The individuals are here dropped from sight, and the elements and processes of two or more ethnic minds are placed in contrast. They are compared in the manner in which they have conceived and carried out notions common to the species—let us say religion, or law, or social relations, or practical inventions. When the comparison is extended to all the cultural elements and the results tabulated, we reach fixed and accurate data for appraising ethnic mental ability, whether racial, tribal, or national.
There is nothing delusive or fanciful in such comparisons. The results are obtained by recognised scientific methods, and are controlled by well-known mathematical laws. They establish the claims of ethnic psychology to a place among the exact sciences, and show that it has a field of its own not yet included in the domain of any of its neighbours.
CHAPTER III
PHYSIOLOGICAL VARIATION IN THE ETHNIC MIND
Thus furnished, as we have seen in the last chapter, with a common stock of faculties and desires, the primitive men set out from their unknown birthplace, to conquer the world. They journeyed east, north, south, and west, into foreign fields and under alien skies. Seized in the iron grasp of novel environment, each band must adapt itself to the new conditions or perish; for in their ignorance they knew not to wrest the power from Nature and make her their slave. They must bow and yield to her commands under penalty of death.
Compelled by external forces, they changed the hue of their skin and the shade of their hair; they grew tall of stature or sunk to pygmies; their skulls altered in shape, and their long bones rounded, or else flattened like those of apes.
Not less surprising were the alterations in their minds. Some felt no desire for fixed abodes, and ever wandered, while others sowed fields and built cities; some remained in small, ungoverned bands, while others founded great empires and enacted iron codes; some were satisfied to compel the Unknown by magical rites, while others sought the wisdom of God and the secrets of Nature.
These variations, however, meant Progress; for repetition is not progress, and it is only by ceaseless change and endless experiment that one can find out the best. The separation of man into families and tribes and peoples was, in fact, a necessary condition to his improvement as a species. From the seeming chaos of changing forms the highest type emerged, as, in Greek myth, from the surging seas rose the perfect form of Aphrodite Anadyomene.
The chaos is indeed but seeming. The differences among men are the results of physiological processes, proceeding in definite directions under fixed laws, and adjusted so that they bring about calculable results. Let us turn to the examination of these processes, in their universal expressions operative everywhere, as well in the psychical as the physical world.
Psychical as well as physical; for the new conditions which transformed the bodies of the primitive horde left their impress also on the minds of its members, not erasing any trait which made them Man, but bringing them into closer likeness between themselves, and by that act into sharper contrast to their neighbours. The varied practical needs of life fostered their peculiarities, and created a similarity of feelings and purposes, and a community of knowledge in each band. This acted as a sort of intellectual mother-water in which each individual mind of the band crystallised into the same shape, readily accepted the beliefs, imbibed the same prejudices, looked at the world through the same spectacles.
We may well believe that it was not long before contests arose between the primitive hordes. We are told, indeed, by a venerable authority that they began between the first two brothers. Then these diversities of body and mind decided the conflict. The stronger slew the weaker or drove them from the field; unless, indeed, by craft or superior skill the weaker foiled the stronger, as, so endowed, in the long run they surely would. Thus the great law of Natural Selection, of the destruction of the less fit, exercised its sway to preserve that horde which, on the whole, was better adapted for preservation and gave it power over the land.