The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology

Although, as we have seen, there is no common measure of Mind and Matter, the connections between the two are so intimate that, in organised beings, any change in the one entails a corresponding change in the other.

This is a principle which has long been accepted in the Science of Man. A quarter of a century ago Professor Schaffhausen expressed it in these words: “One of the weightiest doctrines in Anthropology is the constant correlation between intellectual capacity and physical organisation.” That branch of Anthropology called Somatology is devoted to the investigation of the human body, its measurements, structure, and functions, as they differ in individuals, groups, and races, for the purpose of defining and explaining this correlation.

The expressions of the individual mind are largely the reflex of its environment, of the external impulses, stimuli, and conditions which surround it. These are physical, measurable, quantitative, and therefore within the province of the “natural” sciences.

In their relation to the individual, they mostly belong to the domain of “experimental” psychology; but as they influence the group and decide its constitution they form an important branch of ethnic psychology also.

The natural history of the Mind is chiefly the study of its environments, its milieu. But that term is to be taken in its widest sense.

The nearest environment of my mind is my body. Indeed, it is the only environment of which I have positive knowledge. As John Stuart Mill well said, “I know my own feelings with a higher certainty than I know aught else.”

Hence the physical constitution of the individual is that which has primary importance.

That may be considered first as an individual question, without going beyond the circumstances of the personal life and health, a purely somatic investigation. We may next inquire how many of his peculiarities the individual owes to his ancestors, which will bring up the questions of heredity, hybridity, and others, including mental as well as physical traits. His debt is large to these, but still larger, say some writers, to his contemporaries, the associates with whom he has been thrown from birth. These are his “people,” the “group” of which he is a member. He is modified in a thousand ways by this “demographic” environment.

All these—his ancestors, fellows, and his own body—are “human” influences. Beyond them lies the great world of other beings and of unconscious forces, the animals and plants, the land and water, the clime and spot, which make up his “geographic” environment. How dependent is he upon these! How utterly they often control his thoughts and actions!

Each of these I shall endeavour to estimate in their influence on the individual, not as an individual, but as a member of a group; and on the group itself, as an independent, psychic entity, nowise identical in character with any individual.

The human body is an “organism” each part of which is in vital relation to the whole, and is influenced by the condition of every other part. This is true of function as well as structure, for function, after all, is merely the term we give to structure in action. Mentality, psychical activity, is a function, and, like all others, is organically conditioned by the whole organism and its several parts. To understand the influence of the body on the mind, therefore, we should consider in such relation each of the physiological “systems” which make up the organic life. For my present purpose, however, it will be sufficient to select those most closely related to mental activity.

The Brain.—The learned of all times have sought to find “the seat of the soul.” Primitive men generally placed it in the liver or in the heart; but anatomists have been long agreed that it must be somewhere in the head. The latest word from them is that it resides in the nerve cells of the grey matter of the brain, in the number and activity of the “pyramid-neurons” there situate, and probably in their capacity to send out shoots or branches.

This intimate, ultimate, structure and potency establishes the difference between the intellectual faculties of species and individuals. In the lower animals these cells are few and scattered, and their proliferations short and simple. In man the cells increase in number and their extensions become long and complex. They are more abundant when the grey matter is ample, as is the case where the convolutions are intricate.

Up to a recent period it was supposed that the weight or size of the brain was the chief physical element in mental superiority. It is now known, that has little to do with it. Not a few men of distinguished parts, such as Liebig, Gambetta, Tiedemann, etc., have had brains decidedly below the average in weight, while, on the other hand, many with large brains have led unimportant lives. This is also the case with races, for although the African negro is below the European in his cranial capacity, the Fuegian, decidedly below the African in mental development, has a brain larger than either of the other races. Obviously, both the cubical content and weight of the brain depend much on the general size, stature, and weight of the body; and no one has been found who pretends that the biggest man is also the ablest.

We are almost compelled, therefore, to accept as correct the conclusion reached by Lapouge and others, that not the size but the molecular constitution of the brain is finally decisive of intellectual power; and this is a trait which up to the present time has eluded analysis.

This is not inconsistent with holding that where other proportions are the same, a larger, more complex brain is generally significant of higher mental powers; and that a well-balanced skull, with orthognathic features and moderate facial development, are indications favourable for the psychical possessions of the individual or the group.

The shape would seem to be more significant than the weight of the brain. Of all the elements of gross cerebral anatomy it appears to be that most indicative of mental power.

This is a recent discovery of craniologists, the entire meaning of which has not yet been worked out. It is due to the researches of Ammon and Lapouge within the last decade, and to the anthropologist promises solutions of various obscure problems in the cultural growth of the species.

