norm of duration for such successful growths, or anything to show of what the duration is a function? Must the florescence extend over the whole of the culture, or may it be partial? Is there an order, or tendency toward order, for the several activities to come successively to their zeniths? Can a culture pass through a cycle to full decline and then enjoy another cycle of prosperity, or are we in that case dealing with two cultures? Can the cycles or bursts be induced from without, or must they develop from within? Do the peaks tend to come early within growths, toward, the end, or is the growth curve most often symmetrical? We have here a whole set of problems, or possible problems, on which there exist abundant data, but of which there has been little systematic comparative research.

It is also evident that this set of problems is only one of a number that confront us in regard to the nature of culture. It confines itself to those cultural productiops which seem qualitatively successful to other times and places—which have impressed and commanded a certain respect for their values from other cultures. Besides dealing with cultural quality, the problem deals with its distributions in chronological time and geographical space. But I have deliberately refrained, except incidentally or when necessary, from examining the content of the cultural growths. I have not tried to write a summary or comparative history of philosophy or science or painting with reference to what each civilization achieved in these activities. I have tried to see how far the several civilizations have behaved alike or unlike in the course of producing their highest manifestations in these activities. Nor again, except so far as it seemed necessary, have I dwelt on the sources of the culture material worked into florescences, nor on the influences and stimuli which disparate civilizations received from one another. In short, the characteristic content and specific quality of high cultural developments have been disregarded here, and with them their possible causes, in favor of their growth configurations-configurations in time, in space, and in degree of achievement. Such a limitation has the merit of focusing attention on certain aspects of the phenomena, and of dealing with comparables, or near-comparables, instead of with everything at once. Obviously, an examination thus limited will not reveal causes. But I cheerfully renounce present search for these, because a clearer and surer understanding of how cultures behave historically seems antecedent to why they behave as they do. The treatment, in short, is behavioristically factual rather than explanatory.

§2. Genius

in tracing the historic configuration of the growth of patterns of higher culture, I have used as chief evidence the productions of individuals recognized as superior. This is because there is a strong tendency, ever since there has been history and even before it was written, to associate great cultural products and great men. Whether or not there was a Homer, we invent one. Little as we know of the life and personality of Shakespeare, we use his name to typify a flowering of culture. There is more written about him, probably, than about Elizabethan literature. Most of the readily accessible data of history are attached to personalities.

If the reverse were the case, and history came without names of people, with record only of events and achievements plus their dates and places, the evidential material listed in this book would have had a thoroughly different appearance. And yet it would have shown the same growth configurations, and the culture patterns discussed would have revealed themselves, if anything, more sharply. It is thus clear that while personalities are the medium through which an approach like the present one must largely operate to express itself, they are not of its essence or its goal.

It might be said that what is ordinarily called history deals primarily and cheerfully with persons, though giving their lives the wider illumination of institution and of social or cultural setting; whereas culture history aims consciously to analyze and reëxpress cultural movements, freed so far as possible from the entanglement of individualities. However, culture history has hardly as yet come to be regarded as more than one phase or subdivision of history. The natural or spontaneous procedure is to think of people and events rather than of intangibles like social currents or cultural developments. Behind the conventional historian’s habits, and reinforcing them, lies the popular assumption that because persons have done whatever is recounted in history, therefore the springs of their actions, and consequently of all historical happenings, must lie in their individualities. That personalities are exceedingly plastic, as all observational psychologists tell us, is partly overlooked in this assumption. So is the fact, most consistently emphasized perhaps by anthropologists, of the tremendous molding power of the cultural environment or social milieu. The more naïve attitude—which the abler historians have pretty well transcended without formally repudiating it—is obviously akin to the view that the human will is free. One can write history without holding this belief, but much history is written as if the will were free. The culture-historical approach, which eliminates individual personalities as much as possible, therewith also eliminates this assumption, and so remains at liberty to consider social or cultural happenings and relations as such and in their own plane. The involved causality therefore tends to become different. Analysis and interpretation proceed without reference to individual human wills.

However, this curious situation results. In analyzing out as many as possible of the principal culture growths of admittedly higher value, I have perforce had to express myself in terms of superior personalities or genius; and I foresee that the main point of my work may be lost, in some quarters, because my recitals of data will be construed all over again as confirmation of the presupposition that personalities are primary and that therefore genius produces or causes higher cultural values and forms.

