INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUSNESS 107 



dependent on the environment nor owing anything 

 to it. They are of the most varied description 

 from sublime genius to imbecility, from the heights 

 of religious rapture to the depths of insanity and 

 crime. By psychic inertia, instincts, capabilities, 

 and incapabilities, predispositions to all manner of 

 activities and non-activities good and bad, are carried 

 over into the next generation where they unfold them- 

 selves and maintain themselves not only in non- 

 accordance with the environment but often in oppo- 

 sition to it. The environment in matters psychical 

 always includes, is chiefly constituted by, education. 

 Educability is psychic affectability, in-educability 

 is psychic functional inertia. It is this that Pro- 

 fessor Ribot alludes to when he says that " heredity 

 has set a limit to the education of the negro," * 

 and it sets it to that of many others besides. This 

 is psychic inertia expressing itself via heredity as 

 limit-setting, a mode with which we are familiar. 

 It is the misfortune not the fault of the negro, and 

 so with all those who have inherited disabilities. 

 Such educational disabilities may belong to the 

 individual, the class, the race. Something of this 

 was in Faraday's mind when he wrote in his lecture 

 on mental inertia, f " This is, of course, equivalent to 

 an avowal that there are natural disturbing forces 

 of the inertia of the mind, and that an irregular, 

 a retarded, or even an inverted progression must 

 at times take place in knowledge and morality 



* Ribot, " Heredity/' p. 327. (London : H. S. King and Co., 1875.) 

 f Loc. cit. p. 278. 