These observers have ascertained, by many thousand measurements on the living and the dead, that those persons who, as a class, are best adapted to the high and continued strain of modern city and competitive life, have skulls in that shape termed “subdolichocephalic,” which means that their brains have a prevailing and fixed spatial relation of their parts, a relation, no doubt, which is the most favourable to the general and prolonged activity of those nerve cells which we know are the seat of psychical function.

Such persons in youth stand at the head in the school, they take the prizes in examinations, they carry off the honours in intellectual contests, they are leaders in the learned professions, they are the self-created “upper class,” and, what is equally noteworthy, in the unhealthy atmosphere of great cities they outlive their associates with other shapes of brain.

But these observers also note that while these somewhat long-skulled persons have such intellectual and even physical advantages in the struggle for existence, they are deficient in others, which, under some circumstances, are even more necessary to success.

The same extended series of measurements and comparisons show that those whose brains are rounder in form—more brachycephalic—prove generally superior in technical skill, in industry, and in perseverance. They are less adventurous, they lack imagination and the stimulus of the ideal, they are narrow and formalists; but they shine in the bourgeois virtues of capacity for steady work, of devotion to hearth and home, in respect for settled government, stable laws, and ancestral institutions.

This favourable brain shape is, in Europe, often correlated with the blonde type, light hair, and grey or blue eyes; but whether this is anything more than a local peculiarity remains in doubt.

Ammon has pointed out, however, that these traits, where they have been united in history, have marked a daring, energetic, progressive stock, one fertile in bold explorers, conquerors, and thinkers. Such was the type of the ancient Aryans, who became the ruling race wherever they carried their victorious standard, “not through numbers, longevity, or fertility, but through the consequences of ‘natural selection.’” Professor Lapouge has further shown that in southern France, where the local aristocracy rose from the same stock as the peasantry by superior personal ability, a notable difference is observable between the skull-shapes of the two classes, the crania of the “gentlemen” being considerably longer in proportion to width than those of the peasantry.

They are well suited for village life and agricultural occupations; but, subjected to the stress and strain of great cities, they die out in the third generation.^[3]

When it is remembered that whole nations, stocks, races, are characterised by the prevalence of one or other of these skull-forms, it is at once seen that a physical basis is here presented for ethnic psychology worthy of attentive study. These authors have, in fact, applied their conclusions in this direction; but, concerning themselves chiefly with the mixed populations of European states, have been principally occupied with the “social selections” which may be attained in such communities from this cause.

While the skull-form thus becomes distinctive of brains possessing or lacking certain faculties, it must not be supposed that this relation is an essential one. The brain will perform its work without reference to the shape of the skull. This is proved by the many tribes who have artificially deformed the head in obedience to fashion or superstition. In America it is noteworthy that the crania thus malformed to the utmost degree are precisely those of the nations of the highest civilisation—the Mayas of Central America and the Quechuas of Peru.

The Nervous System.—Professor Haeckel, in his lectures on “anthropogeny,” lays down the maxim, “All soul-functions or psychical activities depend directly on the structure and composition of the nervous system.” This is illustrated by the biological development of the nerves of special sense,—of sight, hearing, taste, and smell. Originally they were all indifferent touch-nerves, and by slow degrees in indefinite time developed their specific reactions.

They are yet by no means the same in all persons, as everyone knows. They also differ widely in groups, nations, and races. The study of the “reaction-times” of the principal races has occupied Cattell, Bache, and other psychologists. The sense of taste is notably different. An Eskimo finds pleasure in castor oil and a Kamchatkan in eating rotten fish. The Annamite is almost insensible to pain from wounds, but suffers intensely from moderate cold and is acutely affected by odours. The Fuegian can sleep naked on the snow with comfort, but is easily disturbed by noises.

The intellectual differences between both individuals and races arise not so much from relative mental capacity as from varying reaction to mental stimuli. They all have pretty much the same power to pursue knowledge, if they choose to exert it. The difference is one involving the general nerve-tracts. Perception and attention were the forces which in the history of organisms developed all the special senses from nerves of touch; and the growth of the intellect is consequently closely conditioned by the qualities of nerve-sensations.

The Osseous System.—To be asked to define the ethnic life of a group from the bones exhumed in its cemeteries would seem a hopeless task. Yet it is possible, for on the osseous system the whole bodily structure is built up, and the activity of the brain is conditioned.

Races differ in their skeletons. That of the African black is heavy, the flat bones thick, the pelvis narrow, and presents many peculiarities which are termed “pithecoid” or ape-like. Contrasting with these are small-boned, delicately formed skeletons of the Indonesians and Japanese, resembling those of the female in other stocks. It would not be difficult to bring the ethnic into relation to these skeletal traits.