I can meet this view only by saying that culture patterns and their values are indeed most fully expressed by genius, but that the subject of this inquiry is not who expresses, but what is expressed, and howr that is, the relations in time, space, and substance of each expression to other expressions of higher culture. Every sophisticated person today will admit that Newton’s Principia could not have been formulated either in Hottentot culture or even among Newton’s Anglo-Saxon ancestors a thousand years earlier. In short, though the Principia could have been produced only by a genius like Newton and are the true expression of his personality, it is nevertheless clear that the existence of a certain body of science was needed before his genius could be touched off to realize itself in the Principia.

Now if we turn the situation around, so that it can be examined from its other side, it becomes clear that we can just as well focus interest on the growth of science, investigate its development, and look upon Newton as nothing more than the genius that was needed to touch off to its fullest realization the condition to which science had arrived in 1687. This second viewpoint is the one I am occupying; and it will perhaps be conceded to be as legitimate as the first and more spontaneous one.

It has, in fact, this advantage: while understanding of the pattern of seventeenth-century science and knowledge of its growth will never explain the psychology of Newton as a man, it will help understanding of the Principia as a cultural product, that is, as a historical phenomenon. On the contrary, the fullest possible understanding of Newton as a personality relates essentially only to the understanding of other personalities, or of genius as a type of personality. It will not explain the Principia, which are explainable only in terms of the growtn of science. Historically, the work of Newton is a phenomenon inherently related to the phenomena represented by the works of other scientists, in time, place, and cultural substance. But Copernicus, Napier, Galileo, Kepler, as personalities or individual aggregations of psychic activity, have of course as good as no specific historical relation to the personality of Newton. And as for the psychological relation which almost certainly exists between them, not alone in type but also in degree or potence of personality, this sort of problem can probably be better studied on living, reexaminable, or more or less controllable individuals than on long-dead ones. At any rate, such seems to be the opinion of psychologists, who as a group are notoriously not historical-minded and presumably see little relation between history and psychology.¹

At bottom, then, the difference between the two attitudes is one of interest. Each is as legitimate as the other. If we are interested primarily in personalities, we are dealing with psychology, and bring in the culture only as a setting which cannot wholly be left out of the picture. If we are interested primarily in culture and how it behaves, we can disregard personalities except as inevitable mechanisms or measures of cultural expression.

It seems that this disregard of personalities, except as symptoms, is justified precisely by the fact that apparently greater, culturally productive individuals appear in history, on the whole, prevailingly in clusters. This makes their appearance a function of sociocultural events. If it were not so, they should appear much more evenly spaced or scattered, except for such minor or mild clusterings as will be produced in a continuous distribution by random accident and can be accounted for by the laws of probability.

It is universally accepted that every human being is the product of two sets of forces: his innate heredity or genetic constitution, and his environment. To attribute the appearance of genius primarily to biological heredity leaves the clusterings or constellations wholly unexplained. The moment we admit these as real, we must admit an important other factor, and it then becomes idle opinion to hold to the primacy of heredity. In fact, the finding of the whole science of genetics is that heredity is normally transmitted according to the laws of chance. Genetics leaves only an infinitesimal possibility for the racial stock occupying England to have given birth to no geniuses at all between 1450 and 1550 and a whole series of geniuses in literature, music, science, philosophy, and politics between 1550 and 1650. Similarly with the Germany of 1550—1650 and 1700-1800, respectively; and innumerable other instances in history.

It was a situation like this which Galton clearly recognized in the difference of genius production between fifth-century Athens and nineteenth-century England. He misinterpreted it by giving the Athenians a hereditary rating as many degrees superior to that of the modern English as these are superior to the African negro. His mathematics is sound—in fact, the greatest tribute is due his insight in applying the laws of probability to problems of this sort. His measurement of genius is probably also reasonably sound; at least, the results of his measurements do not appear to have been seriously challenged. But his explanation in terms of hereditary racial change is simply contrary to all we have learned about heredity since his day. His problem, his method, and his facts stand; it is his conclusions that have collapsed. Why? Evidently because there is a powerful factor of environment at work which he ignored in his search for a biological cause. The presence of this environmental factor could be, and was, suspected or taken for granted in some quarters. But cultural evidence and explanation as such could hardly have disproved positively the primacy of hereditary causality. It remained for the geneticists themselves—fellow biologists—to bring the disproof. And therewith the situation to which Galton pointed, which is a situation of the very type that I am examining, was reopened to explanation by the factor—or, better, factors—of environment.

