steam, electricity, and photography. This is progress "saltatory," or by leaps. It explains, he believes, the sudden and rapid advance of some periods, and also the losses of continuity sometimes observed. His maxim is: "The newest of the factors of culture multiplies all the factors which went before it."

6

CHAPTER IV

PATHOLOGICAL VARIATION IN the ethnic

WE

MIND

E have seen in the preceding chapter that atrophy and regression are an essential process of progressive evolution, necessary in order that the preponderance of nutrition may be cast in favour of the most useful organs and structures.

This is "physiological" degeneration, "degeneration with compensation," the result of which is finally favourable to the general economy.

But there is another form of degeneration, the tendency of which is distinctly injurious to the organism as a whole, and which, if unchecked, would compass its destruction. This is "pathological degeneration," "degeneration without compensation."

Although such processes are also biologic,—that is, carried on by life products (cellular neoplasms),— they are incapable of independent existence and are always warring against that of the organism in which

they are engendered.

It is an axiom that the laws

of progressive evolution do not apply to pathological processes (Virchow).

In the history of the mental life of individuals and nations we find a striking parallelism to these physical processes, certain degenerations bringing with them compensations in the growth of higher faculties, others tending inevitably to the destruction of the individual or the group. The latter belongs to the domain of "ethnic psycho-pathology."

"Psycho

Psychologists have shunned this field. logy," says a recent American writer, "must concern itself with the normal mind"; and a German author of merit has insisted that mental pathology has no place in ethnology, because this science occupies itself only with the progress of mankind.

Much more correct is the opinion of Dr. Ireland that "it is quite erroneous to treat the history of the human race as that of the sane alone"; and, indeed, we may almost go so far as Professor Capitan, of the School of Anthropology of Paris, and say: "Everybody is diseased. Nobody is healthy. We are obliged to study mankind in a constantly morbid condition of body and mind." Or we may go as far as Pascal, when he says, “Men are naturally so insane that he is deemed insane who is not insane with the rest."

Ethnic psychology is obliged to take into account the constant presence and powerful action of pathological mental elements. Tribes and nations have been destroyed by war or by catastrophes; but much more frequently some disease of the ethnic mind itself has prepared its own extinction.

Here an important distinction is necessary. Ethnic mental disease has no relation to the frequency of individual cases of insanity. These do not affect the ethnic mind because that is the outcome of the intelligence of the community, not of its irresponsible members.

For this reason ethnic psycho-pathology cannot be discussed wholly from the standpoint of insanity, although the analogies are such that we can profitably compare them in outline, and this I shall attempt. A definition is sometimes useful, so I present the following:

A pathological condition of the ethnic mind is present when it is chronically incapable of directing the activities of the group correctly toward selfpreservation and development.

Like all definitions in natural science, this one is not to be applied literally in all cases. The incapacity may be present and yet not to such a degree. as to be positively destructive. All nations have some insane tendencies, as have all individuals; and it is

true, as a specialist has said: "The more one knows of insanity, the less does it seem to differ from the normal condition."

These pathological traits of the ethnic mind can be analysed and classified. They will be found to arise 1. From some intellectual deficiency or perversion; or

2. From some persistent disturbance of the emotional life.

No one will demand that every member of a group should suffer from such conditions in order that its collective mind should betray morbid consequences. It is enough if a majority, or even a decided minority, providing it exerts the requisite influence on the mass, is in such a pathological state. A degenerate nobility or a dissolute priesthood has often worked the ruin of a state through the contagion of example and its control of lower classes.

Before considering in detail the varied forms under which these diseased mental traits present themselves, it will be well to examine the general causes to which they are due.

ETIOLOGY.-Each of such pathological conditions of the ethnic mind has a basis in some prevailing physical neurosis, the origin of which can be traced in the ethnic history, and which becomes hereditary in the stock. For of these two principles no student