136 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



elements in the environment (especially in new races), progress of 

 the sciences and industry, by education, beliefs, and in many 

 other ways. " Ideas," he says, " can have no real action on the 

 soul of peoples until, as the consequence of a very slow elaboration, 

 they have descended from the mobile regions of thought to that 

 stable and unconscious region of the sentiments in which the 

 motives of our actions are elaborated. They then become ele- 

 ments of character and may influence conduct." 1 



As to the mechanism of propagation of new ideas, it is held to be 

 by innovation on the part of the elite and imitation on the part of 

 the masses, 2 under some conditions taking a form analogous to 

 contagion. 3 Religious beliefs, he holds, have always constituted 

 the most important element of the life of peoples. 4 



Le Bon makes verbal connection with our general subject in 

 these words: 



The history of civilization is ... composed of slow adaptations, of 

 slight successive transformations. . . . The brain cells do not assimilate in 

 a day what it has taken centuries to create, and what is adapted to the senti- 

 ments and needs of organisms that differ from one another. Only slow 

 hereditary accumulations allow of such assimilation; * 



but his whole discussion is an elaboration of the concept of psychi- 

 cal unity applied to the group, this unity being the progressive 

 result of the law of adaptation, the individual member forced to 

 adapt himself to the group and the group-soul progressively 

 changing in response to new needs until it has attained its full 

 growth when there ensues a period of decline. 



Thus with the progress of social evolution and in accordance 

 with the law of adaptation we find different social groupings so 

 united by a common physiological and psychological heritage, so 

 bound together by common interests and ideals, and responding 

 so alike to a common stimulus that we may well speak of such 

 groups as having a " soul." 6 Though in describing the soul of any 

 particular group whether city or state we may use the normal 

 frequency curve representing all the people, it is the variation 



1 Psychology of Peoples, p. 168. * Psychology of Peoples, p. 190. 



1 Ibid., p. 174. 5 Ibid., p. 96. 



1 Developed in his Crowds. 6 Ibid., pp. 6, 59, 146, 171. 



