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.

CHAPTER II

ETHNIC MENTAL DIVERSITY FROM COGNATIC CAUSES

IN

N 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

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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 About are in good measure because they are born so. 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 The adjective called "homochronous" heredity. 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 Inherited tendthe reproductive period in women.

encies 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