CHAPTER IV

_PATHOLOGICAL VARIATION IN THE ETHNIC MIND_

We 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.”

Psychologists have shunned this field. “Psychology,” 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 self-preservation 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 of the subject can doubt, (1)

that every pathological mental manifestation corresponds to a

neuropathic change, and (2) that whatever may be said about the

transmission of acquired characters in physiology, no physician can for

a moment doubt that morbid infection may be passed down from generation

to generation.

For these reasons the study of causes in ethnic pathology becomes of

enormous practical moment. Only by an acquaintance with them can

preventive and curative remedies be applied.

These causes are, at first, always _external_ and _individual_. They

proceed from some form of “environment,” mental or physical. But the

morbid impression, once fully received, is often indelible, becomes

fixed in the type, and is but little influenced by external agencies.

These primary causes of true ethnic degeneration I shall consider under

four headings.

1. Imperfect Nutrition.

2. Sexual Subversions.

3. Toxic Agents.

4. Mental Shocks.

No one of these can act in the long run in other than a deleterious

manner on the ethnic mind. There is nothing “compensatory” in any one of

them or so little that it need not be reckoned.

1. _Imperfect Nutrition._—It has been said broadly that all psychopathic

and regressive conditions arise from malnutrition (Féré). This is true,

in a sense, but does not carry us far in the direction of treatment. We

ask a closer definition of origins.

There is no doubt of the intimate relationship of ample nutrition and

intellectual progress; but while it is well to avoid the ancient notion

of the independence of soul and body and that the former is superior to

the latter, we must guard against the modern extreme of Buckle and his

followers, that the history of nations can be traced to the food they

eat. Man is omnivorous, and his well-being is nourished by food of any

kind, providing it is nutritious and easily assimilable. The effort

which has often been made to trace the character of tribes and nations

to some prevalent diet—be it of fish or flesh, or vegetable products—is

fanciful, and yields no positive facts. What does harm is not some

particular kind but a general insufficiency of aliment.

Imperfect nutrition may be traced to three principal sources. 1.

Insufficient or unsuitable food. 2. Lack of variety. 3. Improper

preparation of food.

The careful researches of Collignon, Ranke, Ammon, and others have

traced the stunted forms, defective bodies, and low intellectual

development of the Lapps, the mountaineers of central Europe and the

Bushmen of the Kalihari desert to one cause, _la misére_, lack of

sufficient and appropriate food. This is certain to bring about

degeneration of organs, incomplete development, and loss of brain power.

Continued through generations, a hereditary taint is engendered which

saps the vigour of the stock, and cannot be eradicated by improved

conditions.

Unsuitable food is usually consumed on account of the scarcity of better

material, but at times from a morbid craving. Examples are the unctuous

clay which was swallowed by various tribes in America and Australia, and

also by some of the “poor white trash” of Georgia. The ergoted rye and

maize to which some of the peasantry of France and Italy are forced to

have recourse exerts a disastrous influence on both body and mind.

But food may be ever so excellent in itself, yet unsuitable to the

geographic and other conditions. The Eskimo thrives on blubber and raw

fish; but such a diet in Ceylon would be as inappropriate as the

Hindoo’s boiled rice for an exclusive diet in Greenland.

Lack of variety interferes with nutrition even when the food material

itself is ample. By structure and habit man is omnivorous, and suffers

when confined to a single article of diet. The blood becomes depraved

and scorbutic symptoms often appear. Nations who mainly live on some one

substance—rice, cassava, potatoes, etc.—suffer, lose their power of

adaptation to their surroundings, as was remarked by Alexander von

Humboldt, and are more liable to disease. Owing also to the partial

sustenance thus furnished, the brain-cells are less progressive and

energetic. There are nearly a score of chemical elements in the body,

all of which must be supplied by the aliment if maximum physical health

is to be attained and the highest energy and moral vigour are desired;

for, although it is not correct to assert, as some have claimed, that

the physical insures psychical perfection, it is undoubtedly true that

the mind is never at its best in a feeble and sickly body. Dr. Johnson

was more than half right when he argued that a sick man is a scoundrel!

A volume might be written on the influence of the preparation of food on

national character. Cookery is one of the fine arts, and its development

has been parallel with general culture. No tribe takes its food

habitually raw. The Eskimo will freeze it first, the Tartar readies his

steak by placing it beneath his saddle, and the African cannibal will

soak his human morsel in water. Before pots or kettles were invented,

the flesh was roasted over the fire or in trenches covered with hot

coals.

Cookery renders food more assimilable, more digestible, and thus allows

the brain a better chance to do its work. Frying hardens and soddens

food, and the frying-pan is, therefore, an enemy to civilisation.

Chewing coarse, hard, and uncooked food develops the muscles of the jaws

and makes the face “prognathic,” an almost sure sign of intellectual

inferiority, and directly connected with an unfavourable shape of the

skull. The man who invented the mill was one of the greatest benefactors

to his race. Condiments add to the digestibility of food and hold an

important place in its preparation. Salt and pepper thus sharpen the

intellect.

2. _Subversion of Sex-relations._—There is nothing more vital to the

growth, even to the very existence, of a nation than the sex-relations

which it favours by its laws, customs, and preferences. Upon these

depend the processes of natural selection by which the number and the

power of future generations are decided through inflexible rules. If

these relations, as established by the fixed natural laws of

species-perpetuation, are traversed by ignorance or wilful disobedience,

nothing can prevent the injury to the physical strength and mental

ability of the offspring.

Such subversions of the sex-relations may be presented under five

headings:

(_a_) Premature and delayed marriage.

(_b_) Abnormal forms of marriage.

(_c_) Abstention from marriage through various causes.

(_d_) Licentiousness. Divorce.

(_e_) Diminution of natality. Infertility.

_(a) Premature and Delayed Marriage._—Mr. Galton, in one of his

thoughtful works, remarks: “An enormous effect upon the average natural

ability of a race may be produced by influences which retard the average

age of marriage or hasten it.” He has illustrated this by abundant

examples now through his many writings familiar to the public, his

general thesis being that the wisest policy for a nation is to retard

the age of marriage among the weak and to hasten it among the vigorous

classes.

This is, of course, to be construed within physiological lines;

premature relations of the sexes, too early marriages, are disastrous in

every respect. Statistics of European armies show that there is a far

higher mortality and much more sickness among the soldiers who have

married young than among single men of the same age. Certain Australian

and South American tribes force their female children of immature age

into marital relations, and to this is due the rapid decrease of their

numbers.

_(b) Abnormal Forms of Marriage._—Among early Semitic tribes, and to-day

in parts of Tibet and India, the custom prevails of “polyandry,” in

which one woman is the wife of several husbands. This sometimes arose

from female infanticide, sometimes, as in Tibet, where all the brothers

of a family have one wife in common, in order to preserve undivided the

family property.[2]

Footnote 2:

[An obvious gap in the manuscript occurs at this point, but one which

in no way affects the general argument of the author.—EDITOR.]

_(c) Abstention from Marriage._—Mr. Galton has pointed out with great

force the injury worked by sacerdotal celibacy in the history of

European civilisation. The commendation of the single life in man or

woman as “the better part” has been by no means confined to certain

sects of Christianity. Long before that religion started, this sacrifice

was enjoined on the priests of Cybele, the virgins of Vesta, the

Egyptian ministrants, and many other officials in Old World rites; while

in the New World not only were there houses of “nuns” among the Quechuas

of Peru and the Mayas of Yucatan, but the priests in those cults and

even the “medicine men” of rude Northern tribes were frequently vowed to

perpetual and absolute chastity.

In the struggle of modern life, and also in the greater facility for the

pursuit of pleasure, of self-culture or devotion to some cherished

pursuit, the unmarried person has an advantage, and hence it is noted

that marriage is either long delayed or wholly avoided. The division of

a community along narrow social, financial, or religious lines greatly

aids this isolation by narrowing the selection of partners for life.

War, emigration, and the love of adventure prompt the males to desert

remote and quiet localities, leaving the females in the majority and

imbuing the males with a distaste for domestic pursuits. During the

Crusades there were considerable areas in Europe where there was only

one man left to seven women.

Students of psychopathic conditions have pointed out another and

apparently growing cause of indifference to marriage,—that sentiment

called “homosexuality,” an inversion of the sexual instinct toward one’s

own sex. This may be innocent in action and emotion, when it means

merely the preference for friendship in the same gender and a congenital

indifference to sexual feelings; or it may progress to any degree of

monosexual devotion, such as classic tradition attributed to the

characters of Sappho and Heliogabalus.