Environment is, in its mechanism, of two kinds: biological, and sociocultural. Biologically operative environment would include selection, as effective ultimately on heredity; and physiological factors, such as malaria, syphilis, hookworm, iodine deficiency, inhibiting or retarding climate, and the like. Ordinary diseases, which either kill or leave the organism essentially unimpaired, hardly come into question, because there is no indication that either their incidence or their mortality is different for genius and the average. There are left, then, diseases which are hereditary or which by their prevalence can sap whole populations and bring them down below their normal potentiality of performance. In regard to these, or to genuinely selective factors in the Darwinian sense, no more need be said than that no real evidence has been offered with respect to their being a material influence on cultural productivity, and that in general the efforts in this direction have been naïve. It is legitimate enough for a biologist accustomed to biological thinking to suggest that the decline of Roman civilization was brought about by the introduction of malaria. Almost invariably, however, biologists have thrown off such ideas only in passing, as a possibly fruitful hint. They know their inability to handle historical phenomena with professional competence, and in general they refrain from attempted demonstrations, however strong their convictions may sometimes be. It is half-scientists, scientists who have become propagandists, and above all it is educated layman, that have pushed such theories; which therefore it is needless to refute. Historians have never taken them seriously. Such theories represent the taking of an opinion, or side, and propping it up with such evidence as can be assembled with convenience or industry, without control of contrary possibilities. It would be dogmatic to say that explanations of this type are wholly unfounded; but it would be a waste of intellectual energy to refute.or analyze them until some positive and critical showing shall have been made for them.

This leaves culture as the part of environment giving rise to the uneven distribution or clusterings of the appearance of genius. The type of phenomenon included under the term culture in this connection is illustrated by the frequency of simultaneous but independent discoveries and inventions. This simultaneity may now be considered as well established.²

Familiar examples are the devising of calculus by Newton and Leibnitz, the discovery of oxygen by Scheele and Priestley, the formulation of the principle of natural selection by Darwin and Wallace in 1858, the discovery of anaesthetics by four separate American physicians, the invention of the telephone in the same year by Bell and Gray, and innumerable others. Probably a large proportion of the many contested priorities of discovery are due precisely to this fact: the discoveries were made in genuine independence, so far as relations of the personalities are concerned; the independence was then stretched into priority by their partisans, national or other. The same sort of simultaneity obviously occurs in aesthetic innovations: the first use of blank verse, of a metrical form, of a chord, of an architectural proportion, of a theme in painting such as shadow or atmosphere or a manner of brush handling.

In a world only partly conscious of culture, these contemporary and near-identical phenomena are apparently attributed to chance, and are noted as dramatic coincidences. They are, however, far too numerous for that. The explanation now generally given is that the times were ripe—the development of a science or art was sufficiently advanced for a certain next step to be in order. I have used in this book the concept of pattern growth, saturation, and exhaustion. These are all ways of saying substantially the same thing, however vaguely we can yet express it: the causal participation of a cultural factor, the intervention of a superpersonal element in the personal activity of genius. In proportion as a greater number of sociocultural innovations can be shown to have begun independently with several persons at or near the same time, the influence of superpersonal or cultural factors, in distinction from personal ones, will be construable as greater.

The contemporaneity of inventions is of course only one special aspect of cultural environment or influence. Any approach that primarily considers patterns of culture as such, that abstracts them so far as possible from the individual personalities associated with them, involves the recognition of cultural phenomena or factors as cultural. It is such factors, whatever their specific shape, that we must look for as the principal determinants, not indeed of the birth or existence of genius, but of its historic appearance, functioning, and productivity.

This view of course does not deny the superiority of certain individuals over others. It assumes such superiority. It also assumes that the finest flowerings of culture growths are expressed through such superior personalities. In fact, it assumes that, in general, genius will be at hand to express the highest manifestations of culture developments. This belief in turn almost necessarily involves the assumption that geniuses are presumably being born at nearly the same rate per thousand or million, century after century—at any rate, within a given race. Of course in this connection genius means potential, not realized genius: innate, hereditary, psychological superiority as distinct from manifest, historically expressed superiority. This hypothesis is certainly in agreement with what we know of psychobiological inheritance: high capacity ought to be born with but little fluctuation from an average rate, standard for each larger hereditary stock. But inasmuch as historically*recognized geniuses do not ordinarily appear in an even flow, but in clusters separated by intervals, it is evident that cultural situations or influences must at times allow and at others inhibit the realization of genius. In short, it would seem that a large proportion, probably a majority, of eminently superior individuals never get into the reckoning of history. There are long stretches in which first prizes are not awarded, or at least are not recognized by posterity.

