CHAPTER III

PHYSIOLOGICAL VARIATION IN THE

ETHNIC MIND

THUS furnished, as we have seen in the last chap

ter, with a common stock of faculties and desires, the primitive men set out from their unknown birthplace, to conquer the world. They journeyed east, north, south, and west, into foreign fields and under alien skies. Seized in the iron grasp of novel environment, each band must adapt itself to the new conditions or perish; for in their ignorance they knew not to wrest the power from Nature and make her their slave. They must bow and yield to her commands under penalty of death.

Compelled by external forces, they changed the hue of their skin and the shade of their hair; they grew tall of stature or sunk to pygmies; their skulls altered in shape, and their long bones rounded, or else flattened like those of apes.

Not less surprising were the alterations in their

minds. Some felt no desire for fixed abodes, and ever wandered, while others sowed fields and built cities; some remained in small, ungoverned bands, while others founded great empires and enacted iron codes; some were satisfied to compel the Unknown by magical rites, while others sought the wisdom of God and the secrets of Nature.

These variations, however, meant Progress; for repetition is not progress, and it is only by ceaseless change and endless experiment that one can find out the best. The separation of man into families. and tribes and peoples was, in fact, a necessary condition to his improvement as a species. From the seeming chaos of changing forms the highest type emerged, as, in Greek myth, from the surging seas rose the perfect form of Aphrodite Anadyomene.

The chaos is indeed but seeming. The differences among men are the results of physiological processes, proceeding in definite directions under fixed laws, and adjusted so that they bring about calculable results. Let us turn to the examination of these processes, in their universal expressions operative everywhere, as well in the psychical as the physical world.

Psychical as well as physical; for the new conditions which transformed the bodies of the primitive horde left their impress also on the minds of its

members, not erasing any trait which made them Man, but bringing them into closer likeness between themselves, and by that act into sharper contrast to their neighbours. The varied practical needs of life fostered their peculiarities, and created a similarity of feelings and purposes, and a community of knowledge in each band. This acted as a sort of intellectual motherwater in which each individual mind of the band crystallised into the same shape, readily accepted the beliefs, imbibed the same prejudices, looked at the world through the same spectacles.

We may well believe that it was not long before contests arose between the primitive hordes. We are told, indeed, by a venerable authority that they began between the first two brothers. Then these diversities of body and mind decided the conflict. The stronger slew the weaker or drove them from the field; unless, indeed, by craft or superior skill the weaker foiled the stronger, as, so endowed, in the long run they surely would. Thus the great law of Natural Selection, of the destruction of the less fit, exercised its sway to preserve that horde which, on the whole, was better adapted for preservation and gave it power over the land.

In the species Man the exemplification of this great law is, as I have intimated, essentially psychical, and its application is upon masses, upon ethnic

groups. History, the story of man's progress, deals only with these, not with individuals.

Progressive ethnic mental variation is therefore the theme for our immediate consideration, and especially as it is displayed in the processes of natural selection and adaptation. This is the physiology of ethnic psychology, the history of its normal progress to more specialised powers and higher types.

I cannot go amiss if I present it with a rather close adherence to the recognised method of natural science; for the impression is constantly gaining ground that the psychical life of Man follows the same laws as does his physical; or, to express the thought more accurately, that the one is the reflex of the other, for we can read both with equal correctness in terms of thought or terms of extension.

Such changes may take place in several directions: as in abolishing organs no longer useful; in reducing others which are diminishing in value; in strengthening those which are of immediate utility; and, by correlation, maintaining those relations of parts on which the "type" depends.

These changes are not "purposive"; they do not aim toward a future type, though they may result in Such a type may be more decadent than its antecedent, and be the prelude to extinction, under

one.

this adamantine law of destruction; but if its variations have been physiological and adaptive, they will confer upon it the blessing of life, the gift of length of days.

Those changes which strengthen an organ or structure, or tend to develop and preserve new and useful variations are called "progressive"; those which tend to draw individual variation back to the current type or to reduce, certain structures or functions are called "regressive" variations.

It would seem at first sight that such processes must tend in opposite directions-the one beneficial, the other injurious. In fact, both are preservative; but by contrasted physiological processes.

Progressive changes begin in the individual and pass by inheritance into the stock, when they have proved beneficial to it. They continue in action so long as they are useful. When their utility ceases, the energy of the economy is expended elsewhere, on other structures or faculties. The degeneration thus produced is "compensatory." It does not detract from but adds to the general viability of the organism.

What is most marvellous in this process is that the part or power rarely wholly disappears, no matter how long it has been useless. The pineal gland in the human brain is the remains of a third eye with