Professor Hervé, of the School of Anthropology of Paris, has argued that the presence of the “Wormian bones” and the complexity of the cranial sutures are a measure of the rapidity of brain-development, and consequently a criterion of mental activity in a stock. This can scarcely be accepted, for we are not sure that the rapidity of bone-formation bears any ratio to the growth of the brain-cells; but it is not rash to argue that a people whose bones are largely diseased must have lived in unhygienic conditions, and had become degenerate in mind as well as body.

Such is the case with the skeletons of that wholly unknown tribe who once densely peopled the Salt River valley in Arizona, and of those who dwelt near the great cemetery of Ancon in Peru. About one-third of the skeletons present pathological features indicating long-continued defective nutrition or widespread disease. No wonder that both stocks perished off the earth. Though at one time singularly advanced, they had sunk into complete degeneracy.

Muscular System; Height and Weight.—There is a relation between height, weight, and mental power, true for the individual and the group. This is not mysterious, as all three depend upon nutrition. Physiologists lay down ratios of height, weight, and age which are requisite to the highest health, mental and physical.

We may go further, and say that any marked aberration from the average of the species in these respects is accompanied by some equally noticeable psychical peculiarity. Dwarfs have often acute minds, but rarely deep affections.

Inferior stature is often an ethnic trait. The central African pygmies, the Lapps, and the Bushmen are familiar examples. Mr. Haliburton has recorded others in the Atlas and Pyrenean mountains; and Dr. Collignon reports the diminution in height in some districts of central France.

The explanation of all is the same—lack of proper, regular, and sufficient alimentation. They are, as the Germans say, Kümmerformen, products of wretchedness. The shortest of the Bushmen are also the most miserable—those living amid the barren sands of the Kalihari desert.

The reaction of such prolonged semi-starvation on the functions of the brain-cells leads to psychical dwarfishness. None of these undersized stocks have gained a position in history or contributed to the culture of humanity. They have been unequal in physical strife, and have been forced to the wall.

Reproduction.—The reproductive function in its various manifestations exerts an enormous influence on the individual mind, and exhibits broad racial and ethnic distinctions. Its power is scarcely less operative in the fate of nations than of persons, and its reflection in the mind of groups deserves closest attention.

The period of puberty changes widely the direction of the thoughts, and the character frequently undergoes a complete transformation. Children previously studious lose interest in their lessons, while others pursue them with greatly increased devotion. The sexual emotions, which mark the epoch, may absorb the whole being or merely stimulate it to higher efforts.

The age at which puberty begins varies, following the general law that the higher the annual temperature the earlier in life does the change set in. This becomes of psychical interest when it is added that the earlier the change the more intense and permeating are the erotic passions; the more do they compel to their sway the other emotions and the intellect.

Only two motives, observes Professor Friedrich Müller, can induce the Australian or the typical African to prolonged labour,—hunger and the sex passion. Civilised communities are measurably lifted above the immediate struggle for food, but not in the least above the other impulse. If you could learn the prime motive, says Dr. Van Buren, of the presence of the crowds of men on Broadway, you would find ninety per cent. of them are there through sex feeling.

The sentiments of love, of marital and parental affection, of family life, control mankind more completely than any other motives. These are physical, personal feelings, and to that extent narrow and in conflict with many which are broader and more altruistic. Few persons can advance beyond them, and the collective mind is obliged by the laws of its own existence to register them as of the very first importance.

The power of a group is, other things being equal, in proportion to the size of the group, and its increase in numbers is in geometrical proportion to its fecundity, provided the food-supply remains sufficient.

These are two closely related and essential factors to advance, and have been so felt from man’s earliest infancy. The complicated systems of marriage and relationship in vogue among the Australian and other rude tribes arose from the effort to adjust the birth-rate to the available amount of food. Many of the forms of marriage arose from the same consideration. In polygamous countries most men are monogamous because they cannot keep large families. Legal infanticide, exposure of the new-born, as in China, is another effort in the same direction. Where such measures are not legalised they reappear in other guises. Artificial abortion and intentional limitation of families are frequent in France and the United States. They are outcrops of a sentiment of self-protection which has been familiar to the species from its beginning.

Sex feeling belongs distinctly to the animal and emotional side of human nature. Where it is the dominating motive, neither individual nor group can attain the highest development. This is noticeably the case in the African. Coloured children in our public schools are equal to their white associates up to the age of puberty. But that change is more profound in the African than in the European constitution. After it has occurred, the difference in favour of the white children becomes very apparent. Their mental world is not so invaded by thoughts of sex, and they are more inclined to study.

In a less degree, as I have before remarked, the same contrast exists between the Teutonic and Latin peoples of Europe, and has been acknowledged to have resulted in decided advantages for the former.

Virility—that is, the reproductive potency in the male—bears no relation to the strength of the erotic passion.