In Occidental sculpture, Italy holds preeminence; and in five centuries of Italian preeminence, Michelangelo, born in 1475, is considered as marking the culmination. But can we be certain that he was inherently, by his innate gifts, a greater sculptor than Ghiberti, born in 1378, Donatello, 1385, Bernini, 1598, or Canova, 1757? Ghiberti had nothing to build on, but he initiated the Renaissance. Donatello reached higher, but he stood on Ghiberti’s shoulders; and Michelangelo on Donatello’s. Here the pattern began to strain and wilt; and we rate Bernini much lower. But can we be at all sure that in imagination , sense of form, technical skill, he was inferior to Michelangelo? His themes, his invoking of emotions, and perhaps his taste were on a lower level; but they were the emotions and taste of his age. The same holds for Canova. For sculptural ability we cannot really with certainty rate him one notch below the highest; it is the tepid neoclassicism of his period which we rate below Renaissance intensity. It is true that Michelangelo almost surely remains the greatest personality of the five; but on the extrinsic ground that he was painter, architect, and poet also, the other four are chiefly sculptors only.

What this example shows is that in ranking geniuses we evidently do not rank them according to intrinsic ability, which we have little means of estimating as such; rather, they appear to us as the composite product of personal superiority and cultural influence. If the cultural pattern which they express is still unformed, or is manifestly declining, we tend to evaluate them as lesser individualities than the geniuses at the pattern peak; but it is uncertain that they really are lesser. It does seem somewhat naïve to assume, because Donatello’s and Michelangelo’s presumptive native endowments plus the known state of art in Florence in 1430 and 1510 come to a higher total than Bernini’s and Canova’s presumptive native endowments plus the obviously decadent state of Italian art in 1650 and 1800, that Donatello and Michelangelo were therefore the greater men. Yet in our general thinking that is what we do. We veil the imperfect logic of the procedure by assuming that Florentine sculpture of 1450-1500 was made great by some miracle of Donatello’s and Michelangelo’s ancestral germ plasm.

To this assumption the simplest objection remains that historically such miracles mostly come in clusters, whereas if they were really accidents of the germ plasm they should come scattered.

On the contrary, culture florescences, viewed as such, reveal themselves as tending strongly to come in pattern waves. Hence the inference is justified that it is something in the wavelike character of culture growths which is at the bottom of the otherwise unexplainable clusterings of genius.

It will be clear that I am not denying or minimizing the existence of individual superiority. I am denying it as the cause of cultural superiority. The cause or causes of this latter remain unknown, and constitute a great problem of inquiry: this volume is an attempt to organize data so as to define the problem. Cultural superiority obviously avails itself of individual superiority as an important channel of expression. It therefore helps personally superior individuals to realize themselves as significant historical figures. On the other hand, absence of cultural superiority tends strongly to prevent inherently superior personalities from being realized as such, historically.

Evidently, a majority of born geniuses never come to fruition for the world. If we could keep culture permanently at its best level, the number of productive geniuses would be perhaps three or ten times as great as it actually is on the average in human history. This proposition is aside from the main line of the inquiry into how culture behaves; but it has a deserving interest of its own.

1 ² Wundt is the outstanding apparent exception, in his Völkerpsychologie, but this deals professedly with sociocultural phenomena and not at all with personalities. The psychoanalysts have shown some inclination to interpret historic figures, but in this they are only applying to interesting and widely but imperfectly known dead persons the processes which they have learned by clinical dissection of living ones.

2 ³ So far as I am aware, the significance of co-inventions and discoveries was first formally pointed out by me in 1917. Within five years, Ogburn and Thomas (Are Inventions Inevitable? Political Science Quarterly, 37:83-98, 1922) cited a list of instances about ten times as numerous. I suspect that we had not only contemporaries but predecessors, and that if their and my recognition of the phenomenon as a recurrent one had been considered sufficiently important to be worth fighting over, our priority would have been contested and quite likely taken away from us by proofs. In short, the principle applies, as it ought if true, to the origin of its own recognition.

§3. The Problem

Recognition of the prevalence of clustering of genius and of the constellating of production of high cultural values is widespread and old. Probably most historians and most nonhistorians would accept it as a fact. On the contrary, there has been curiously little serious endeavor to see implications of general significance in it. The first step in such an endeavor obviously is the systematic collocation of the more available pertinent data, accompanied by analysis to insure their empirical comparability. Such an attempt cannot be said to have been made. The problem has been left to the historians of the arts, who deal with no more than single aspects of cultures, and to the philosophers, who are not empiricists. Spengler both saw the problem and felt passionately its profound importance; but he also felt that he knew the solution, and he was neither analytical, critical, nor orderly. So far as I am aware, no able orthodox historian, or scientist other than Galton, has dealt systematically with the problem.

