434 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n\ s., i, 1899
The coordinative and inventive modes of thinking give char- acter to scriptorial culture ; yet there would seem to be a meas- urably distinct stage now arising in the highest culture — a stage in which knowledge is instantaneously diffused over the earth by the telegraph, in which the human voice sounds over the continents through the telephone, and in which various devices for the anni- hilation of space and time are reacting on thought in such man- ner as to unify the thinking of all humanity. It is becoming evident, too, that the coordination of thought by means of devices whereby brain is brought in contact with brain throughout the world (as suggested by intercontinental telegraphic chess games) produces a constructive cooperation between widely separated thinkers, somewhat akin to that of individual hand and brain, and thus shapes a collective and superorganic mechanism for the making of knowledge by the conjoined efforts of many workers. This immature stage seems to be essentially creative.
In brief, the culture-stages may be outlined as (A) prescripto- rial or receptive, comprising (1) pronominative and (2) associative thinking; (B) scriptorial or directive, comprising (3) codrdinative, and (4) inventive thought ; and perhaps (C) superscriptorial or {5) creative mind-work ; and it would appear that no thinker in any stage or sub-stage can comprehend the thinking of any higher plane, or fully assimilate that of any lower plane. These principal stages and sub-stages are themselves made up of local and temporary phases of thinking too many for enumeration — indeed as many as there are distinct peoples ; yet all these appear to fall naturally into groups corresponding to the stages outlined.
When the culture-grades, or planes in cultural development, are thus defined, it becomes easy to understand the various ways in which different minds respond to given stimuli, and, at the same time, to weigh such activital coincidences as occasionally arise ; it also becomes easy to discriminate the effects of the external and internal factors of thought, that is, the effects of
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