182 ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 



the environment in wliicli the Enq-lish have evolved 

 has so differed from the environments in which the 

 French, the Italians, the Germans, and the West 

 Africans have evolved, that survival of the fittest, in the 

 case of the Englishman, has caused in them a greater 

 evolution of the nervous structures which subserve 

 resolution than it has caused in the other nations named ; 

 it can hardly be that the Frenchman is inherently vain 

 because the environment of his ancestry was such that 

 superior vanity caused a greater survival or a lesser 

 elimination than it caused in the other nations ; there 

 is no conceivable reason why phlegm in Germanic sur- 

 roundings should have conduced to survival more than 

 in West African surroundings ; or wh}'' cruelty should 

 have been more beneficial or less deleterious to the 

 ancestors of the West Africans than it was to the 

 ancestors of the Germans. 



We must suppose, therefore, that differences in the 

 sizes and shapes of the brains of various races imply, 

 not differences, in inborn mental traits, but differences 

 in the power of acquiring traits ; we must conclude that 

 the African Busliman, with his small brain, differs 

 mentally from the Englishman with his large brain, not 

 mainly in inborn mental traits, but mainly in the traits 

 which he acquires, and in his poiucrs of acquiring tliem. 

 Reasoning from the analogy of loAver animals, it is certain 

 that the man witli the smaller and less developed brain 

 differs inherently from the man with the larger and 

 better developed brain, mainly in that he has a 

 smaller power of develoj)ing in response to stimulation, 

 a lesser power of acquiring fit mental traits, not mainly 

 in that he has different inborn mental traits, for 

 these latter {i. e. instincts), as I say, have been so re- 

 placed and oversliadowed in man by acquired mental 

 traits, that they have undergone great retrogression, 

 an:l except as regards certain instincts, common to all 