The essential phenomena were recognized nearly two thousand years ago by Velleius Paterculus. Velleius was not a profound thinker, and obviously did no more than reflect, with his characteristic spontaneity, the opinion of his time. He is worth quoting in full.

Although this portion of my work has already, as it were, outgrown my plan, and although I am aware that in my headlong haste—which, just like a revolving wheel or a down-rushing and eddying stream, never suffers me to stop—I am almost obliged to omit matters of essential importance rather than to include unessential details, yet I cannot retrain from noting a subject which has often occupied my thoughts but has never been clearly reasoned out. For who can marvel sufficiently that the most distinguished minds in each branch of human achievement have happened to adopt the same form of effort, and to have fallen within the same narrow space of time. Just as animals of different species when shut in the same pen or other enclosure still segregate themselves from those which are not of their kind, and gather together each in its own group, so the minds that have had the capacity for distinguished achievement of each kind have set themselves apart from the rest by doing like things in the same period of time. A single epoch, and that only of a few years’ duration, gave lustre to tragedy through three men of divine inspiration, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. So, with Comedy, a single age brought to perfection that early form, the Old Comedy, through the agency of Cratinus, Aristophanes, and Eupolis; while Menander, and Philemon and Diphilus, his equals in age rather than in performance, within the space of a very few years invented the New Comedy and left it to defy imitation. The great philosophers, too, received their inspiration from the lips of Socrates—their names we gave a moment ago— how long did they flourish after the death of Plato and of Aristotle? What distinction was there in oratory before Isocrates, or after the time of his disciples and in turn of their pupils? So crowded were they into a brief epoch that there were no two worthy of mention who could not have seen each other.

This phenomenon occurred among the Romans as well as among the Greeks. For, unless one goes back to the rough and crude beginnings, and to men whose sole claim to praise is that they were the pioneers, Roman tragedy centres in and about Accius; and the sweet pleasantry of Latin humor reached its zenith in practically the same age under Caecilius, Terentius, and Afranius. In the case of the historians also, if one adds Livy to the period of the older writers, a single epoch, comprised within the limits of eighty years, produced them all, with the exception of Cato and some of the old and obscure authors. Likewise the period which was productive of poets does not go back to an earlier date or continue to a later. Take oratory and the forensic art at its best, the perfected splendor of eloquence in prose, if we again except Cato—and this I say with due respect to Publius Crassus, Scipio, Laelius, the Gracchi, Fannius, and Servius Galba—eloquence, I say, in all its branches burst into flower under Cicero, its chief exponent, so that there are few before his day whom one can read with pleasure, and none whom one can admire, except men who had either seen Cicero or had been seen by him. One will also find, if he follows up the dates closely, that the same thing holds true of the grammarians, the workers in clay, the painters, the sculptors, and that pre-eminence in each phase of art is confined within the narrowest limits of time.

Though I frequently search for the reasons why men of similar talents occur exclusively in certain epochs and not only flock to one pursuit but also attain like success, I can never find any of whose truth I am certain, though I do find some which perhaps seem likely, and particularly the following. Genius is fostered by emulation, and it is now envy, now admiration, which enkindles imitation, and, in the nature of things, that which is cultivated with the highest zeal advances to the highest perfection; but it is difficult to continue at the point of perfection, and naturally that which cannot advance must recede. And as in the beginning we are fired with the ambition to overtake those whom we regard as leaders, so when we have despaired of being able either to surpass or even to equal them, our zeal wanes with our hope; it ceases to follow what it cannot overtake, and abandoning the old field as though pre-empted, it seeks a new one. Passing over that in which we cannot be pre-eminent, we seek for some new object of our effort. It follows that the greatest obstacle in the way of perfection in any work is our fickle way of passing on at frequent intervals to something else.

From the part played by epochs our wonder and admiration next passes to that played by individual cities. A single city of Attica blossomed with more masterpieces of every kind of eloquence than all the rest of Greece together—to such a degree, in fact, that one would think that although the bodies of the Greek race were distributed among the other states, their intellects were confined within the walls of Athens alone. Nor have I more reason for wonder at this than that not a single Argive or Theban or Lacedaemonian was esteemed worthy, as an orator, of commanding influence while he lived, or of being remembered after his death.