In some the passion of sexual love is little more than an appetite. Satisfied, it is indefinitely quiescent, not entering into the general life; or, if it at times fires the emotions, they are easily restrained or banished by the exercise of other mental powers. This has been the case with many eminent men of notoriously ardent temperaments but never subdued by them (Byron, Goethe).

It is also an ethnic trait, a characteristic of the Teutonic blood, in sharp contrast to the so-called Latin peoples. With the latter, as is obvious from the literature, the erotic feeling is an enduring and overmastering passion, colouring the intelligence and often absorbing into itself the activities of the life.

As virility in man, so fecundity in woman has no relation to sex feeling; or, if any, in a reverse degree.

The famous calculations of Malthus, which cannot be disproved, and which have been confirmed by the latest statistics, show that this fear of population transcending the food-supply is real and ever present. Where it is not immediate, as in modern life, it is nevertheless near and visible in the division of the parental property among a large family of children; in the increased difficulties of properly educating such a family and giving each a proper position and start in life; and in providing for such as are feeble or incompetent. This effort, extended throughout a community, means more intense competition, a more bitter struggle for property, a more constant occupation with sordid details, to the neglect of reflection, study, and abstract thought.

Reproduction, therefore, to its utmost limits, would be of no advantage to a community, but decidedly deleterious. Its effect on the collective mind would be lowering, as it would centre the general attention on material aims and personal interests.

Nor is the individual who would direct his activities by the highest motives at all compelled to increase his kind. The accessory demands upon his time and powers which such an action usually entails, would probably hinder him in his efforts. Darwin forcibly stated this in his Descent of Man. He imagines a man who, not compelled by any deep feeling, yet sacrifices his life for the good of others through the love of glory. “His example would excite the same wish for glory in other men and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration. He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high character.”

If this is true of one governed by a motive confessedly not the highest, how much more true of him or her whose soul is fired with a devotion to the truth of science or to the welfare of the race!

Feminism.—The physical contrast of the sexes belongs to all mammals, to birds, and to most of the animal kingdom. The female is generally smaller, lighter, with lines more graceful and delicate. This is true, as a rule, in all races of men and held good for the earliest tribes whose skeletons have been preserved. Yet the contrast in man is so far from positive that the anatomist knows no criteria to establish the sex from the bones except the more obtuse angle of the rami of the pubes in the female; and even this is obliterated in some branches of the human race, the Indo-Chinese, for example, where the rami meet in both sexes at about the same angle (Hervé).

The tendency to “feminism” is not unusual in the white race as an individual peculiarity; and is especially prominent as a racial trait in the Asiatic or Mongolian branch of our species. They have sparse beards, little hair on the body but much and strong on the head, and the features of the sexes are similar. In many respects they display feminine traits of character, being industrious, sedentary, and peace-loving, receptive but not originative, ruled by emotion, and easily brought under the influence of nervous impressions.

Women have much less variability than men; they are precocious, and their growth more rapid, but the arrest of development arrives with them sooner. They remain near the child type throughout their lives.

Mr. Havelock Ellis has argued that for this reason they are nearer the future type of the species, and that the results of modern civilisation are to render men more feminine in occupations, character, appearance, and anatomy.

It would be more correct to say that as civilisation advances the distinctions between the sexes erected by conditions of lower culture tend to disappear, each sex gaining much from the other without forfeiting that which is peculiarly its own.

The masculine woman and the feminine man are erratic, often degenerate types. The tendency to “homosexuality” (or to “non-sexuality”) has appeared from time to time as an ethnic trait. It was notorious in ancient Greece and mediæval Italy, and in both cases presaged deterioration.

The Vital Powers.—Health is one trait; tenacity of life another. Feeble and sickly people sometimes reveal a surprising vitality; others, who are hale and athletic, succumb to slight attacks. The American Indian, when he falls ill, gives up and dies; while Europeans, though increasingly requiring medical attention, are growing in longevity.

This physical fact has a noticeable bearing on ethnic psychology. Where the old survive, the property and the management of society usually rest in their hands. The traits of age are reflected on the collective mind. It is cautious, perhaps to timidity, slow in action, avoiding strife. These are the traits of Chinese diplomacy, in which country not only is longevity considerable, but the respect for the old passes into veneration.

As a rule, the lower forms of culture are associated with the shortest lives. The Australian is a Nestor who reaches fifty years. Early maturity and early decay mark inferior and degenerate stages of society. Hence they are guided by inexperienced minds and by the emotional characters of youth.

Temperament.—The ancient physicians had much to say about “temperaments,” classifying them usually as four, the sanguine, bilious, nervous, and phlegmatic. Both modern medicine and psychology have rejected these as a basis of classification, but acknowledge that there lies an important truth in the ancient doctrine.

