70 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



again,* " Atavism one of the most marked and 

 striking tendencies of organic beings ; this hereditary 

 tendency/' and againf " the tendency of races 

 to return to their primitive type." Functional 

 inertia, as racially expressed, is responsible for 

 keeping nations unprogressive, backward as regards 

 civilisation according to our ideas ; it can scarcely 

 be affectability that has done it. Viewed thus, the 

 Chinese, who are to-day, as regards their enlighten- 

 ment, almost exactly where they were a few thou- 

 sand years ago, have much functional inertia ; we 

 know how excessively conservative they are, and 

 what enormous obstacles Western ideas encounter 

 amongst them. This is so obviously inertial, that 

 a recent writer, M. Guyau t uses the very term with 

 reference to a similar race, the Turks " The Turk 

 with his Oriental Inertia." 



Environment acting through affectability has 

 certainly produced and established racial character- 

 istics the solemn man of the cold Northern hills, 

 the light-hearted vagabond of sunny Sicily but 

 functional inertia, having preserved the status quo, 

 is responsible for their being maintained under, it 

 may be, very different conditions. The Irishman 

 or the Aberdonian, encountered at the Antipodes, 

 is found to have retained his brogue and his humour, 

 his accent and his caution respectively : certainly 



* " Darwiniana : Collected Essays," vol. ii. p. 398. 

 t Ibid. p. 425. 



i J. M. Guyau, " Education and Heredity," Contemn. Science 

 Series, p. 67. (London: Scott, 1891.) 