These cities, otherwise distinguished, were barren ol such literary pursuits with the single exception of the lustre which the voice of Pindar gave to Thebes; for, in the case of Aleman, the claim which the Laconians lay to him is spurious¹

That a problem is old may mean that it is insoluble, but it does not mean that it is vain or unworthy. Velleius has stated its essentials. To them we can add the facts of the history of Islamic and European civilization, of Egyptian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, even some beginnings of understanding of Mesopotamian and native American. Instead of two cultures, one largely derived from the other, we can compare half a dozen major ones. This is the scope of the examination.

On the other hand, I deliberately refrain from any ultimate explanation. If we can do no better than to find the causality of the phenomena in emulation, like Velleius, or in any other commonplace factor of individual psychology, we had better leave the problem alone. The phenomena are cultural, and their first understanding must be in cultural terms: how they actually behave culturally; how far they are historically alike or unlike; whether there is a type of events underlying.the several cultural physiognomies. At present, any explanation can hardly be more than descriptive. The nearest I have ventured to an interpretation is in terms of realization of culture patterns. But I recognize that as an explanation this is only perceptive or descriptive. We are becoming increasingly aware of culture patterns. But we know extremely little, in any systematic or coherent way, about how they function and operate; and beyond that lies the problem of the why of their behavior, which may ultimately lead us back into psychology, or into the complex and obscure field in which psychobiological and sociocultural factors are enlaced. Short-circuiting by means of a spurious answer in terms of such causalities, which at present can be only verbal, I am specifically conscious of trying to avoid.

Another type of interpretation I mention only to dismiss as trivial: the specific historic explanation, such as that Elizabethan drama arose to its heights because of the victory over the Armada, or that the Thirty Years’ War made Germans write poor poetry and do feeble science for a century after. Historians have long and increasingly been sheering away from such immaturities, but they persist in textbooks and amateur pronouncements. Some explanations of this type may contain some truth, though even then it is likely to be of the kind which makes the trigger responsible for the shot. Invariably, however, they are more wrong than right, because any single specific cause is always only one of many: the realest reason, the best understanding we can arrive at, in regard to any cultural phenomenon, is always the complex nexus of the largest historical totality with which the phenomenon can be brought into relation. The whole understanding of history is a matter of depth or perspective, as against which the singling out of obviousnesses in the immediate foreground is intellectually infantile. A cultural or historical pattern is a larger nexus which we perceive as possessing a certain objective validity.

If in the course of this study I allude to such shortsightednesses, it is to correct those which still have some currency: such as the concept of an Augustan age, whereas Roman literature came into flower during the dissolution of the Republic and died under Augustus. Or again, it is significant that mediaeval French architecture, sculpture, literature, and royal power had all declined before the Hundred Years’ War; presumably, therefore, this war is more properly to be construed as the effect of a general decline in French national fortunes, perhaps as the product of a sag or interval between the working out of two successful sets of French patterns. Similarly with the four centuries following the Han breakup in China: the arts, instead of being destroyed by barbarian conquest and civil war, were actually progressing through a formative stage, of which the earlier T'angs reaped the fruits; it was the alleged political prosperity of the Hans under which the older Chinese culture reached its terminal stage. The inspection of cultural phenomena with an eye to their constellations, to the growth curve of their patterns, leads to a number of such corrections of particular perspective.

1 ⁵ Roman History, Bk. I, pp. 16-18. Translation by F. W. Shipley, 1924.

§4. Procedure

The most feasible plan for the study seemed to be to examine separately each separable course of a recognized intellectual or aesthetic activity and to determine as nearly as possible the growth of its quality or value curve in terms primarily of time, but of geographic localization also. This means that the qualitytime configurations of Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, Greek philosophy, Arabic philosophy, and so on, were separately expressed. These in turn were then compared with one another. Thereupon science was treated in the same way; then sculpture; and so forth. This more or less sociological procedure has the disadvantage of lifting each growth out of its context of actual historical association. It seemed necessary, however, to begin an empirical operation analytically, with minimal groups of phenomena, and to compare and synthesize later. Theoretically, objection might also be made to this method because it assumes without proof the equivalence of each pattern growth, whereas science functioned differently in the total cultures of ancient China and modern Europe, philosophy was interwoven with religion in India and the Middle Ages but much more dissociated from it in Greece, and so on. In short, the supposedly comparable activities are not strictly comparable. I concede the point; but know of no other procedure. Roughly, at least, everyone is in agreement upon what constitutes philosophy or sculpture or poetry, especially when attention is focused upon activities which attained recognized achievement value and not with fumbling endeavors, undifferentiated gropings, half-articulate attempts. I have tried to do justice to major departures of direction by mentioning them, without allowing them to prevent comparative investigation altogether. After all, there are great similarities, and these must have significance, underneath the endless variability of particular historic expression.

