Lastly, the reader must ask himself the question: What mental effects have centuries of freedom or slavery, or of civilisation, or of barbarism, on races? Do they produce innate changes, or do they merely render certain acquirements so nearly universal that their perpetuation by imitation is insured? If he supposes that the changes are innate, he must ask himself the additional question whether they arose through the transmission of parental acquirements to offspring, or through the actual and constant destruction in certain environments of certain definite types of individuals who were thus prevented from leaving offspring and so perpetuating their like. The former hypothesis is now generally repudiated by science. The latter may be true, but as yet has not been supported by evidence; or at any rate is supported only by such evidence as that which Mill and Buckle denounced. In either case, though history may furnish him with intellectual occupation, it will supply few lessons of practical value. If, on the other hand, he has perceived the greatness of the part played in the human mind by acquirement, if he has noted that man is man, a thinking and rational being, the conqueror of the earth, only because he is the most impressionable and therefore the most adaptable of living types, the reader will learn from the racial see-saw of the past what kinds of mental training have conduced to success and happiness and what to ruin, and so perhaps he may find himself in a position to help the fortunes of his people and his children. The real value of history, as in the last analysis of all experience, lies in its educational applications.
G. ARCHDALL REID
PREHISTORIC MEN ATTACKING THE GREAT CAVE BEARS
LARGER IMAGE
THE RISE OF MAN
AND THE EVE OF HISTORY
THE WORLD BEFORE HISTORY