the group life throughout long lapses of time in peculiar climatic or geographical conditions finally results in the development of special group characteristics, mental as well as physical. It should be remembered, however, that the great race types such as the Australoid, the Negro, the Caucasian, and the Mongolian 1 are the result of age-long selection under definite conditions so that the characteristics of the group are relatively permanent. Certainly no pronounced race types have appeared in the memory of man either as the result of race intermingling or through the operation of climatic or economic conditions. The great races have lost their plasticity to a large extent, owing partly, no doubt, to age and partly to man's increased ability to control his environment.2

There seems to be little doubt, however, that in the beginning race differences were the outcome of the selective influence of environment. To be sure the aristocratic school of Gobineau, with its emphasis on history and its glorification of Aryanism, finds the key to all progress in certain fixed race endowments. It even asserts that the transfer of the civilisation of an advanced race such as the Anglo-Saxon to a lower

1 The classification given by Sir H. H. Johnston, op. cit., p. 1. For other classifications see "Dictionary of Races and Peoples," Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. V, p. 6.

race such as the negro can only take place through intermingling of blood.1 The same idea of the paramount importance of certain constant race traits tinges later writers, particularly of Germany, who approach the problem of race largely from the standpoint of Weismannism.2 But these traits must originally have been the result of selective environment in conjunction with happy variations within the group, so that the comparative fixity of race characteristics is apparently due to the rigid and prolonged process of natural selection to which the group has been subjected.3

The habitats of the Australoid and negro races, namely, Australia and the tropical region to the south of the desert of Sahara, are typical illustrations of the selective influence of environment. The home of the negro race is relatively small, uniformly tropical in climate, and with very little geographical diversification, consequently variations among individuals

1 Woltmann, Politische Anthropologie, p. 158.

2 Ibid. Driesmans, Keltenthum, also Rasse und Milieu. Ammon, Die Naturliche Auslese beim Menschen, and Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen. The latest and perhaps the most successful glorification of das Germanenthum is Chamberlain's Die Grundlagen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (English translation). Schallmeyer, though a follower of Weismann, repudiates this senseless Rassedünkel. See his Vererbung und Auslese im Lebenslauf der Völker, p. 383.

'Driesmans, Rasse und Milieu, Ch. I.

or groups are not encouraged. The result is a social organisation, with a monotonously simple mode of life, and pronounced and deeply ingrained race traits, in which the instinctive and the impulsive predominate over the rational. Because of these conditions the West African negroes have, according to Keane, "made no perceptible progress" for a thousand years.1 It is imperative that both the optimist and the pessimist on the negro question bear in mind this background of race history when they approach the vexed question as to the ability of the negro to adapt himself to our strenuously industrial and highly complex civilisation.

When we come to describe more in detail the hereditary race traits that are supposed to determine the social mind of a group, we are met by the psychologist who insists that the bond of human society is essentially rational and that hereditary factors are, therefore, negligible as belonging to a lower level.2 The

1 Man; Past and Present, p. 84. Dowd, The Negro Races, perhaps overemphasises the effect of geographic and economic conditions upon the mental traits of the various groups. See also Semple, op. cit., p. 173 ff.

2 The uncritical humanitarianism of the ethical idealist may be ignored. For when we have taken the philosophical saltum mortale which enables us to view the race question from the comfortable heights of the ethical absolute, differences which seem tragically real to the farmer in the "black belt" of the South may very easily dwindle into "childish phenomena in our lives, phenomena on a level

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obvious reply to this attempt to divorce the physical and the mental is that man is a psychophysical being and variations in the physical organism would lead ' us to expect corresponding differences in mental traits. "It does not seem probable," says Boas, "that the minds of races which show variations in their anatomical structure should act in exactly the same way. Differences of structure must be accompanied by differences of function, physiological as well as psychological; and, as we found clear evidence of difference in structure between the races, we must anticipate that differences in character will be found." 1

The psychologist will further remind us that whatever hereditary differences exist between races must be reconciled with the fact that all men, irrespective of race, exhibit the same general mental qualities. Scientific tests have shown that, in spite of the marvellous stories of travellers, the savage does not surpass the civilised man in the acuity of his senses.2 No tribe has been found without a well-organised language, showing that the power of concept-building

with the dread of snakes, or of mice; phenomena that we share with the cats and with the dogs, not noble phenomena, but caprices of our complex nature." Royce, Race Questions, pp. 48, 49.

1 Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 115.

2 Woodworth, "Racial Differences in Mental Traits," Science, N. S., Vol. 31, pp. 171-186.

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must be present in an elementary form among all people.1 Homo alalus is a fiction; we know only homo sapiens. The parallelism shown in the development of remote groups, where similar phenomena, such as spirit-worship, taboos, blood-vengeance, animistic beliefs, and the like appear, indicates that the same general type of mind must be possessed by all peoples.2 These common mental aptitudes would correspond in a general way to the physiological similarities which make complete interracial fecundity possible.

To

While this is true, facts are not wanting to show that this common stock of mental traits has been subject to change through natural selection operating at the level of the instincts and motor reactions. take one illustration, the vigour of the sex instinct in the African negro is probably the result of his long struggle with unhealthful environment and a high death-rate, natural selection insuring the survival of those groups only which possessed the procreative impulse to a very high degree. "An African baby's life," says a recent African traveller, "is a series of miraculous escapes; perhaps if some of the safeguards so elaborately gathered round English children were removed, we should see some compensation for a

1 Boas, op. cit., p. 96.

2 Thomas, American Journal of Sociology, Jan., 1905, p. 450.