Professor Wundt, for example, defines temperament from the psychological standpoint as “an individual tendency to the rise of a certain mental state,” and Manouvrier, recognising the intimate relationship of mind and body, explains it as “an ensemble of physical and mental traits arising from fundamental constitutional differences” in individuals.

Confining myself to the psychological aspect of temperament, I should call it the personal mode of reaction to different classes of stimuli. It is the general disposition of the mind, the individual way of looking at things, l’humeur habituelle, and is independent of sentiments, ideas, or knowledge. It is the psychic resultant of the whole organic life of the individuals. In this sense, the distinctions of temperaments are justified, as they depend on the dominance of one or the other of the physiological systems—circulatory, alimentary, nervous, genital, etc.—in the economy.

Various writers (Manouvrier, Ribot, Kant) have adopted as the measure of temperaments and the principle of their classification, the one standard of energy; in other words, molecular change. They speak of sthenic and hypersthenic temperaments, active and passive, etc.

I doubt if this is correct in physiology, and it is certainly not so in psychology. Men of all temperaments may be equally energetic, equally active in life-work. That is an old observation. The measure or standard should be, not energy, but that general mental condition called happiness. That is the popular distinction, and it is the true one. When we speak of a sanguine, bilious, cheerful, gloomy, temperament, we refer to a general and characteristic mental attitude, with reference to individual happiness.

Rabelais could joke on his death-bed, but Byron, young, rich, and courted, could find no theme for song but sorrow.

The phlegmatic temperament is supposed not to enjoy keenly, but also not to suffer keenly. The sanguine temperament is not easily cast down by adversity, while the bilious or melancholic person is little capable of appreciating the joyous side of life.

These ancient terms may not be acceptable to modern science; but the truths on which they are based are acknowledged by all authorities.

They interest us here, because a group has its temperament as much as an individual, drawn, no doubt, from that prevailing among its members, but noticeably strengthened by the inherent forces of ethnic psychics.

The recognition of this is seen in common parlance when we speak of the phlegmatic Dutchman, the gay Frenchman, etc.

Such popular characterisations may not be accurate, but they serve to show that the fact of a national temperament has unconsciously made itself felt.

It does not seem dependent either on nutrition, geographic position, or history; and it is hereditary and constant. Thus the Eskimos, living amid eternal snows, with a limited diet and a desperately hard struggle for existence, have a singularly cheerful disposition, loving to talk, laugh, and indulge in pleasant social intercourse. On the other hand, the Cakchiquels of Guatemala, living amid the most beautiful and fertile tracts in the world, are chronically morose and gloomy. Their temperament is reflected in their language, which, as the late Dr. Berendt remarked, is as singularly rich in terms for sad emotions as it is poor for those of a joyous character.

There is no doubt that a cheerful mental disposition is in itself a defence against the attacks of disease. Seeland, in his anthropologic studies of the question, found that persons of a cheerful temperament are, in an extended series, physically stronger than those who are melancholic, in the proportion of 148:135; though whether this should be regarded as cause or consequence is open to construction; and, while fully recognising the actuality of national temperaments, he adds that an analysis of them, with a view to defining their causes, is still far from practicable. The important conclusion which he reaches, however, is that the happier temperament corresponds to the higher degree of health, and that, in comparison, that which tends to the melancholic is morbid, a pathologic product, an indication of degeneration.

Regarded as a national question, we derive from this that the calm and the cheerful temperaments are those which promise most success and permanence.

In the last chapter I have considered the individual in his relation to the group simply as an isolated unit, with his own powers and weaknesses.

Both of these, however, he derives largely from his ancestors, through the fact that he is born a member of a particular species, race, and family. Such traits react powerfully on his mental life, and, indeed, in themselves force him into relation with a human group, his cognatic or kindred associates.

The ethnic psychologist must therefore devote to them insistent attention. For convenience of study the facts may be grouped under three headings, Heredity, Hybridity, and Racial Pathology.

Heredity.—In body and mind, the child resembles his parents, the individual his ancestors. This is the principle of fixity of type, the permanence of species.

Neither in body or mind is the child ever exactly like his parents or either one of them. Differences are always visible. This is the principle of constant variation, at the basis of the unending transformations of organic forms.

On these two principles rests the law of Evolution, which may be progressive or regressive, that is, toward greater complexity and specialisation or toward simplicity and homogeneity. Of these two principles, one is real, the other merely apparent,—the negative or minus quantity of the other, as cold is to heat or darkness to light. Which is the real?

The question is not idle, for upon its correct decision depends the accuracy of our views of organic life.

So long as the doctrine of the immutability of species was accepted, everyone believed in the fixity of type as the prime law. When Lamarck and Darwin had undermined that position, and up to a very recent date, the two principles were considered somehow equal, dual conflicting forces, the fixity of type being a passive result of the action of the “environment.”

