PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 879 



One of our first tasks is to settle whether national characteristics 

 should be dealt with by social psychology or handed over to ethno- 

 logy. This depends on whether differences in national traits are due 

 primarily to race-endowment or to situation and history. It is 

 certain that "blood" is not a solvent of every problem in national 

 psychology, and that "race" is no longer a juggler's hat from which 

 you can draw explanations for all manner of moral contrasts and 

 peculiarities. Nowadays no one charges to inborn differences the 

 characteristic contrasts between Englishmen and Russians, between 

 Jews and Christians, between Javanese and Japanese. The marvel- 

 ous transformation, to-day of Japan, to-morrow perhaps of China 

 and Siam and the Philippines, makes one doubt if even the impassive 

 Oriental is held fast in the net of race. Perhaps the soul-markings 

 of Anglo-Saxons or Slavs or Orientals are of societal origin, due to 

 the capitalization of centuries of experience in unlike situations, 

 and to the injection and saturation of individual minds with these 

 transmitted products by means of social circumpressure. When 

 the Apache youth returned from Hampton, the Hindoo back from 

 Eton, or the Chinaman home from Yale, reverts to ancestral ways, 

 everybody cries "Race! " But why ignore the force of early impres- 

 sions? If we had caught them as sucklings instead of as adoles- 

 cents, perhaps there would be no reversion. Why should we expect 

 a few years of schooling to bleach those who have been steeped 

 since their 'teens in a special environment and culture? 



The broad moral contrasts between German, Turk, and Gipsy 

 must be due to race or to environment, physical and social. Now, 

 how much weight ought we to assign to the race-factor? For my 

 own part, I doubt if ideas ever get into the blood, or feelings and 

 dispositions that depend on particular ideas. The Chinaman is not 

 born a conservative, the Turk a fatalist, the Hindoo a pessimist, 

 the Semite a monotheist. Notions and beliefs do not become fixed 

 race-characters, nor do the emotions and conduct connected with 

 them become congenital. Yet, considering how differently the 

 peoples have been winnowed and selected by their respective environ- 

 ments, occupations, and histories, I see no reason why there should 

 not arise between them differences in motor and emotional response 

 to stimulus. 



Even now in the same stock, nay, even in the same family, we 

 find congenital differences in the strength of the sex-appetite, in 

 the taste for liquor, in the craving for excitement, in Wanderlust, in 

 jealousy, in self-control, in capacity for regular labor, in the spirit 

 of enterprise, in the power to postpone gratification differences 

 which defy eradication by example or instruction. If such divers- 

 ities declare themselves within a people, why not between peoples? 

 Will not a destructive environment select the sensual, a bountiful 