A second treatment of the data crosscuts the first: the several activities within one area or nationality are considered to gether, in conjunction with political fortunes. This yields a profile of national- or integral-culture developments. This review (in Chapter Ten) is briefer, since most of the data have already been given in the preceding chapters.

The third part of the work (Chapter Eleven) consists of review and discussion.

As for the activities considered, they are, apart from the military-political data introduced in Chapter Ten, taken from the fields of aesthetic and intellectual exercise. These are, of course, not the most fundamental cultural activities; but they lend themselves best to the kind of examination proposed— perhaps because they are like flowers and fruits, from which the classifying botanist can in general extract more classification and history, or at least a readier classification, than from roots, stems, and leaves. They cycle more definitely, whereas technical arts and economies tend to go on with less evident fluctuation. Sociopolitical structure, population size, and wealth are factors which vary and which should be studied in this connection. But it is very difficult to obtain precise data on the last two over any lapse of time.

Of the several activities, philosophy and science speak for themselves. Of the arts, sculpture, painting, architecture, music, and literature obviously come into question. Of these I have reluctantly omitted architecture, except for some superficial cognizances in the combined national treatments in Chapter Ten. Almost alone among the arts, I found myself unable to follow the histories of architecture with sufficient empathy to induce a conviction of understanding their judgments. Structural features, which I evidently have not mastered sufficiently, interplay with aesthetic ones. Apparently, almost any building of sufficient mass or engineering difficulty will produce a strong psychological impression, to which the historians of architecture, like the mass of mankind, have yielded. A huge pyramid of masonry, even a stupa of heaped-up earth, an aqueduct, or a modern office building, are indubitably powerful symbols in emotional effect; but they may express but little direct aesthetic impulse. Then, too, the conventional classification —as into Doric and Ionic, Romanesque and Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque—proved confusing with respect to many particular structures. These terms are labels which at times refer to essential design and at times to externals; the initiate is supposed to know when and which. In my bafflement, I retain the suspicion that a culture-historically intelligible history of architecture is yet to be written.

Music I have had to restrict to that of the later Occident. The histories of other musics are mainly histories of their theories or instruments. The compositions are lost, or we do not know how the occasionally preserved records really sounded.

As for drama, there seemed reason both for separate discussion and for inclusion in literature. At the risk of some repetition, I met the dilemma by treating drama, both ways. Prose proved difficult to separate consistently from poetry, and history from other prose writing. Rather against my preconceptions, historiography often failed to yield clear-cut constellations of its own; I have therefore reluctantly left it as a strain of literature. On the other hand, at the risk of some disproportion, I have allowed a chapter to philology: though it is the least important of the activities dealt with, its configurations are neat.

Another disproportion is of size. The chapter on Philosophy is briefer than that on Science, and that on Music than those treating of the other arts: they were the first written. If this is an injustice, I hope it will be compensated for by compactness, to which I could not always attain in later chapters.

My rating of genius and values, at any rate relatively within any one culture, is in the main the currently conventional one: I have followed the books, and their consensus is fairly close. Textbooks especially have been convenient in this regard, on account of their timidity about departing from the accepted norm. Encyclopaedias likewise, in the space they assign; and they give the facts which I principally needed—achievement, degree of eminence, dates, and place—concisely and with freedom from argument or novel opinion. The space measure- ments within books are not valid internationally: of Chinese, Hindus, and Arabs only the more outstanding penetrate to our encyclopaedias, as against many second-talent Europeans; and of course every French, German, English, or American encyclopaedia favors its nationals. But within the frame of one culture or nationality both the dicta and the space allotments of the secondary works are equitably significant. Where I have followed my personal judgment in place of the usual rating, I have tried to remember to designate it as such.

Certain disproportions are deliberate. Japan, for instance, developed a highly specialized mathematics which is of the greatest intrinsic interest culture-historically, but it remains unknown to most scientists and most historians; I have therefore given more space to this than to the configuration history of the familiar European mathematics.