Whatever the cause which leads to the presence of many old bachelors and

spinsters in a community, it must be condemned by the anthropologist,

because it is certain to bring about mental deterioration of the stock;

and the higher the motive, the more exalted the reason offered for such

abstention, the surer is the deterioration, because it means that the

class capable of such superior motives will be extinguished in the

community.

_(d) Licentiousness; Divorce._—No one will need to be persuaded that

open licentiousness, the disregard of those sentiments and principles

which attach in lasting unions persons of opposite sex, can have other

than a detrimental effect on individual and national character. Wherever

this has prevailed, the community has been weakened and its powers

misdirected. Any stimulus to the sex feeling beyond that for its

physiological purpose detracts from the general energy, physical and

mental; and any indulgence of it in other than physiological methods

develops degenerative tendencies.

Sexual psychopathy has been abundantly investigated of late years by

Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and other students, and its prevalence is too

extended for it not to have profound effect on the ethnic mind. What is

one of the worst features is the attraction that such psychopathic

subjects have for each other, whether of the same or opposite sexes. It

thus becomes an inherited trait, and in a majority of the cases this is

easily recognised.

The question here arises, to what extent in a community the marriage tie

may be relaxed without injury to or to the advantage of the general

psychical welfare. This practical inquiry should be decided not by

religious or social prejudice, but by a study of the peculiar conditions

of the community and of the application of general principles to them.

It is impossible for me here to enter into this vast and vital question;

but some of these general principles may be briefly stated.

Students of primitive conditions have reached the conclusion that

neither sex in the human species is inclined to permanent sexual unions.

They point out that among savage tribes, and indeed in various advanced

religions, ceremonies and customs are in vogue to expiate such

attachments as contrary to the divine ordinances. They further show that

the forms of marriage were instituted either for selfish sensual

purposes on the part of the male or for property reasons; and that in a

condition of freedom and advanced culture neither sex is inclined to

regard them as durably binding.

With progressive enlightenment, bringing with it, as it must, the

freedom of woman from civil disabilities, divorces increase, and only

those marriages are stable in which both parties are satisfied. The

result of this is constantly beneficial. Facility of separation is a

potent stimulus to connubial harmony; for the one most satisfied with

the relation will always strive to render it agreeable to the other, in

order to avoid a dissolution of the tie.

Licentiousness, therefore, is not synonymous with loose marriage

relations, but the reverse.

_(e) Diminution of Natality._—There is no more certain sign of the

degeneration of a race, nation, or class than a decreasing birth-rate.

When it reaches the point that the deaths in its ranks exceed the

births, extinction has already begun. Providing that fecundity continues

normal, the onslaughts of war, famine, and pestilence may be remedied;

but when, through agencies of any description, the birth-rate sensibly

falls off, there is no escape from destruction. This disaster may arise

from physical, but is generally due to psychical causes, and therefore

points distinctly to mental pathology in the group where it occurs.

Striking examples of this have been presented by studies of the noble

families of Europe. Placed in positions where their chief aims were

amusement, self-indulgence, and ostentation, their best faculties were

allowed to rust and finally to decay, bringing with this the extinction

of their lines.

Researches in European history show that the ennobled families of

France, Germany, and England have rarely survived the fifth generation,

and not more than six per cent. are in existence after three hundred

years. Of 427 English noble families, but 41 were represented at the

beginning of the 17th century. The patrician families who controlled the

free cities of the Middle Ages are now known in history only. Scarcely a

score have outlived the degenerative agencies of wealth, idleness, and

indulgence.

The other extreme of the social scale is equally unfriendly to

productiveness. It is popularly thought that the poor man has children

if he has nothing else. But he must not be too poor. Surgeons of the

Indian civil service have proved by ample statistics that the famines

which periodically ravage the East bring in their train widespread and

lasting infertility. Arrest of puberty and organic deterioration of the

reproductive system are common results of the prolonged starvation, and

prevent child-bearing.

The psychic contrast between this result and that of malignant epidemics

is marked and singular. During and after famines the feelings dependent

on sex are almost extinguished; while in epidemics of acute diseases,

such as plague, cholera, and yellow fever, they are notably exalted, as

they are also in leprosy.

There is also a class of maladies known in medicine as “dystrophic” on

account of their tendency to diminish virility, and thus both lessen the

birth rate and lead to morbid psychic states. Prominent among these are

malarial fevers, tuberculosis, and the later stages of alcoholism and

the opium habit. By many writers the inordinate use of tobacco is

believed to exert a similar effect.

In modern life, notably in France and the eastern United States, there

is a very observable infecundity in certain classes, and they the

wealthiest and best educated, due unquestionably to intention on the

part of the married—to purely psychic causes, therefore. In the “best

society” of those localities two or three children to a marriage are as

many as are wanted and as many as arrive.

That this limitation is deliberate, and not the result of reproductive

debility, has been shown by an application of the law of sex at birth as

formulated by Dumont. This is, that when the proportion of the sexes at

birth are as 105 males to 100 females, the diminished natality is

voluntary; and when it is involuntary, due to disease or malformations,

this ratio is always disturbed.

As statistics prove that in modern life two-thirds of the children born

alive never perpetuate their kind, through death, the single life,

sterility, or other reason, it is plain that intentional limitation of

offspring to a number less than four means certain extinction of the

family.

3. _Toxic Agents._—The toxic agents of ethnic degeneration belong to two

classes, stimulant-narcotics and disease-germs. The former are

voluntarily consumed by the individual, the latter he absorbs through

exposure to insalubrious conditions. Both belong to preventable causes

of deterioration.

Of the stimulant-narcotics, alcohol, opium, and tobacco are the most

familiar. But they by no means exhaust the list. Everywhere and at all

times man has had an intense craving for these nervines. Where the Koran

forbids alcoholic drinks, the Arabs take refuge in kief and other

species of hemp. The native Mexicans cull the _peyotl_, the Siberians a

toadstool, the Peruvians coca.

The precise degree to which these agents have altered the intellectual

and moral powers of communities has long been the theme of

controversies.

This is especially true of alcohol. Professor Lapouge, certainly an

unbiassed observer, citizen of a land where temperance societies are

unknown, does not hesitate to call it “the most formidable agent of

degeneration in modern society.” Its worst effects are not the violence

to which it occasionally leads or the frightful nervous diseases which

its excessive use entails, but the slow hardening of the “axis

cylinders” in the nerve sheaths, the immediate consequence of which is

permanent deterioration of mental activity. Extended throughout a

community, this means a lessening of its energy and of its finest mental

qualities. Chronic alcoholism of this kind does not materially shorten

life, but it is eminently transmissible, and this soddens the stock. The

white race is most exposed to these mental and nervous effects of

alcohol, while the red and black races escape them in large measure.

The second class of toxic agents affecting the community at large

includes the various forms of disease-germs. No one can doubt the

debilitating influence of malaria on the mental faculties of the

population exposed to its poisonous action. Vast tracts of the earth’s

surface are by it rendered incapable of sustaining the highest types of

humanity. Their energy is sapped, their vitality lowered, by the

insidious miasm. No race or nationality is immune. Though the white race

is most liable to its attacks, the African blacks are so far from being

exempt that in the more intense malarial districts of their continent

nearly one-third of the natives suffer from the disease.

Marsh poison is usually confined to the lowlands. But the mountain

valleys also generate a noxious agent, most unfriendly to mental growth.

It displays itself in a threefold form, embracing goitre, cretinism, and

deaf-mutism, the three closely related and bringing with them a positive

debility of psychical powers. The mountains have not only been the

refuge of the feeble, escaping from the plains, but they have worked to

render these outcasts feebler still by reducing them in stature and

viability. Goitre is not confined to Alpine regions, though more

prevalent there. It is distinctly hereditary, and the offspring of

goitrous parents are predisposed to cretinism and allied forms of

imbecility. The southern and western slopes of the Alps, the Pyrenees,

the Himalayas, and the Cordilleras are especially the homes of this

class of diseases.

Another series of toxic agents which calls for consideration in this

connection are the so-called “constitutional diseases.” These are

contagious and transmissible, the poison of the blood being handed down

from generation to generation.

The most noteworthy of these is syphilis. Its extreme prevalence among

lower classes of the community and in some of the darker races is a

present and potent cause of their mental inferiority. It is well known

to specialists that children born of syphilitic parents are deficient in

mental energy and physical stamina. They are liable to scrofulous

symptoms and tubercular degenerations, and are deficient in ambition and

love of labour.

