THE WIDER VIEW. 359 



considered as a complex machine, the beginnings and 

 relations of mental phenomena could in some cases be 

 discovered. Yet by this effort we touch our problem 

 on one side only, and so must be prepared to meet 

 modifying facts which are certain to come in from other 

 sources. 



The problem of education in its most general form 

 demands an answer to the question, how the individual 

 is to make the best use of his own limited life-cycle, 

 while at the same time those larger responsibilities of 

 the unit to the race are kept in mind. 



The facts which may be brought forward as materials 

 for the reply are, however, very baffling. 



A study of the foregoing tables indicates that races 

 which have progressed farthest in civilisation are also 

 those which possess a large brain-weight ; but the converse 

 of this proposition is by no means true, for the tables also 

 show that there are races possessed of a large brain- 

 weight and yet uncivilised. It would be hardly fitting 

 to introduce here matters which have taxed the best 

 ingenuity of the anthropologists, but it is worth while, 

 perhaps, to make some effort towards the clear expres- 

 sion of the fact that so-called civilisation is not 

 necessarily accompanied by an increase in the native 

 mental power of the individuals who take part in it. 



These difficulties have recently been very concisely 

 presented by Boas, 1 who concludes that races low in 

 the scale may still have before them a future of develop- 

 ment, and suggests certain methods for the study and 

 determination of race characters. 



The turn of any race towards progress depends, like 

 all other reactions between living things and their 

 environment, upon a series of happy accidents. It must 



1 Boas, Human Facility as determined by Race. Address before 

 the Section of Anthropology, Am. Ass. Ad. Sci., August, 1894. 



