The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 323 



tion, but owing to the imperfect development of his mind he could 

 understand nothing of our European civilization, and interpreted 

 everything according to the notions of a savage. Thus, when a 

 rich man passed, he would say, 'That man has a good deal to eat,' 

 unable to understand wealth in any other way. 



The mind must certainly be first moulded by previous culture 

 in order to enter on complex questions, and this is true of the 

 species no less than of the individual. In the individual all 

 progress of the intellect becomes, when fixed by memory, the basis 

 and the condition of further progress ; in the species all progress 

 of the intelligence becomes, when fixed by heredity, the basis and 

 the condition of further progress. Heredity plays, in regard to 

 the species, nearly the same part that memory plays in regard to 

 the individual. 



If in our literary history we make some unexpected comparison 

 as, for example, between men of letters of the fifth century and 

 those of the eighteenth ; between Gregory of Tours and Tredega- 

 rius, etc., and Voltaire, Diderot and the whole Encyclopedistes ; 

 or between the court of Charlemagne and our romantic movement 

 of the nineteenth century the discord is so complete, the contrast 

 so great, that the comparison seems to be simply whimsical. There 

 is, between the intellectual forms of the two epochs compared, an 

 immense difference, which it is usually said proceeds from progress 

 and civilization. 



We are told, and it is proved to us, how the French mind 

 reached its apogee after much groping and many efforts and 

 failures. But this progress is explained altogether by external 

 causes the influence of Christian beliefs, the crusades, great dis- 

 coveries, Greek and Latin culture, the Renaissance, etc. But 

 there is also, it seems to us, an internal cause of which we hear 

 nothing; the gradual transformation of the intelligence by heredity. 

 The average French mind in the sixth and ninth centuries was 

 capable only of a certain degree of culture ; beyond that it under 

 stood nothing, and distorted everything, after the manner of the New 

 Zealand savage. But this average mental constitution, improved 

 by culture, was bequeathed, principal and interest, to the next 

 generation, and so on for ten or twelve centuries. 



This is no mere hypothesis, although it would be difficult to 