Less widely distributed, but yet affecting whole communities, are

ergotism and pellagra, due to the consumption of diseased grain, and

leprosy which is undoubtedly hereditary and vitiates the blood of whole

families. Certain stocks are especially liable to it, notably the

African blacks and next to them the Semites, both Jews and Arabs.

4. _Mental Shock._—History presents many instructive examples of the

destructive power of mental shock on the ethnic mind. It is brought

about by some great, sudden, unexpected catastrophe, which breaks

asunder the associations or institutions in which the community has

lived its mental life.

Such a disruption may arise from an intensely malignant epidemic, from

war, or from a natural catastrophe.

An example of the first was the frightful “black death” which swept over

Europe in 1348–50, destroying nearly a fourth of the whole population.

All accounts agree that the despair and desperation which accompanied

such an unexampled affliction showed themselves in an abandonment of all

restraint, a reckless indulgence in the wildest debaucheries, an entire

disregard of social restrictions. The same is true of the “plague and

famine” years, 1491–95, when, in the words of a medical historian, “the

corruption of morals reached a height without parallel in ancient

times.”

The depressing power of sudden defeat and subjugation has been

repeatedly exemplified. The “spirit is broken” of the conquered people.

Only by such a profound mental depravation can we explain why such a

warlike and numerous nation as the Aztecs sank instantly to be the serfs

of a handful of white conquerors.

A writer on the history of the Christian church has remarked that “every

nation has its peculiar heresy.” A student of mental pathology might

justly add that every nation has its peculiar form of insanity. An

irrational tendency is present and active in every community, ever

striving to gain the ascendancy, and when it succeeds, as has often been

the case in history, it makes steadily for the destruction and

extinction of the national existence.

The forms of mental alienation are as various in the collective as in

the individual mind, and as they are extensions of the symptoms seen in

the latter, they may be classified on similar lines. I shall examine

them, therefore, first as they are connected with intellectual and next

with emotional disturbances, in accordance with the following scheme:

ETHNIC PSYCHOPATHIC CONDITIONS.

I.—_In the Intellectual Life._

1. Conditions of Deficiency │(_a_) Imbecility.

│(_b_) Criminality.

2. Conditions of Perversion │(_a_) Delusions.

│(_b_) Dominant Ideas.

II.—_In the Emotional Life._

1. Conditions of Hypersthenia (active motor │(_a_) Hysteria.

states) │

│(_b_) Exaltation.

│(_c_) Destructive

│ Impulses.

2. Conditions of Asthenia (passive sensory │(_a_) Melancholia

states) │ (Depression).

│(_b_) Neurasthenia

│ (Exhaustion).

I. PSYCHOPATHIC CONDITIONS IN THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE—1. CONDITIONS OF

DEFICIENCY.—The intellect of a group, like that of the individual, has

its limits, beyond which it is not possible to educate it. This is

conspicuously seen in intellects below the normal, such as in

feeble-minded persons. No amount of training can cure their radical

defects and make them the equals of their average associates. These are

instances of intellectual deficiency. It may express itself either in

some degree of imbecility or in the active form of criminal habits.

Another class do not seem below the average in general powers, may,

perhaps, appear in various directions above it; but they have some twist

or obliquity in their mental make-up which separates them from their

fellows, usually to their detriment. In common life such persons are

known as “cranks” or “eccentrics,” men of one idea and paranoiacs. They

are examples of intellectual perversion. Ethnic psychology can also

supply abundant instances of this character.

_(a) Imbecility._—To say that there are tribes or whole peoples actually

imbecile would perhaps be going too far. Yet this has been asserted of

some by competent observers. Mr. Horatio Hale, who was among the native

blacks of Australia, related that the impression they produced on his

mind was one of “great natural obtuseness, downright childishness, and

imbecility.” The only arguments which availed with them were “such as we

should use towards a child or a partial idiot.” Mr. Hale attributed this

to generations of semi-starvation and malnutrition, and was so convinced

of this that he believed the most favoured race would, by similar

conditions, be reduced to the same low intellectual stage.

A prevailing inability to judge of evidence is common among many peoples

and classes, and this is a marked sign of mental deficiency. They

mistake associations of time and place for relations of cause and

effect, and their reasoning is vitiated in consequence. Superstition is

fostered by this mental obliquity. The casual objective relation is

mistakenly assumed as the subjective necessity. This is especially

common among savages, and the illiterate classes of higher culture. It

is a mark of mental inferiority tending to irrational action and

confusion of thought.

In civilised communities those of the population who are thus

constituted form the “dependent” class, incapable of making their own

living, and supported either by their families or the state. They may

thus survive and reproduce their kind, but ethnic groups afflicted with

such intellectual retardation either perish or become subject to those

with higher gifts.

_(b) Criminality._—Criminality in its common forms must be classed as a

condition of intellectual deficiency brought about by one or several of

the causes I have already rehearsed. It is not necessary, here, to enter

into the discussion as to whether a criminal is born or made, nor do I

speak now of those violators of the law in favour of a higher law, the

reformers, apostles, martyrs to a faith and a truth in advance of their

time and place, nor of those who have yielded for a moment to some

mastering temptation. I speak of the ordinary criminal who for selfish

ends habitually violates the usages of the group in which he lives, and

to this extent aims at its destruction.

This class cannot be disciplined into the rules necessary to the peace

and welfare of the society in which they live. Researches on their

psychology show them, as a rule, defective in physical sensibility, more

frequently colour-blind, mental instability is always present, vanity is

exaggerated, the emotions are violent, and the general intelligence is

below the average. We must regard them as pathological, rapidly

approaching a self-destructive degree of degeneration. When they are

numerous in a group it is a sure sign of its general inferiority.

The most advanced criminologists of to-day have returned to the opinion

advocated a generation ago by Quetelet in these words: “Society creates

the germs of all crimes which are committed. She instigates them, and

the criminal is merely the instrument of their execution.”

Translated into other words, this means that the psychic traits of any

group are the direct parent of its anti-social, self-destructive,

criminal instincts. To the extent that such traits are remediable the

body politic is directly responsible for the violations of its own laws.

If left unremedied, the ruin of the group must follow.

2. CONDITIONS OF PERVERSION.—Alienists have frequent occasion to observe

cases of mental disease where all the faculties of the mind seem intact

and equal to the average, except that there is a persistent irrational

delusion on some single point or a few points; or else the mind is

controlled by the insistent recurrence of a single idea, which

obstinately aims to govern the whole man. The latter is known as an

_idée fixe_, a fixed or dominant idea.

In ethnic psycho-pathology the same conditions may be constantly

observed, and they react on the character and fate of peoples with

visible power. That which passes under the name of “popular prejudice”

is an example. A community will adopt an opinion, without reason, and

will not permit a discussion of its merits. Any one not accepting it

will be regarded as a public enemy.

_(a) Delusions._—In primitive conditions the most common delusion is

that of the identity of waking and dream-life. There is no distinction

allowed in the equal reality of both, or, if any, it is in favour of the

superiority of the dream-life, for in dreams the person seems possessed

of powers which he loses on awakening. So highly are dreams esteemed,

that many savage tribes and many nations of respectable culture have

risked their gravest undertakings on the interpretation of these visions

of the night.

Such a delusion is, of course, most contrary to reason and good order.

On account of an inauspicious dream a Brazilian tribe will desert its

village and its plantations; while if a Kamchatkan dreams that he has

been given another man’s wife, it is held necessary for public welfare

that his dream be realised.

Another delusion, deeply rooted in the philosophy of India and which has

worked untold misfortunes on its peoples, is that of the unreality of

the distinction between subject and object—that is, between thought and

the external world. Hence arose the doctrine that real life is _mâyâ_,

an illusion or deception of the senses, and its aims and duties unworthy

the contemplation of the true philosopher. The consequent neglect of the

practical duties of life could not fail to weaken the peoples who

juggled with sound reason in this manner.

A wonderful example of long-persistent delusion was the Crusades. For

nearly two centuries (1095–1289) the Christian nations of Europe

neglected state and domestic affairs in order to rescue the Holy

Sepulchre from the hands of the infidels. All classes, from kings to

peasants, fell a prey to the same obsession. It was accompanied by

repeated and unmistakable signs of epidemic manias and neuropathias

unequalled in history. Lykanthropy, in which the possessed howled and

destroyed like wolves, was extremely common; the dancing mania spread

through wide areas, forcing old and young into wild gestures and crazy

motions; and, stranger than all, young children were attacked with a mad

desire to leave their homes and to wander forth they knew not whither.