The unphilosophical character of such a conception of facts has now become apparent, at least to a few. The true positive of the two forces is change, variation. This is the one, fundamental, essential characteristic of living matter. Every element of an organism that is not ceaselessly changing ceases to be living, vital.

“Hereditary,” therefore, is a merely negative expression. It means a diminution, not a cessation of change. Inherited traits are those in which the rate of variability has been so reduced that they reappear by repetition in several or many generations. Every one of them began in some single individual, was due to a definite exciting cause, and was transmitted by the route of reproduction. Hence inherited traits have been properly termed “secondary variations.”

The long discussion whether acquired characters can be inherited has virtually been decided in favour of the opinion that every character, whether racial or specific, was originally acquired by a single person or persons and transmitted by them. The data of pathology admit of no doubt on this point, and pathology is but one of the aspects of general organic development.

That not every acquired character can be transmitted goes without saying; and it is equally true that hereditary traits vary widely in their capacity for survival. So evident is this that they have been classified by observers into “strong” and “weak” traits, the latter betraying a feebleness of self-perpetuation compared to the former.

I have been discoursing of physical heredity and some of its observed laws. This has not been beside the mark; for I repeat that the correlation between body and mind is absolute. Psychical traits are passed down from generation to generation hand in hand with physical peculiarities. Men are what they are in good measure because they are born so. About this the students of heredity are unanimous and positive. Hence the necessity in ethnic psychology of learning the laws of physical heredity and applying them to the history of the mind.

An example will illustrate this.

There is a curious manifestation of transmission called “homochronous” heredity. The adjective signifies that a trait which appears first at a certain age in the parent will also appear first at about the same age in the offspring. A familiar physiological example is the date of the beginning and the end of the reproductive period in women. Inherited tendencies to disease will recur in the offspring at the age they revealed themselves in the parent. This is strikingly true of mental traits, especially those which are degenerative.

Even in the mixed populations of modern states, the connection of mental with physical heredity is manifest. Commenting on the population of France, Dr. Collignon observes: “To the difference of races, a purely anatomical fact attested by the form of the skull, the colour of the eyes and hair, and similar bodily traits, there corresponds a cerebral difference, which shows itself in the prevailing direction of the thoughts, and in special aptitudes.” These contrasts are shown by the statistics of Jacoby, who examined the birth and lineage of the most eminent men of France in all departments of activity. He found that the Normans were decidedly ahead in the exact sciences and practical affairs, while in poetry, romance, and works of imagination in general the people of the Midi were far superior to them.

Heredity is believed to present itself in another aspect, which has excited much attention. I refer to that form of it called “atavism” or “ancestral reversion,” or “retrogression,” in which a child “takes after,” not his immediate parents, but some remote ancestor; even, as has been often claimed, so remote as beyond the limits of our own species. Such traits have been called “pithecoid” (ape-like) reversions, as they are alleged to be derived from some four-footed precursor of man, an ape, or even a lemur.

Evolutionists whose enthusiasm transcended their discretion have pointed out many such features in the human skeleton. A few years ago (1894) I gathered these together, and in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I undertook to prove that these features can be satisfactorily explained by mechanical and functional processes acting in the individual life or in that of his immediate ancestors, and that we have no occasion to appeal to hypotheses of descent, which have, at least, never been proved. Other American anatomists (Bowditch, Baker) endorsed and supported by further evidence this position, so that physical anthropologists, in our country at least, have said less about atavism than formerly; and the final blow to it has been dealt quite lately by a Dutch writer, Dr. Kohlbrügge. He has established the thesis that “all so-called atavistic anomalies are meaningless for the race-type. They are brought about by arrests of development or general variability. They depend on disturbances of nutrition, leading to excess or deficiency of productive energy, presenting a deceptive appearance of progressive or retrogressive evolution.”

The consideration of these questions in physical heredity is necessary in psychology, whether individual or ethnic, not merely because the laws of physical run parallel to those of psychical life, but as well for the valuation of those expressions about “men recurring to their brute ancestors” in habits or feelings, so frequent in popular literature.

Hybridity.—The intermixture of human races or stocks, human hybridity as it is sometimes called, has been recognised by all anthropologists to be a prime factor in ethnic psychology, in the psychical history of Man.

But, strange to say, the opinions about its results could not have been more divergent. On the one hand we have a corps of authors, Gobineau, Nott, Broca, Hovelacque, Hervé, etc., who condemn the admixture of human races as leading inevitably to mental and physical degeneration, infertility, and extinction.

In direct contradiction to them we find the not less distinguished names of Quatrefages and Bastian, who maintain not only that such “miscegenation” is harmless, but that it has been the main factor of human intellectual progress! That owing chiefly to it certain tribes and nations have by unconscious selection drawn to themselves the strong qualities of many lines of blood, and thus won the foremost place in the struggle for existence. This was notably the opinion of Quatrefages, who defended the thesis, “In race-mingling the crossing is unilateral and is directed under unconscious selection toward the superior race.”