In the choice of cultures I have also been guided largely by practical considerations appearing in the course of the work. Obviously I have had to work largely at second hand, from extant histories. These vary in their utility according as knowledge has been made available in European languages. For China and Japan the histories are excellently dated, but the currents are traced and evaluations are made according to plans, presumably native in origin, rather different from those followed in most other histories. For India, the value judgments are rather like our own, but the dating is of the haziest. For Egypt, the currently accepted picture of constellations, though unique in its repetitiveness, is remarkably clear; so sharp, in fact, as to arouse a suspicion of overschematization. Mesopotamia, on the contrary, is a chaos of discontinuities and uncertain dating; little that would make a picture emerges, and I have had to omit the culture from most chapters. The native American civilizations I would have liked to include, on account of their presumably complete historical disparateness; but the facts are insufficiently clarified. We have an inscrip- tional chronology from the earlier Maya which is internally certain but unplaced in universal time. We have a documentary history for the later Maya and Tol tec-Aztec, but it is more or less legendary both in dates and content; it seemed wise not to build on materials so much less certain than most of the others. Ancient Peru I know something of at first hand; but we possess no dates whatever, and some of the culture sequences are not yet out of controversy, so it seemed wise to forego any interpretations based on personal certitude.

European or Occidental civilization I treat differently from any other: first,, nation by nation, in each activity; and then as a composite whole. This procedure, together with the fullness of readily available data, has produced the result that the European section of several chapters has become as bulky as all the other sections combined. This I regret, because it will inevitably tend to produce an impression which I do not hold, namely, that European culture is more important than any other. In any genuinely sociological or comparative investigation the reverse is of course true: each essentially independent growth should count equally; if anything, the culture we participate in ought to weigh less heavily than the others, because our knowing it subjectively tends to impede our objective understanding of it. However, Occidental culture is extremely interesting as multinationally symphonic to a greater degree than any other. Each nation, as it were, contributes its own timbre and its own part to the unity of the larger composition. The way in which the national configurations proved to build up into the pan-European one has been, to me, one of the most fascinating results of the study.

Obviously, I have not read every writer, philosopher, or scientist whose name is cited as material, nor can I identify the product of each sculptor or painter named. I have tried to acquire at least a little firsthand acquaintance with some sample of each culture growth dealt with; not so much because this would suffice for a control, but for my own satisfaction and assurance. I am not a polyhistor nor writing a work of polyhistory, but have selected facts, from among those on common record, as they are pertinent to the problem set.

I have tried to exercise due care for exactness, but the range of history referred to is wide and some errors have no doubt crept in, especially in dates. Not all of these are due to my own carelessness of transcription: the sources I have used have a way of differing. Encyclopaedists evidently have a habit of borrowing from one another more frequently than is avowed, and in this way birth dates come to be perpetuated in two traditions. Deaths are more frequently given uniformly, but they are less important for my purposes. Names and birthplaces are also subject to error. A of X is a frequent Greek and mediaeval designation, in which X most frequently is the birthplace, but not always; sometimes fairly intensive biographical research would have to be conducted to insure accuracy, and then not always with certain result. Since my theme is constellations, and not biography, individuals-become as it were only stones in a wall, and smallish inaccuracies are of less consequence than they would be in personal history. Errors would have to be gross to affect the argument.

I do not read Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese, or Russian, and so cannot control the orthography of names from these languages, for most of which two or more systems of transcription are in use. According as my authorities employed one or the other, I followed. In a work of primary scholarship or permanent reference for factual detail, it would generally be considered necessary to transcribe into a consistent system, and this would require knowledge of the language. In this book, where names primarily serve identification, such correctness would have added a grace of workmanship which nobody would have appreciated more than I; but it might have added another seven years to the writing.

Certain recurring metaphors, I am certain, will provoke irritation and criticism: growth, patterns, saturation, realization, pulse, dissolution, and the like. If I could have found more precisely denotive terms, I should certainly have used them, and I shall welcome any substitutions that are either more definable or more aptly connotive. It must be remembered that history has the least technical vocabulary of any learned study, and that in all of what it has become customary to call social science the choice is largely between using figurative terms for fairly well understood groups of phenomena, or quarreling over definitions of concepts which tend to lead an existence of their own because their relation to phenomena is loose. Diffusion, for instance, began as a hesitant figurative extension of meaning, but has become a standard term in anthropology and culture history. It includes a variety of processes, such as diffusion by war, trade, long contact-residence, missionization, or force. Where the mechanism is less of an issue than is the result, or where the result is clear but the specific mechanism is unknown or dubious, diffusion without further qualification may be a perfectly adequate description of the phenomena dealt with. Similarly in the present work, the concern of which is with the inherent grouping of certain phenomena of history and which largely begs the question of the basic causal mechanism involved, growth