Were they prevented, they pined and died. These “children’s crusades”

began in Germany in 1212, extended through France, Switzerland, and

Italy, and continued as late as 1418.

_(b) Dominant Ideas._—The weightiest topic in universal history may

possibly be the study of dominant or fixed ideas in ethnic psychology. A

philosophic observer may regard each nation as the destined

representative of some one idea, which, when its usefulness has ended,

yields to others more germane to existing conditions; and by the

successive action of all, the progress of the species is secured through

the gradual elimination of those which are regressive.

Certain it is that in any group the constituent minds are controlled at

a given time by some one idea common to all. This is, in one sense, a

perversion of the intellect. The dominant idea assumes a magnitude out

of proportion to its actual value; and by this disproportion—that is, by

the undue attention it receives, others, often of equal or greater value

to the group, are neglected.

These dominant ideas form the national ideals, after which the

individual lines are consciously patterned, and by the practical

application thus given, add to the cohesion of the group through the

unification of its members. Acting under natural laws, common to organic

forms as well as to societies, these ideas are the chief agents in

social selection, and thus control almost absolutely the traits and

destinies of nations, as has been traced in a masterly manner by Vacher

de Lapouge.

Such ideas are easily recognised in a community. A slight acquaintance

with history and literature teaches us that the early Romans were

exclusively possessed by the military ideal, the lust of conquest; that

the ideal of the Israelites has always been the thirst for commercial

gain; and that art was the ruling aim in the palmy days of Greece.

But the finest example that occurs to me of many different peoples being

dominated by a fixed idea is seen in the votaries of the Mohammedan

religion. They are bound together by one sacred language, in which one

book, the Koran, lays down all law, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical,

and the expressed dicta of which set them in sharpest opposition to all

who do not accept it. The religious idea, thus stimulated out of all

proportion to others, has developed in them a fanatical force which at

one time almost enabled them to conquer the known world, and which has

since resulted in the inevitable decay of their greatest states, their

literature and arts.

II. PSYCHOPATHIC CONDITIONS IN THE EMOTIONAL LIFE.—Apart from the

perversions of intelligence which cloud the reasoning faculties of

nations, they are subject to widespread and persistent disturbances of

their emotional lives, which frequently react disastrously on the common

weal.

Following the division adopted by some competent alienists in individual

cases, I may with propriety classify these into two divisions, as they

represent, on the one hand, excessive, misdirected, and morbid activity,

or, on the other, unhealthy depression and apathy.

1. CONDITIONS OF HYPERSTHENIA.—It is a popular error in scientific

circles that diseases of the nervous system increase with civilisation.

The opposite is true. The lowest stages of culture are far more

pathological than the higher, in this, as well as in most respects. True

that certain neuroses belong to cultured peoples; but morbid emotional

states are especially prevalent in lower conditions.

_(a) Hysteria._—This is well illustrated in the history of epidemic

hysteria. It may occasionally be seen among ourselves in a hospital ward

or at a camp-meeting; but such outbreaks are sporadic. They belong in

the ethnic temperament of many tribes of the Malayan and native American

races.

The Jesuit fathers described in vivid colours such outbreaks among the

Hurons of Canada, attacking whole villages and frequently leading to

their destruction. Father de Quen was quite right when he wrote: “The

old saying alleges that every man has a grain of madness in his

composition; but this is a tribe where each has half an ounce.” He

correctly regarded them as in a permanently pathological state.

Quite similar recitals are preserved of such outbreaks among the

Guaranis of Paraguay, and other primitive stocks, notably the Malay

peoples.

From the accounts of travellers it would seem, contrary to what we might

suppose, that such excessive nervous sensibility is peculiarly present

in extreme northern latitudes, while tropical tribes are much more

liable to conditions of depression. Castren, who lived long among the

northern Sibiric tribes, dwells with astonishment on their nervous

sensitiveness. A sudden blow on the outside of the skin yurt will throw

its occupants into spasms.

Among these “neuroses of excitement” which at times seize upon the souls

of communities, none is more inexplicable, and none more fraught with

consequences to world-history than the goading restlessness which has

driven single tribes or groups of tribes into aimless roving. This

_Wanderlust_ arises as an emotional epidemic, not by a process of

reasoning. It drives communities from fixed seats and comfortable homes,

transforming them into migratory and warring hordes.

_(b) Exaltation._—Under the heading of exaltation of nervous impulse the

alienist includes a morbid devotion to sexual thoughts and acts

(erotomania); to vanity, ambition, and self-magnification; and those

states of megalomania where the patient is subject to delusions of

greatness, _idées de grandeur_.

To all of these we may easily find parallels in ethnic life. They have

all their analogies in tribal or national history, with consequences as

disastrous as they disclose in the individual.

No more positive examples of erotic mania could be found in an asylum

than those presented by the whole of some Polynesian tribes. The life of

both sexes was devoted chiefly to the pleasures of the genital nerves.

Societies were formed where such practices were developed into arts;

children before maturity were initiated into them; and no mode of

excitement, unnatural though it might be, was omitted or shunned.

The destructive results of such licentiousness in the history of these

tribes, already extinct or nearly so, need not be insisted upon. But why

seek to demonstrate it from remote times or savage lands? Within a year

a philosophic student, from a wide range of investigation, has

attributed chiefly to the same pathological cause the deterioration of

the leading so-called Latin nations of Europe in the last two centuries.

In them, says Signor G. Ferrero, the sex impulse develops earlier, and

absorbs and wastes the life energies more than in the Teutonic nations,

yielding to the latter the superior place in the struggle for existence.

Another and familiar exemplification of this neuropathic frame of the

ethnic mind is that exaggerated national boastfulness known (from a

soldier under Bonaparte) as _Chauvinism_. It is patriotism passed into

mild dementia; so well known that it has a special name in English also,

_Jingoism_. The profound conviction that our own country—whichever that

may be—is the greatest in the world, leader of all in intelligence,

power, culture, and vigour, is invariably and everywhere a mental

delusion, a type of megalomania. Such a notion prepares the way for

increase of ignorance and self-esteem so blind that it is sure ere long

to fall in the pit ever open for fools.

_(c) Destructive Impulse._ The passion for wanton destruction may seize

equally upon a person or group. It may be directed toward inanimate

objects or against human life. John Addington Symonds gives a thrilling

sketch of the monster, Ezzelino da Romano, Vicar of the Emperor

Frederick II., in northern Italy (about 1250). His own passion was the

mutilation, torture, and murder of men, women, and children. His

inordinate cruelty and repeated massacres led to his becoming the hero

of a fiendish cycle in Italian literature.

We may call him, if we wish to palliate his monstrous deeds, a

monomaniac; but, as Symonds says, if we thus excuse him “we shall have

to place how many Visconti, Sforzeschi, Malatesti, Borgias, Farnesi,

etc., in the list of maniacs?” No, it was an ethnic tendency of Italy at

that period, and for long afterwards, and could be illustrated by scores

of traits from popular as well as princely life.

The mania for murder which seized the Parisian populace in 1793 was a

true pathological outburst. No sense of patriotism thrilled the crowds

who ran by the tumbrils and surrounded the guillotines. It was

hæmatomania, the blood-madness, that was upon them.

The suicidal impulse occasionally assumes an epidemic form which arises

from conditions of the ethnic life. The aborigines of Cuba when enslaved

by the Spanish conquerors practised self-destruction on a scale which

contributed much to their prompt extinction. In the city of

Frankfort-on-the-Main in the last century suicide became so frequent

among women that the dead bodies were suspended by the feet in order to

check the impulse in the survivors.

In a less degree the destructive passion directed against objects, or

figuratively against institutions, known as _iconoclasm_, is often a

mere outburst of unreasoning emotion. Its energy is misdirected and

fruitless. What was the result of that which during the eighth and ninth

centuries raged in Constantinople and Asia Minor? It altered

image-worship into picture-worship, nothing more.

2. CONDITIONS OF ASTHENIA.—In contrast to the repeated explosions of

nerve force which give rise to the active motor states of ethnic

dementia I have been considering, are those characterised by a loss of

reaction to stimuli, by passive, merely sensory, conditions.

These are of two varieties, well marked in their differences, each

highly significant in its ethnological and historic relations. The one

is allied to melancholia, being marked by depression or inaction of the

psychic forces, the other by their exhaustion, by incapacity for

reaction to ordinary stimuli.

_(a) Melancholia._—The consequence of mental shock, I have already

pointed out, is to bring about a sort of mental paralysis, a listless,

apathetic state; and this I have illustrated by some examples.

