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 abandoment 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.

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CHAPTER III

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

T the risk of needless repetition I again empha

AT

sise the fact that Ethnic Psychology, the groupmind, is a product of social relations, a result of aggregation, and cannot be fully explained by the processes of the individual mind. The resemblances between them are analogies, not homologies. They act and react, one on the other, with the force of independent psychic entities.

The general proposition to this effect I have laid down in the second chapter of Part I. Now I shall go more into detail and examine just what influences the ethnic mind brings to bear upon that of the individual to bring it into rapport with itself, to make it conform to the mass, to expunge, in fact, all that is individual within it.

I have also briefly but sufficiently referred to the psychologic measures by which this is accomplished, such as imitation, opposition, and continuity, by which the anti-social instincts are curbed, but at the

same time originality and independence are also often crushed.

It remains to point out the exact instruments which the group-mind employs in this process and

to estimate their relative force.

These may be classified under five headings: Language, Law, Religion, Occupation, and Social Relations. This is in the order of the influence which they generally exert on the individual mind, which influence is to be understood as reciprocal, the individual working most potently on the ethnic mind in the same order of instruments. It is true, however, that the relative potency of each of them varies considerably with the condition of culture. Let us briefly examine their several characteristics.

Language. Of all bonds which unite men, none other is so strong as language. This, indeed, it is which first developed the human in man. I have shown that the one distinguishing trait which divides man from brute is his power of general conceptions under symbols. The word "language" provides the symbol. To form words is the necessary first step in reasoning; to attach to words precise meanings, perfect connotations, is the main effort of all subsequent reasonings. Words are the storehouse of all knowledge; they are the tools of the mind, by which all its constructions are framed.

Language is the involuntary product of the human intellect. The man speaks with like spontaneity as the dog barks or the bird sings; but the brute's inarticulate cry expresses mere emotion, while the man's articulate sounds convey thought.

Language is a proof of man's original social nature. It is impossible to explain it as other than the action of a group. It is due directly to the need of others felt by each. The individual alone could never form a speech, and hence he could never clearly think; for thought, for clearness, needs not only creation but expression. We never fully understand or fully believe, until another understands us and believes with

us.

Hence, language is the most perfect example of ethnic psychical action. It is the product of the group, to which each individual of the group contributes his share, and which is the common property of all, reflecting at once the traits of the group and the relations of the individual to it.

Nor is language a merely temporary criterion of group-character. Conspicuously not. Nothing clings so tenaciously to us as our mother tongue. Religions may fade and institutions decay, we may change our clime and culture, but the tongue persists. It is passed from generation to generation, exceeding count. No heirloom is so cherished, no tradition so hoary.