RACIAL MENTAL DIFFERENCES 295 



caused a lesser elimination than it caused in other nations. 

 There is no conceivable reason why phlegm in Dutch 

 surroundings should have conduced to survival more than 

 in West African surroundings ; or why cruelty should have 

 been more beneficial or less deleterious to the ancestors of 

 West Africans than it was to the ancestors of Dutchmen. 



469. Inborn characters evolved by Natural Selection are 

 usually very stable ; for, since they are common to the whole 

 race, they are generally very ancient. During the course of 

 many generations they may undergo slow evolution or 

 regression, but they are never suddenly changed. Acquired 

 racial peculiarities, also, may be very stable ; thus language 

 has persisted for thousands of generations, and some forms 

 of religion for thousands of years. But acquired peculiarities 

 differ from inborn characters in that they are liable to be 

 changed for the whole race in a single generation. The best 

 evidence, therefore, that the racial peculiarities which are 

 commonly regarded as inborn are in truth acquired, is 

 furnished by the fact that many races have altered their 

 mental characters with great swiftness. Almost all civilized 

 races have emerged from comparative barbarism too rapidly 

 to permit of the racial change being accounted for in any 

 other way. In a single generation the Japanese have 

 become progressive, and the Maoris of New Zealand orderly 

 and intellectual. In a scarcely longer period the Highlanders 

 of Scotland underwent similar changes. For two or three 

 centuries the Greeks were one of the most splendid races of 

 which history holds record ; within a century or two later 

 they ranked amongst the most degraded of peoples. Much 

 the same is true of the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, and the 

 Romans. The Egyptians, once so great, have long been a 

 wretched people, cowardly, effeminate, untrustworthy. Under 

 British tuition they have again begun to show some martial 

 capabilities. The Arabs, after an unmeasured past of stagna- 

 tion, quite suddenly displayed great qualities. They over- 

 ran much of the known world, founded the highest and most 

 liberal civilization of the Middle Ages, produced a literature 

 of considerable merit, and made very important mathe- 

 matical, astronomical, and other scientific discoveries. They 

 have since lapsed into comparative barbarism. 



470. The clearest evidence, however, is afforded by the 

 history of religions. A religion is, of course, a pure acquire- 

 ment. Any traits that arise under its influence are also 

 pure acquirements. For good or evil every religion is a 

 most potent educational factor, especially if it limits the 