A touching one is recorded of the Greek colony which erected the city of

Pæstum on the Tyrrhenian Sea, whose stately ruins still attract

thousands of visitors annually.

A clearly ethnic type of melancholia is _nostalgia_ or homesickness. Of

course it is found in some degree in all lands, but with some peoples,

notably dwellers in high northern latitudes, the Lapps and Eskimo, it is

severe and general. If removed from their surroundings they mope and

die.

_(b) Neurasthenia._—Diseases of nervous and mental exhaustion belong

exclusively among nations of advanced culture. There are those which

have not merely increased, most of them have originated in stages of

high civilisation; not, as some have falsely argued, from conditions

essential to culture, but to errors and misdirections in that culture.

As, in all rapid motions, slight deviations entail more serious

consequences than when motion is slow, so, in the rapid progress of

modern times, slight neglects of hygiene bring about more serious

results than in ruder countries.

This explains the relative increase of some forms of insanity, of

suicide and criminality, and the appearance of new maladies, such as

progressive paralysis, in civilised centres. They are due to exhaustion

of the nerve centres in those who are not adapted to bear the strain of

contemporary competitive life, or who, if able, fail to direct their

activities in successful channels.

Another evidence of exhaustion, one which properly exercises the

attention of the student of modern life, is the progressive distaste for

the sex relation, especially among women. The consequences of this

mental attitude are the prevalence of spinsterhood and the limitation of

families in marriage, to which I have already referred. The attraction

of the “higher culture” and of their new facilities for seeing and

enjoying liberty have led to atrophy of the maternal instinct and of the

desire of marriage. This can have but one result,—the diminution and

final extinction of the group in which it prevails.

There is also such an ethnic malady as moral exhaustion. After a period

of intense but ill-regulated ethical enthusiasm there often follows a

reaction, when all ethical principles are thrown to the winds. This has

been plausibly explained by Dr. Laycock as an overstimulation of the

brain-cells most closely connected with this class of sentiments, with

consequent exhaustion in transmission to the next generation. “The

fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on

edge.”

The bigotry of Puritan England in the 17th century was followed by the

laxity of the Restoration.

PART II

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ETHNIC MIND

_INTRODUCTION_

Although, as we have seen, there is no common measure of Mind and

Matter, the connections between the two are so intimate that, in

organised beings, any change in the one entails a corresponding change

in the other.

This is a principle which has long been accepted in the Science of Man.

A quarter of a century ago Professor Schaffhausen expressed it in these

words: “One of the weightiest doctrines in Anthropology is the constant

correlation between intellectual capacity and physical organisation.”

That branch of Anthropology called Somatology is devoted to the

investigation of the human body, its measurements, structure, and

functions, as they differ in individuals, groups, and races, for the

purpose of defining and explaining this correlation.

The expressions of the individual mind are largely the reflex of its

environment, of the external impulses, stimuli, and conditions which

surround it. These are physical, measurable, quantitative, and therefore

within the province of the “natural” sciences.

In their relation to the individual, they mostly belong to the domain of

“experimental” psychology; but as they influence the group and decide

its constitution they form an important branch of ethnic psychology

also.

The natural history of the Mind is chiefly the study of its

environments, its _milieu_. But that term is to be taken in its widest

sense.

The nearest environment of my mind is my body. Indeed, it is the only

environment of which I have positive knowledge. As John Stuart Mill well

said, “I know my own feelings with a higher certainty than I know aught

else.”

Hence the physical constitution of the individual is that which has

primary importance.

That may be considered first as an individual question, without going

beyond the circumstances of the personal life and health, a purely

_somatic_ investigation. We may next inquire how many of his

peculiarities the individual owes to his ancestors, which will bring up

the questions of heredity, hybridity, and others, including mental as

well as physical traits. His debt is large to these, but still larger,

say some writers, to his contemporaries, the associates with whom he has

been thrown from birth. These are his “people,” the “group” of which he

is a member. He is modified in a thousand ways by this “demographic”

environment.

All these—his ancestors, fellows, and his own body—are “human”

influences. Beyond them lies the great world of other beings and of

unconscious forces, the animals and plants, the land and water, the

clime and spot, which make up his “geographic” environment. How

dependent is he upon these! How utterly they often control his thoughts

and actions!

Each of these I shall endeavour to estimate in their influence on the

individual, not as an individual, but as a member of a group; and on the

group itself, as an independent, psychic entity, nowise identical in

character with any individual.

CHAPTER I

_THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOMATIC ENVIRONMENT_

The human body is an “organism” each part of which is in vital relation

to the whole, and is influenced by the condition of every other part.

This is true of function as well as structure, for function, after all,

is merely the term we give to structure in action. Mentality, psychical

activity, is a function, and, like all others, is organically

conditioned by the whole organism and its several parts. To understand

the influence of the body on the mind, therefore, we should consider in

such relation each of the physiological “systems” which make up the

organic life. For my present purpose, however, it will be sufficient to

select those most closely related to mental activity.

_The Brain._—The learned of all times have sought to find “the seat of

the soul.” Primitive men generally placed it in the liver or in the

heart; but anatomists have been long agreed that it must be somewhere in

the head. The latest word from them is that it resides in the nerve

cells of the grey matter of the brain, in the number and activity of the

“pyramid-neurons” there situate, and probably in their capacity to send

out shoots or branches.

This intimate, ultimate, structure and potency establishes the

difference between the intellectual faculties of species and

individuals. In the lower animals these cells are few and scattered, and

their proliferations short and simple. In man the cells increase in

number and their extensions become long and complex. They are more

abundant when the grey matter is ample, as is the case where the

convolutions are intricate.

Up to a recent period it was supposed that the weight or size of the

brain was the chief physical element in mental superiority. It is now

known, that has little to do with it. Not a few men of distinguished

parts, such as Liebig, Gambetta, Tiedemann, etc., have had brains

decidedly below the average in weight, while, on the other hand, many

with large brains have led unimportant lives. This is also the case with

races, for although the African negro is below the European in his

cranial capacity, the Fuegian, decidedly below the African in mental

development, has a brain larger than either of the other races.

Obviously, both the cubical content and weight of the brain depend much

on the general size, stature, and weight of the body; and no one has

been found who pretends that the biggest man is also the ablest.

We are almost compelled, therefore, to accept as correct the conclusion

reached by Lapouge and others, that not the size but the molecular

constitution of the brain is finally decisive of intellectual power; and

this is a trait which up to the present time has eluded analysis.

This is not inconsistent with holding that where other proportions are

the same, a larger, more complex brain is generally significant of

higher mental powers; and that a well-balanced skull, with orthognathic

features and moderate facial development, are indications favourable for

the psychical possessions of the individual or the group.

The _shape_ would seem to be more significant than the weight of the

brain. Of all the elements of gross cerebral anatomy it appears to be

that most indicative of mental power.

This is a recent discovery of craniologists, the entire meaning of which

has not yet been worked out. It is due to the researches of Ammon and

Lapouge within the last decade, and to the anthropologist promises

solutions of various obscure problems in the cultural growth of the

species.

These observers have ascertained, by many thousand measurements on the

living and the dead, that those persons who, as a class, are best

adapted to the high and continued strain of modern city and competitive

life, have skulls in that shape termed “subdolichocephalic,” which means

that their brains have a prevailing and fixed spatial relation of their

parts, a relation, no doubt, which is the most favourable to the general

and prolonged activity of those nerve cells which we know are the seat

of psychical function.

Such persons in youth stand at the head in the school, they take the

prizes in examinations, they carry off the honours in intellectual

contests, they are leaders in the learned professions, they are the

self-created “upper class,” and, what is equally noteworthy, in the

unhealthy atmosphere of great cities they outlive their associates with

other shapes of brain.

But these observers also note that while these somewhat long-skulled

persons have such intellectual and even physical advantages in the

struggle for existence, they are deficient in others, which, under some

circumstances, are even more necessary to success.

The same extended series of measurements and comparisons show that those

whose brains are rounder in form—more brachycephalic—prove generally

superior in technical skill, in industry, and in perseverance. They are

less adventurous, they lack imagination and the stimulus of the ideal,

they are narrow and formalists; but they shine in the bourgeois virtues

of capacity for steady work, of devotion to hearth and home, in respect

for settled government, stable laws, and ancestral institutions.

This favourable brain shape is, in Europe, often correlated with the

blonde type, light hair, and grey or blue eyes; but whether this is

anything more than a local peculiarity remains in doubt.