This is supported by many well-known examples. In our own country, the superiority of the mulatto to the full-blood negro is proved by history and is familiar to all observers; and Dr. Boas has shown by statistical researches that the half-blood Indian is mentally superior to his companion of pure lineage, while the half-blood Indian women, instead of revealing diminished fertility, average two more children to a marriage than their red sisters of unmixed lineage.

But it will not do to ignore the array of facts of contrary tenor which has been marshalled to show that in divers instances the result of race-mixture has been disastrous.

Many of these may easily be explained by the unfortunate social condition of children in such unions, mostly illegitimate, or at odds with extreme poverty and its ill surroundings. If they do inherit an increased ability, it is, under modern conditions, more apt to be directed against than in favour of the social order.

After all such allowances, there remains a residue unexplained by them, and inconsistent with the general theory of advantage in race-intermixture.

The solution of this problem is to be found in the operation of an obscure but certain law of heredity which has been demonstrated by the best modern observers.

This reads that in the struggle for transmission between contrary characteristics in the parents, any trait, mental or physical, may be passed down separately, independently of others.

Thus, on the physical side, the father may have red, the mother black, hair. The children will inherit, not a blended colour, but some the red, some the black hair. Or, let us say, one parent has marked musical ability, the other none. Some of the children will have as much as the gifted parent, the others be devoid of the faculty.

It is essential, also, to remember that it is the inferior race only which reaps the psychical advantage. Compared to the parent of the higher race, the children are a deteriorated product. Only when contrasted with the average of the lower race can they be expected to take some precedence. The mixture, if general and continued through generations, will infallibly entail a lower grade of power in the descendant. The net balance of the two accounts will show a loss when compared with the result of unions among the higher race alone.

This consideration has led a recent writer, Dr. Reibmayr, to a theory of ethnic mental development which merits close attention.

A family, tribe, caste, or race, to preserve and increase its faculties must sedulously avoid intermarriage with one of inferior gifts. The value of “breeding in-and-in” is familiar to all interested in the improvement of the lower animals. This was attained in primitive life by the tribal law of endogamous marriages, by which a man must take his wife within the tribe, but not of his immediate blood.

The superiority which this developed led to the subjection of other tribes, and this, through capture and enslavement of the women, to intermixture of blood, with its above mentioned first consequences: deterioration of power in the captors, and, next, elevation of the lower, conquered tribe.

The former was sometimes counteracted by the maintenance of purity of blood in a portion of the community, which thus became the ruling class; and if this did not take place, the tribe itself soon fell beneath the sway of some neighbour which had maintained its lineage more purely.

Thus, says Dr. Reibmayr, the history of human mental development is, in fact, the history of human hybridity and its necessary consequences.

Thus it appears that the reciprocal action of these two genetic processes, the one of close and closer interbreeding, the other of wide and wider intermixture of blood, is the prime element in modifying the psychical faculties,—in other words, in creating and moulding the ethnic mind.

How weighty this consideration becomes when we reflect that throughout historic times, that is, from the earliest dawn of civilisation, the subspecies of man have ever been as clearly contrasted in every feature as they are to-day! The oldest monuments of Egypt and Assyria show their portraits as typical as if carved or painted yesterday. No boreal fountain can wash the Ethiopian white; no kisses of tropical Phœbus could turn Cleopatra black.

We are constrained to adopt, therefore, the principle formulated by Orgeas, that, so far as history knows, “the races of men have never altered their traits except through intermarriage.”

The physical criteria of race, such as the colour of the skin, the hair, the shape of the skull, the odour of the glands, are well marked in the gross. I have examined their relative values for purposes of classification in another work, and need not repeat the details here. But the question is pertinent: Are there psychological distinctions separating the subspecies of man as clearly as those of his physical economy?

Conflicting answers have been and still are offered to this inquiry. By some the mental powers of the races are asserted to be as sharply contrasted as their personal appearance, and the gulf between them to be practically impassable.

I have already said that nothing in the minute or gross anatomy of the brain can be offered to support this view. The contributions to the general culture of the species have been markedly unequal; but may not this be explained by other reasons than inherent physical inequalities?

I have already expressed the opinion that human groups have differed less in inherent psychical capacity than in stimuli and opportunities. Such, also, is the belief of that profound student of human development, Professor Bastian. He claims that convincing evidence in favour of such a view can be drawn from the uniformity in the development of thoughts, inventions, customs, religions, and the other elements of culture the world over, up to a certain point at which other intercurrent influences entered, not dependent on race distinctions.

