408 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 



the introduction of such institutions, they will, if forced to accept 

 them, be ultimately liberated thereby and raised to a higher plane 

 of existence and civilization. The essential element in this belief 

 is that reason is the one controlling force in human conduct, and that 

 rational institutions are productive of rational action, and hence 

 are the sole requirement for well-ordered and civilized life. As 

 a matter of fact, however, the science of the nineteenth century has 

 abandoned this belief in the universal supremacy of the conscious 

 rational faculty. Men are governed far more by their inherited 

 beliefs, customs, and instincts, than by a conscious choice between 

 different courses of action. This is true among ourselves, and it is 

 so to an exceedingly greater extent among more aboriginal peoples. 

 The doctrine of assimilation makes a demand upon the rational 

 element in human nature which not even the action of the most 

 highly developed individuals, not to say nations, could justify. The 

 natives are to abandon the entire complex of customs and beliefs 

 which have thus far guided them through life, and by an act of 

 selective reason, to adopt institutions foreign to their social experi- 

 ence. Modern science is agreed that inherited psychological ele- 

 ments - - the constitution of the mind - - are the most persistent 

 phenomena of which we have any knowledge. New ideas may be 

 poured into the consciousness, may even be understood by the 

 rational faculties, but they will leave no trace upon the mental 

 constitution and upon the real spring of action. The most conclu- 

 sive proof of this is found in the psychology of those races which 

 have come, through the chance of history, under the control of dif- 

 ferent conquerors. Through numberless generations under the most 

 varied historical conditions and environments, the descendants of 

 the same race will continue to develop similar psychological traits. 

 Thus, parts of the Malay race have been for centuries under the rule 

 of three different European peoples, and nevertheless the Filipinos, 

 with their Spanish instruction, the Javans trained under the Dutch 

 colonial system, and the Malays of the mainland who have been 

 under English tutelage, all display identical characteristics and have 

 the same intellectual constitution which the earliest explorers noted 

 in their day. In the same way we may trace among the negroes of 

 the United States, of Hayti, and of Martinique, the same psycho- 

 logical tendencies which are found among their distant relatives 

 in the African forests. The actual experience of colonizing nations 

 and the results of scientific investigation leave room for but one 

 opinion upon the policy of assimilation, that it rests upon a purely 

 ideological basis and runs counter to the scientific laws of psychic 

 development. 



The very first requirement in laying the foundations of a colonial 

 policy is, therefore, the careful study of the ethnical character of the 