Ammon has pointed out, however, that these traits, where they have been

united in history, have marked a daring, energetic, progressive stock,

one fertile in bold explorers, conquerors, and thinkers. Such was the

type of the ancient Aryans, who became the ruling race wherever they

carried their victorious standard, “not through numbers, longevity, or

fertility, but through the consequences of ‘natural selection.’”

Professor Lapouge has further shown that in southern France, where the

local aristocracy rose from the same stock as the peasantry by superior

personal ability, a notable difference is observable between the

skull-shapes of the two classes, the crania of the “gentlemen” being

considerably longer in proportion to width than those of the peasantry.

They are well suited for village life and agricultural occupations; but,

subjected to the stress and strain of great cities, they die out in the

third generation.[3]

Footnote 3:

These deductions were based on many thousand observations in France,

Switzerland, and Germany, and are undoubtedly true for the places and

periods in which they were conducted; but it has not been shown that

they are generally applicable in other areas. Some observers (Livi,

Lombroso) have not accepted them for Italy. The opposition they have

met in France from Fouillée and others is merely sentimental.

When it is remembered that whole nations, stocks, races, are

characterised by the prevalence of one or other of these skull-forms, it

is at once seen that a physical basis is here presented for ethnic

psychology worthy of attentive study. These authors have, in fact,

applied their conclusions in this direction; but, concerning themselves

chiefly with the mixed populations of European states, have been

principally occupied with the “social selections” which may be attained

in such communities from this cause.

While the skull-form thus becomes distinctive of brains possessing or

lacking certain faculties, it must not be supposed that this relation is

an essential one. The brain will perform its work without reference to

the shape of the skull. This is proved by the many tribes who have

artificially deformed the head in obedience to fashion or superstition.

In America it is noteworthy that the crania thus malformed to the utmost

degree are precisely those of the nations of the highest

civilisation—the Mayas of Central America and the Quechuas of Peru.

_The Nervous System._—Professor Haeckel, in his lectures on

“anthropogeny,” lays down the maxim, “All soul-functions or psychical

activities depend directly on the structure and composition of the

nervous system.” This is illustrated by the biological development of

the nerves of special sense,—of sight, hearing, taste, and smell.

Originally they were all indifferent touch-nerves, and by slow degrees

in indefinite time developed their specific reactions.

They are yet by no means the same in all persons, as everyone knows.

They also differ widely in groups, nations, and races. The study of the

“reaction-times” of the principal races has occupied Cattell, Bache, and

other psychologists. The sense of taste is notably different. An Eskimo

finds pleasure in castor oil and a Kamchatkan in eating rotten fish. The

Annamite is almost insensible to pain from wounds, but suffers intensely

from moderate cold and is acutely affected by odours. The Fuegian can

sleep naked on the snow with comfort, but is easily disturbed by noises.

The intellectual differences between both individuals and races arise

not so much from relative mental capacity as from varying reaction to

mental stimuli. They all have pretty much the same power to pursue

knowledge, if they choose to exert it. The difference is one involving

the general nerve-tracts. Perception and attention were the forces which

in the history of organisms developed all the special senses from nerves

of touch; and the growth of the intellect is consequently closely

conditioned by the qualities of nerve-sensations.

_The Osseous System._—To be asked to define the ethnic life of a group

from the bones exhumed in its cemeteries would seem a hopeless task. Yet

it is possible, for on the osseous system the whole bodily structure is

built up, and the activity of the brain is conditioned.

Races differ in their skeletons. That of the African black is heavy, the

flat bones thick, the pelvis narrow, and presents many peculiarities

which are termed “pithecoid” or ape-like. Contrasting with these are

small-boned, delicately formed skeletons of the Indonesians and

Japanese, resembling those of the female in other stocks. It would not

be difficult to bring the ethnic into relation to these skeletal traits.

Professor Hervé, of the School of Anthropology of Paris, has argued that

the presence of the “Wormian bones” and the complexity of the cranial

sutures are a measure of the rapidity of brain-development, and

consequently a criterion of mental activity in a stock. This can

scarcely be accepted, for we are not sure that the rapidity of

bone-formation bears any ratio to the growth of the brain-cells; but it

is not rash to argue that a people whose bones are largely diseased must

have lived in unhygienic conditions, and had become degenerate in mind

as well as body.

Such is the case with the skeletons of that wholly unknown tribe who

once densely peopled the Salt River valley in Arizona, and of those who

dwelt near the great cemetery of Ancon in Peru. About one-third of the

skeletons present pathological features indicating long-continued

defective nutrition or widespread disease. No wonder that both stocks

perished off the earth. Though at one time singularly advanced, they had

sunk into complete degeneracy.

_Muscular System; Height and Weight._—There is a relation between

height, weight, and mental power, true for the individual and the group.

This is not mysterious, as all three depend upon nutrition.

Physiologists lay down ratios of height, weight, and age which are

requisite to the highest health, mental and physical.

We may go further, and say that any marked aberration from the average

of the species in these respects is accompanied by some equally

noticeable psychical peculiarity. Dwarfs have often acute minds, but

rarely deep affections.

Inferior stature is often an ethnic trait. The central African pygmies,

the Lapps, and the Bushmen are familiar examples. Mr. Haliburton has

recorded others in the Atlas and Pyrenean mountains; and Dr. Collignon

reports the diminution in height in some districts of central France.

The explanation of all is the same—lack of proper, regular, and

sufficient alimentation. They are, as the Germans say, _Kümmerformen_,

products of wretchedness. The shortest of the Bushmen are also the most

miserable—those living amid the barren sands of the Kalihari desert.

The reaction of such prolonged semi-starvation on the functions of the

brain-cells leads to psychical dwarfishness. None of these undersized

stocks have gained a position in history or contributed to the culture

of humanity. They have been unequal in physical strife, and have been

forced to the wall.

_Reproduction._—The reproductive function in its various manifestations

exerts an enormous influence on the individual mind, and exhibits broad

racial and ethnic distinctions. Its power is scarcely less operative in

the fate of nations than of persons, and its reflection in the mind of

groups deserves closest attention.

The period of puberty changes widely the direction of the thoughts, and

the character frequently undergoes a complete transformation. Children

previously studious lose interest in their lessons, while others pursue

them with greatly increased devotion. The sexual emotions, which mark

the epoch, may absorb the whole being or merely stimulate it to higher

efforts.

The age at which puberty begins varies, following the general law that

the higher the annual temperature the earlier in life does the change

set in. This becomes of psychical interest when it is added that the

earlier the change the more intense and permeating are the erotic

passions; the more do they compel to their sway the other emotions and

the intellect.

Only two motives, observes Professor Friedrich Müller, can induce the

Australian or the typical African to prolonged labour,—hunger and the

sex passion. Civilised communities are measurably lifted above the

immediate struggle for food, but not in the least above the other

impulse. If you could learn the prime motive, says Dr. Van Buren, of the

presence of the crowds of men on Broadway, you would find ninety per

cent. of them are there through sex feeling.

The sentiments of love, of marital and parental affection, of family

life, control mankind more completely than any other motives. These are

physical, personal feelings, and to that extent narrow and in conflict

with many which are broader and more altruistic. Few persons can advance

beyond them, and the collective mind is obliged by the laws of its own

existence to register them as of the very first importance.

The power of a group is, other things being equal, in proportion to the

size of the group, and its increase in numbers is in geometrical

proportion to its fecundity, provided the food-supply remains

sufficient.

These are two closely related and essential factors to advance, and have

been so felt from man’s earliest infancy. The complicated systems of

marriage and relationship in vogue among the Australian and other rude

tribes arose from the effort to adjust the birth-rate to the available

amount of food. Many of the forms of marriage arose from the same

consideration. In polygamous countries most men are monogamous because

they cannot keep large families. Legal infanticide, exposure of the

new-born, as in China, is another effort in the same direction. Where

such measures are not legalised they reappear in other guises.

Artificial abortion and intentional limitation of families are frequent

in France and the United States. They are outcrops of a sentiment of

self-protection which has been familiar to the species from its

beginning.

Sex feeling belongs distinctly to the animal and emotional side of human

nature. Where it is the dominating motive, neither individual nor group

can attain the highest development. This is noticeably the case in the

African. Coloured children in our public schools are equal to their

white associates up to the age of puberty. But that change is more

profound in the African than in the European constitution. After it has

occurred, the difference in favour of the white children becomes very

apparent. Their mental world is not so invaded by thoughts of sex, and

they are more inclined to study.

