THE INTEGRATION OF CULTURE 51 
the individual’s habit-patterns under the influence of 
traditional custom can best be understood at the present 
time through the study of simpler peoples. This does not 
mean that the facts and processes we can discover in this 
way ate limited in their application to primitive civiliza- 
tions.. Cultural configurations are as compelling and as 
significant in the highest and most complex societies of 
which we have knowledge. But the material is too intri- 
cate and too close to our eyes for us to cope with it suc- 
cessfully. 
The understanding we need of out own cultural pro- 
cesses can most economically be arrived at by a détour. 
When the historical relations of human beings and their 
immediate forbears in the animal kingdom were too in- 
volved to use in establishing the fact of biological evolu- 
tion, Darwin made use instead of the structure of beetles, 
and the process, which in the complex physical organiza- 
tion of the human is confused, in the simpler material was 
transparent in its cogency. It is the same in the study of 
cultural mechanisms. We need all the enlightenment we 
can obtain from the study of thought and behaviour as it 
is organized in the less complicated groups. 
I have chosen three primitive civilizations to picture in 
some detail. À few cultures understood as coherent or- 
ganizations of behaviour are more enlightening than many 
touched upon only at their high spots. The relation of 
motivations and purposes to the separate items of cultural 
behaviour at birth, at death, at puberty, and at marriage 
can never be made clear by a comprehensive survey of the 
world. We must hold ourselves to the less ambitious task, 
the many-sided understanding of a few cultures.