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eludes that social evolution is a series of mutations of the mind.
A theory of this kind can be ingeniously supported, simply by
going back to a point where the facts are sufficiently befogged.
Heard does this with the aid of another kind of outmoded anthro–
pology: the dogmatic diffusionism which arose in protest to the
equally dogmatic idea of independent cultural evolution (as it
was conceived by Frazer). The diffusionists (like Elliott Smith
and W. H.
R.
Rivers) insisted on the irrationalism and uninvent·
iveness of man and held that culture originated in one or more
centers and became diffused throughout the world by migrations
and military campaigns. Heard gives this a purely idealistic twist,
maintaining that what is diffused is "a new outlook on the uni·
verse" or "general frames of mind." Thus he holds, on very scanty
evidence,* that the cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus
Valley, the three "arcs of proto-civilization," were "precipitated
as a whole" from a primeval culture somewhere in the Middle
East.
Our problem, then, is to make a similar psychological muta·
tion and to precipitate the new society as a whole. And this is the
true destiny of man, for he is the only mental creature, the only
creature, therefore, equipped to escape the biological evils
of
"specialization and intra-specific warfare," which have accounted
for the atrophy of countless subhuman species (and, as Toynbee
shows, of human societies as well) . In order to learn how to make
this mutation, Huxley and Heard turn to the religious mystics–
the Buddhists, Lao-tzu and the Taoists, the Christian mystics, the
Quakers-who allegedly know the psychological technique and
have practiced it with parochial success ever since the mass
of
mankind lost touch with the Golden Age.
It
is a commonplace that when a cultivated civilization decays
from its own inner confusion or from the threat of barbarism, the
tender-minded become concerned with the injustice of the evolu·
tionary processes of nature. The passional urges, which seem to
conform to the natural processes and to deny humane morality,
appear to be overwhelming. The ideas of sin and pain become
obsessive. The most complete possible solution of this problem,
short of suicide, was made some 2400 years ago by Gotama, the
Buddha. And in the Buddha is to be found much of the
psych~
•Namely, that archeologists find in this region no indication of a
developing
culture