In a less degree, as I have before remarked, the same contrast exists

between the Teutonic and Latin peoples of Europe, and has been

acknowledged to have resulted in decided advantages for the former.

Virility—that is, the reproductive potency in the male—bears no relation

to the strength of the erotic passion.

In some the passion of sexual love is little more than an appetite.

Satisfied, it is indefinitely quiescent, not entering into the general

life; or, if it at times fires the emotions, they are easily restrained

or banished by the exercise of other mental powers. This has been the

case with many eminent men of notoriously ardent temperaments but never

subdued by them (Byron, Goethe).

It is also an ethnic trait, a characteristic of the Teutonic blood, in

sharp contrast to the so-called Latin peoples. With the latter, as is

obvious from the literature, the erotic feeling is an enduring and

overmastering passion, colouring the intelligence and often absorbing

into itself the activities of the life.

As virility in man, so fecundity in woman has no relation to sex

feeling; or, if any, in a reverse degree.

The famous calculations of Malthus, which cannot be disproved, and which

have been confirmed by the latest statistics, show that this fear of

population transcending the food-supply is real and ever present. Where

it is not immediate, as in modern life, it is nevertheless near and

visible in the division of the parental property among a large family of

children; in the increased difficulties of properly educating such a

family and giving each a proper position and start in life; and in

providing for such as are feeble or incompetent. This effort, extended

throughout a community, means more intense competition, a more bitter

struggle for property, a more constant occupation with sordid details,

to the neglect of reflection, study, and abstract thought.

Reproduction, therefore, to its utmost limits, would be of no advantage

to a community, but decidedly deleterious. Its effect on the collective

mind would be lowering, as it would centre the general attention on

material aims and personal interests.

Nor is the individual who would direct his activities by the highest

motives at all compelled to increase his kind. The accessory demands

upon his time and powers which such an action usually entails, would

probably hinder him in his efforts. Darwin forcibly stated this in his

_Descent of Man_. He imagines a man who, not compelled by any deep

feeling, yet sacrifices his life for the good of others through the love

of glory. “His example would excite the same wish for glory in other men

and would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admiration. He

might thus do far more good to his tribe than by begetting offspring

with a tendency to inherit his own high character.”

If this is true of one governed by a motive confessedly not the highest,

how much more true of him or her whose soul is fired with a devotion to

the truth of science or to the welfare of the race!

_Feminism._—The physical contrast of the sexes belongs to all mammals,

to birds, and to most of the animal kingdom. The female is generally

smaller, lighter, with lines more graceful and delicate. This is true,

as a rule, in all races of men and held good for the earliest tribes

whose skeletons have been preserved. Yet the contrast in man is so far

from positive that the anatomist knows no criteria to establish the sex

from the bones except the more obtuse angle of the rami of the pubes in

the female; and even this is obliterated in some branches of the human

race, the Indo-Chinese, for example, where the rami meet in both sexes

at about the same angle (Hervé).

The tendency to “feminism” is not unusual in the white race as an

individual peculiarity; and is especially prominent as a racial trait in

the Asiatic or Mongolian branch of our species. They have sparse beards,

little hair on the body but much and strong on the head, and the

features of the sexes are similar. In many respects they display

feminine traits of character, being industrious, sedentary, and

peace-loving, receptive but not originative, ruled by emotion, and

easily brought under the influence of nervous impressions.

Women have much less variability than men; they are precocious, and

their growth more rapid, but the arrest of development arrives with them

sooner. They remain near the child type throughout their lives.

Mr. Havelock Ellis has argued that for this reason they are nearer the

future type of the species, and that the results of modern civilisation

are to render men more feminine in occupations, character, appearance,

and anatomy.

It would be more correct to say that as civilisation advances the

distinctions between the sexes erected by conditions of lower culture

tend to disappear, each sex gaining much from the other without

forfeiting that which is peculiarly its own.

The masculine woman and the feminine man are erratic, often degenerate

types. The tendency to “homosexuality” (or to “non-sexuality”) has

appeared from time to time as an ethnic trait. It was notorious in

ancient Greece and mediæval Italy, and in both cases presaged

deterioration.

_The Vital Powers._—Health is one trait; tenacity of life another.

Feeble and sickly people sometimes reveal a surprising vitality; others,

who are hale and athletic, succumb to slight attacks. The American

Indian, when he falls ill, gives up and dies; while Europeans, though

increasingly requiring medical attention, are growing in longevity.

This physical fact has a noticeable bearing on ethnic psychology. Where

the old survive, the property and the management of society usually rest

in their hands. The traits of age are reflected on the collective mind.

It is cautious, perhaps to timidity, slow in action, avoiding strife.

These are the traits of Chinese diplomacy, in which country not only is

longevity considerable, but the respect for the old passes into

veneration.

As a rule, the lower forms of culture are associated with the shortest

lives. The Australian is a Nestor who reaches fifty years. Early

maturity and early decay mark inferior and degenerate stages of society.

Hence they are guided by inexperienced minds and by the emotional

characters of youth.

_Temperament._—The ancient physicians had much to say about

“temperaments,” classifying them usually as four, the sanguine, bilious,

nervous, and phlegmatic. Both modern medicine and psychology have

rejected these as a basis of classification, but acknowledge that there

lies an important truth in the ancient doctrine.

Professor Wundt, for example, defines temperament from the psychological

standpoint as “an individual tendency to the rise of a certain mental

state,” and Manouvrier, recognising the intimate relationship of mind

and body, explains it as “an ensemble of physical and mental traits

arising from fundamental constitutional differences” in individuals.

Confining myself to the psychological aspect of temperament, I should

call it the personal mode of reaction to different classes of stimuli.

It is the general disposition of the mind, the individual way of looking

at things, _l’humeur habituelle_, and is independent of sentiments,

ideas, or knowledge. It is the psychic resultant of the whole organic

life of the individuals. In this sense, the distinctions of temperaments

are justified, as they depend on the dominance of one or the other of

the physiological systems—circulatory, alimentary, nervous, genital,

etc.—in the economy.

Various writers (Manouvrier, Ribot, Kant) have adopted as the measure of

temperaments and the principle of their classification, the one standard

of _energy_; in other words, molecular change. They speak of sthenic and

hypersthenic temperaments, active and passive, etc.

I doubt if this is correct in physiology, and it is certainly not so in

psychology. Men of all temperaments may be equally energetic, equally

active in life-work. That is an old observation. The measure or standard

should be, not energy, but that general mental condition called

_happiness_. That is the popular distinction, and it is the true one.

When we speak of a sanguine, bilious, cheerful, gloomy, temperament, we

refer to a general and characteristic mental attitude, with reference to

individual happiness.

Rabelais could joke on his death-bed, but Byron, young, rich, and

courted, could find no theme for song but sorrow.

The phlegmatic temperament is supposed not to enjoy keenly, but also not

to suffer keenly. The sanguine temperament is not easily cast down by

adversity, while the bilious or melancholic person is little capable of

appreciating the joyous side of life.

These ancient terms may not be acceptable to modern science; but the

truths on which they are based are acknowledged by all authorities.

They interest us here, because a group has its temperament as much as an

individual, drawn, no doubt, from that prevailing among its members, but

noticeably strengthened by the inherent forces of ethnic psychics.

The recognition of this is seen in common parlance when we speak of the

phlegmatic Dutchman, the gay Frenchman, etc.

Such popular characterisations may not be accurate, but they serve to

show that the fact of a national temperament has unconsciously made

itself felt.

It does not seem dependent either on nutrition, geographic position, or

history; and it is hereditary and constant. Thus the Eskimos, living

amid eternal snows, with a limited diet and a desperately hard struggle

for existence, have a singularly cheerful disposition, loving to talk,

laugh, and indulge in pleasant social intercourse. On the other hand,

the Cakchiquels of Guatemala, living amid the most beautiful and fertile

tracts in the world, are chronically morose and gloomy. Their

temperament is reflected in their language, which, as the late Dr.

Berendt remarked, is as singularly rich in terms for sad emotions as it

is poor for those of a joyous character.

There is no doubt that a cheerful mental disposition is in itself a

defence against the attacks of disease. Seeland, in his anthropologic

studies of the 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 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 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 are in good measure because they are

born so. About 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 called “homochronous”

heredity. The adjective 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 the reproductive period in women. Inherited

tendencies 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 skull, the colour of the

eyes and hair, and similar bodily traits, there corresponds a cerebral

difference, which shows itself in the prevailing direction of the

thoughts, and in special aptitudes.” These contrasts are shown by the

statistics of Jacoby, who examined the birth and lineage of the most

eminent men of France in all departments of activity. He found that the

Normans were decidedly ahead in the exact sciences and practical

affairs, while in poetry, romance, and works of imagination in general

the people of the Midi were far superior to them.

