428 NATURE AND NURTURE 



the negro Baptists and Methodists of the United States are in 

 many respects typical Baptists and Methodists resembling those 

 of Wales. Jews who abide by their religion retain their character- 

 istics ; those who abandon it merge indistinguishably into the 

 surrounding population. Indeed all the world over peoples of the 

 same colour are divided mentally much more sharply by religious 

 differences than by anything else. 



705. To me it appears, if only we think carefully enough and 

 take all the facts into account, that it is impossible to come to 

 conclusions other than the foregoing. They amount to nothing 

 more than is implied in the statement that man is mentally an 

 extremely adaptable, malleable, educable, intelligent, and in- 

 tellectual animal ; and, therefore, that he is much more a creature 

 of habit than of instinct. Educability is nothing other than a 

 power of growing mentally under the stimulus of experience ; 

 intellectuality is nothing else than a having so grown. 



706. Some authorities, however, founding themselves on 

 statistical inquiries, are of a contrary opinion. At least they claim 

 to have proved that man is less educable, less a creature of acquire- 

 ment, than I have supposed. Thus Professor Karl Pearson 1 

 issued schedules to school-teachers and requested them to supply 

 information as precise as possible concerning certain mental and 

 physical characters of (i) pairs of brothers, (2) of sisters, and (3) of 

 brother and sister. Some of the physical characters were capable 

 of being measured. Others were estimated, as, of course, were all 

 mental characters. The physical characters included health, 

 athleticism, length, breadth, and height of head, colour, smooth- 

 ness, waviness, or curliness of hair, and colour of eyes ; the mental 

 characters included ability in various studies, noisiness or quiet- 

 ness, self-consciousness, self-assertion, shyness, conscientiousness, 

 popularity, and temper. Pearson chose children rather than adults 

 owing to the difficulty of obtaining correct information concerning 

 the latter. " In the first place it seemed to me absolutely impos- 

 sible to get a quantitative measure of the resemblances in moral 

 and mental characters between parent and offspring. You must 

 not compare the moral character of a child with those of its adult 

 parents. You can only estimate the resemblance between the 

 child and what its parents were as children. Here the grand-parent 

 is the only available source of information ; but not only does age 



1 " On the Inheritance of the Mental and Moral characters in Man, and its 

 Comparison with the Inheritance of the Physical characters." The Huxley Lecture 

 for 1903. The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 



