426 NATURE AND NURTURE 



this or that class of facts, but no power of learning to utilize them. 

 So also, while it is possible that some geniuses may be men 

 endowed with exceptional all-round capacity, they are usually 

 distinguished from the average type by exceptional capacity in 

 some particular department of mental activity. It is probable, for 

 example, that Shakespeare had more poetic capacity (i.e. power of 

 responding to poetic experiences, of recording and learning to 

 utilize such experiences) and less artistic capacity than Michael 

 Angelo, who presumably had less mathematical capacity 

 than Newton, who in turn had less military capacity than 

 Napoleon, who again was inferior in philosophic capacity to 

 Darwin. 



701. But, admitting all this, it must still be borne in mind that 

 (i) the stimulus of nutriment is capable of developing the bodies 

 and minds of men in only one way ; that is, we cannot by changing 

 the kind of nutriment which the human being is capable of 

 assimilating, produce different kinds of bodies and minds ; under 

 all kinds of nutriment a man will still have much the same sort of 

 limbs, lungs, sensations, instincts, and memory ; (2) changes in the 

 kind of stimulus of use cannot produce very great changes in the 

 bodies of men ; as in the case of nutriment, they may develop 

 this or that organ more or less according to the amount of use 

 supplied, but that is all ; limbs and lungs and other structures will 

 still be of the same kind no matter what the stimulus ; (3) but 

 differences in the stimulus of experience supplied to the mind are 

 capable of causing tremendous differences in mental development. 

 For example, while the bodily parts of a yokel (e.g. his brain) 

 differ little in appearance from that of a cultured man, the mental 

 difference is obviously very great. It follows, that in comparing men 

 or races we are on safer ground when we suppose that their bodily 

 differences are innate (i.e. germinal) than when we suppose that 

 their mental differences are innate. Doubtless, as I say, differences 

 in mental capacity are just as great as innate physical differences ; 

 but they are apt to be overshadowed and concealed by vaster 

 acquired differences. 



702. Perhaps the most convincing evidence that human mental 

 and moral characters arise mainly under the stimulus of experi- 

 ence is afforded by the history of races and nationalities. Like 

 individuals, races differ in their mental characteristics. Thus the 

 English have one set of characteristics, (knowledge, ideals, and 

 so forth), the Japanese a second, the Russians a third, and West 

 Coast Africans a fourth. Most historians and men of science 