After a prolonged study of primitive peoples the anthropologist Waitz reached the conclusion that there is not and never was any positive difference in the intellectual power of races; and the historian Buckle, reviewing the record of the species in time, announced his conviction that “the natural faculties of man have made no progress.”

In abundant instances the children of savage parents have been brought up in civilised surroundings and have shown themselves equal and occasionally superior to their comrades of the so-called higher race in all the tastes of cultured society. It were useless, therefore, to talk of an average natural inferiority.

The attainment of a possible average, therefore, must be conceded. But this must not be construed as closing the question historically or psychically.

It is constantly observed in education that children of equal ability are by no means equally good scholars. They respond differently to the stimulus of the desire of knowledge.

Such contrasts are witnessed in races also, and, apart from whatever other influences we may name, are hereditary characteristics, recurring indefinitely and controlling the racial mind, its activities and its ambitions.

So visible are the mental differences of races that some writers have advocated a psychological classification in anthropology. Professor Letourneau has attempted it in one of his many treatises.

Pathology.—But it is not sufficient in this study of racial psychology to recount what a race has done and left undone in the work of the world. We must also turn a gloomier page and take into account the pathological mental symptoms it betrays; for these may be indicative of a disease so deep seated and so fatal that the doom of the race is inevitable. When we see whole peoples dying out, not through external violence, but through some internal lack of vital force or adaptability, as in the instances of the Tasmanians, Australians, Polynesians, and American Indians, we may be sure that either in mind or body they are the victims of some deep-seated, fatal disease.

Most writers, treating the subject superficially, have sought for the cause of the decline and destruction of peoples in the decay of their institutions, in the immorality of their lives, in their apathy to danger, or in the loss of their ambitions. These are but symptoms of the mental or physical malady which, “mining all within, infects unseen.” They are the results of the incurable ailment which is hurrying them to destruction. Dr. Orgeas is right in his contention that “the pathological characteristics of peoples have played leading parts in the grand dramas of history, though they have too often escaped the observation of historians.”

It finds its expressions in such phenomena as Ratzel enumerates as the cause of the deaths of peoples—restlessness, indifference to life, debauchery, infanticide, murder, cannibalism, constant war, slavery, laziness. When these are carried to the extent of reducing the personal and numerical vigour of a tribe or race, it indicates that its intellect is awry, its mind is diseased.

Thus the ineradicable restlessness of the red race, which more than any other one trait has stood in the way of their self-culture, belongs in the pathology of their nervous system. As Dr. Buschan points out, and as I have elsewhere emphasised, they are especially subject to “diseases of excitement,” contagious nervous disorders, leading to scenes of the wildest riot and tribal loss.

They share this pathological condition with the Malayo-Polynesian peoples of the Pacific island-world. Among them both we find numerous examples of that outbreak of homicidal mania called “running amuck” (properly amok), where the maniac rushes into a crowd, killing whom he can; a crowd, not of enemies, as in the “Berserkerwuth” of the Northmen, but of friends and relatives. The abandonment of both races to alcoholism and narcotics is an evidence of the same morbid nervous excitability. This is an inherited racial pathological tendency and is not to be measured by the mere prevalence of nervous diseases. These may arise from the increased strain on the neurons when the struggle for existence is intensified. The enfranchised blacks since they have been obliged to support themselves present a much larger percentage of brain and nerve disease; such maladies among the Jews of Europe are six times more frequent than among the Aryans; and certain forms, such as progressive paralysis, are unknown in any but the most civilised communities.

The immunity of races to disease, or its reverse, reacts powerfully on their mental life, leading in the latter case to discouragement and apathy, in the former to confidence and conquest.

Two of the most striking examples are measles and smallpox. In the white race, the former has become merely one of the “diseases of children,” exciting little alarm, and, against the latter, vaccination provides an efficient protection. Among native Polynesians and Americans the ravages of both have been so dreadful as not merely to decimate a population but to leave the survivors mentally prostrate and indifferent to life. To such an extent has this mental depression sometimes progressed that some tribes, as the Lenguas of La Plata, have decided on the self-destruction of their race, and destroyed all their children at birth.

The immunity of the white race to malignant measles is not due to any special power of resistance, but to well-known laws of natural selection in disease, and does not extend to many diseases. The Japanese are practically immune to scarlet fever, the black race to yellow fever, etc., and that all such exemptions react favourably on the ethnic mind cannot be doubted. Such immunity is strictly cognatic, a legacy of blood in the true physiological sense, the human cells having undergone changes by the repeated attacks of the disease-germs resulting in practical indifference to their assaults.

Indirectly, the march of epidemics has often not only decided the fate of nations but worked remarkable changes in national character. A familiar and striking example is the result of the Black Death (bubonic typhus) in England in the reign of Edward III.