Heredity is believed to present itself in another aspect, which has

excited much attention. I refer to that form of it called “atavism” or

“ancestral reversion,” or “retrogression,” in which a child “takes

after,” not his immediate parents, but some remote ancestor; even, as

has been often claimed, so remote as beyond the limits of our own

species. Such traits have been called “pithecoid” (ape-like) reversions,

as they are alleged to be derived from some four-footed precursor of

man, an ape, or even a lemur.

Evolutionists whose enthusiasm transcended their discretion have pointed

out many such features in the human skeleton. A few years ago (1894) I

gathered these together, and in a paper read before the American

Association for the Advancement of Science, I undertook to prove that

these features can be satisfactorily explained by mechanical and

functional processes acting in the individual life or in that of his

immediate ancestors, and that we have no occasion to appeal to

hypotheses of descent, which have, at least, never been proved. Other

American anatomists (Bowditch, Baker) endorsed and supported by further

evidence this position, so that physical anthropologists, in our country

at least, have said less about atavism than formerly; and the final blow

to it has been dealt quite lately by a Dutch writer, Dr. Kohlbrügge. He

has established the thesis that “all so-called atavistic anomalies are

meaningless for the race-type. They are brought about by arrests of

development or general variability. They depend on disturbances of

nutrition, leading to excess or deficiency of productive energy,

presenting a deceptive appearance of progressive or retrogressive

evolution.”

The consideration of these questions in physical heredity is necessary

in psychology, whether individual or ethnic, not merely because the laws

of physical run parallel to those of psychical life, but as well for the

valuation of those expressions about “men recurring to their brute

ancestors” in habits or feelings, so frequent in popular literature.

_Hybridity._—The intermixture of human races or stocks, human hybridity

as it is sometimes called, has been recognised by all anthropologists to

be a prime factor in ethnic psychology, in the psychical history of Man.

But, strange to say, the opinions about its results could not have been

more divergent. On the one hand we have a corps of authors, Gobineau,

Nott, Broca, Hovelacque, Hervé, etc., who condemn the admixture of human

races as leading inevitably to mental and physical degeneration,

infertility, and extinction.

In direct contradiction to them we find the not less distinguished names

of Quatrefages and Bastian, who maintain not only that such

“miscegenation” is harmless, but that it has been the main factor of

human intellectual progress! That owing chiefly to it certain tribes and

nations have by unconscious selection drawn to themselves the strong

qualities of many lines of blood, and thus won the foremost place in the

struggle for existence. This was notably the opinion of Quatrefages, who

defended the thesis, “In race-mingling the crossing is unilateral and is

directed under unconscious selection toward the superior race.”

This is supported by many well-known examples. In our own country, the

superiority of the mulatto to the full-blood negro is proved by history

and is familiar to all observers; and Dr. Boas has shown by statistical

researches that the half-blood Indian is mentally superior to his

companion of pure lineage, while the half-blood Indian women, instead of

revealing diminished fertility, average two more children to a marriage

than their red sisters of unmixed lineage.

But it will not do to ignore the array of facts of contrary tenor which

has been marshalled to show that in divers instances the result of

race-mixture has been disastrous.

Many of these may easily be explained by the unfortunate social

condition of children in such unions, mostly illegitimate, or at odds

with extreme poverty and its ill surroundings. If they do inherit an

increased ability, it is, under modern conditions, more apt to be

directed against than in favour of the social order.

After all such allowances, there remains a residue unexplained by them,

and inconsistent with the general theory of advantage in

race-intermixture.

The solution of this problem is to be found in the operation of an

obscure but certain law of heredity which has been demonstrated by the

best modern observers.

This reads that in the struggle for transmission between contrary

characteristics in the parents, any trait, mental or physical, may be

passed down separately, _independently of others_.

Thus, on the physical side, the father may have red, the mother black,

hair. The children will inherit, not a blended colour, but some the red,

some the black hair. Or, let us say, one parent has marked musical

ability, the other none. Some of the children will have as much as the

gifted parent, the others be devoid of the faculty.

It is essential, also, to remember that it is the inferior race only

which reaps the psychical advantage. Compared to the parent of the

higher race, the children are a deteriorated product. Only when

contrasted with the average of the lower race can they be expected to

take some precedence. The mixture, if general and continued through

generations, will infallibly entail a lower grade of power in the

descendant. The net balance of the two accounts will show a loss when

compared with the result of unions among the higher race alone.

This consideration has led a recent writer, Dr. Reibmayr, to a theory of

ethnic mental development which merits close attention.

A family, tribe, caste, or race, to preserve and increase its faculties

must sedulously avoid intermarriage with one of inferior gifts. The

value of “breeding in-and-in” is familiar to all interested in the

improvement of the lower animals. This was attained in primitive life by

the tribal law of endogamous marriages, by which a man must take his

wife within the tribe, but not of his immediate blood.

The superiority which this developed led to the subjection of other

tribes, and this, through capture and enslavement of the women, to

intermixture of blood, with its above mentioned first consequences:

deterioration of power in the captors, and, next, elevation of the

lower, conquered tribe.

The former was sometimes counteracted by the maintenance of purity of

blood in a portion of the community, which thus became the ruling class;

and if this did not take place, the tribe itself soon fell beneath the

sway of some neighbour which had maintained its lineage more purely.

Thus, says Dr. Reibmayr, the history of human mental development is, in

fact, the history of human hybridity and its necessary consequences.

Thus it appears that the reciprocal action of these two genetic

processes, the one of close and closer interbreeding, the other of wide

and wider intermixture of blood, is the prime element in modifying the

psychical faculties,—in other words, in creating and moulding the ethnic

mind.

How weighty this consideration becomes when we reflect that throughout

historic times, that is, from the earliest dawn of civilisation, the

subspecies of man have ever been as clearly contrasted in every feature

as they are to-day! The oldest monuments of Egypt and Assyria show their

portraits as typical as if carved or painted yesterday. No boreal

fountain can wash the Ethiopian white; no kisses of tropical Phœbus

could turn Cleopatra black.

We are constrained to adopt, therefore, the principle formulated by

Orgeas, that, so far as history knows, “the races of men have never

altered their traits except through intermarriage.”

The physical criteria of race, such as the colour of the skin, the hair,

the shape of the skull, the odour of the glands, are well marked in the

gross. I have examined their relative values for purposes of

classification in another work, and need not repeat the details here.

But the question is pertinent: Are there psychological distinctions

separating the subspecies of man as clearly as those of his physical

economy?

Conflicting answers have been and still are offered to this inquiry. By

some the mental powers of the races are asserted to be as sharply

contrasted as their personal appearance, and the gulf between them to be

practically impassable.

I have already said that nothing in the minute or gross anatomy of the

brain can be offered to support this view. The contributions to the

general culture of the species have been markedly unequal; but may not

this be explained by other reasons than inherent physical inequalities?

I have already expressed the opinion that human groups have differed

less in inherent psychical capacity than in stimuli and opportunities.

Such, also, is the belief of that profound student of human development,

Professor Bastian. He claims that convincing evidence in favour of such

a view can be drawn from the uniformity in the development of thoughts,

inventions, customs, religions, and the other elements of culture the

world over, up to a certain point at which other intercurrent influences

entered, not dependent on race distinctions.

After a prolonged study of primitive peoples the anthropologist Waitz

reached the conclusion that there is not and never was any positive

difference in the intellectual power of races; and the historian Buckle,

reviewing the record of the species in time, announced his conviction

that “the natural faculties of man have made no progress.”

In abundant instances the children of savage parents have been brought

up in civilised surroundings and have shown themselves equal and

occasionally superior to their comrades of the so-called higher race in

all the tastes of cultured society. It were useless, therefore, to talk

of an average natural inferiority.

The attainment of a possible average, therefore, must be conceded. But

this must not be construed as closing the question historically or

psychically.

It is constantly observed in education that children of equal ability

are by no means equally good scholars. They respond differently to the

stimulus of the desire of knowledge.

Such contrasts are witnessed in races also, and, apart from whatever

other influences we may name, are hereditary characteristics, recurring

indefinitely and controlling the racial mind, its activities and its

ambitions.

So visible are the mental differences of races that some writers have

advocated a psychological classification in anthropology. Professor

Letourneau has attempted it in one of his many treatises.