MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN 213 



things which the experiences of his earher Hfc have 

 accustomed him to look for and to find. This may be 

 granted, and it may also be admitted that children of 

 so-called '' lower " races can be educated side by side 

 with the youth of white races without noticeably falling 

 behind, up to a certain point when, at the age of adoles- 

 cence, in the classic case of the Australian natives, 

 other factors prove to be obstacles to further i)rogress. 

 We must also recognize that the character of the en- 

 vironment of a race determines to a large extent the 

 mode of life of the people ; a forest-dwelling Indian of 

 the interior is a hunter as well as a warrior, while a 

 South Sea Islander is a navigator and a fisherman. 



But the fact remains that the inhabitants of similar 

 countries have reached markedly different grades of 

 intellectual and cultural life. Anglo-Saxon dominance 

 must be referred ultimately to Anglo-Saxon heredity 

 and not to the peculiarities of the land. Although 

 adaptation is no less necessary for men as individuals 

 and as social groups than it is for all other living things, 

 I believe that it is to diversity in constitutional endow- 

 ments, however these may have arisen, that we must 

 attribute the superiority of some races over others. 

 The question is not whether a savage race can or cannot 

 adopt the higher conceptions of a civilized people ; 

 the fact is that they have not actually become civilized 

 by themselves. Thus, while evolution in mental re- 

 spects has not resulted in the loss of plasticity in the 

 case of the brain and the nervous system as a whole, 

 wherefore the activities of these organs still remain 

 capable of individual and racial modifications that are 

 impossible in the case of the skeleton and in the color 



