398 EVOLUTION OF MENTAL CHAEACTERS 



development. Certain points are noteworthy. The apparent arrest 

 of development is associated with an absorption at a certain age in 

 practical matters, in tribal habits and customs, in sex and in 

 settling down to a normal married existence as much on the lines 

 of their ancestors as is possible under the altered conditions. 

 Several passages quoted above strongly suggest that what we 

 are here witnessing is a turning away from the training felt to 

 be strange and foreign, owing to the strength of the native 

 tracUtion which claims all the affection and interest of the young 

 man. In other words this arrest may not be so much an inevitable 

 result of the kind of mental faculties which are inherited as 

 a result of the coming into play of a peculiar tradition. This 

 conclusion is supported by the fact that, when in Africa education 

 begins earlier, when, that is to say, there is more of a break with 

 native tradition, the arrest is less well marked. Further, in 

 America, it is still less marked though it can be detected. The 

 conclusion would thus seem to be that, though there may be some 

 tendency for intellectual development to stop at a rather lower 

 stage than among European races, it is nothing like so well 

 marked as the observations of residents in South Africa would 

 seem at first sight to show. 



The evidence quoted has chiefly been drawn from observations 

 upon the negro races. It must suffice here to say that what is 

 known regarding the intellectual development of other races 

 included in the first and second groups leads to the conclusion 

 that, although there are signs of differences as between these 

 races, yet these differences are not remarkable, and further that 

 the degree to which so apparently low a race as the Australians 

 differs from Europeans is not in any case much greater than the 

 degree in which negroes differ from Europeans. 



It remains to ask how far this evidence supplements that 

 derived from a study of fossil remains. Judging from the fact 

 that the general level of the development of the mental faculties 

 of any primitive race is not separated markedly farther from that 

 of modern European man than are the negro races in this respect 

 from modern European man, it seems that we must allow to 

 Upper Palaeolithic man on the average a degree of mental 

 development at least equivalent to that of the negro. It is further 

 only reasonable to suppose that the ancestors of Upper Palaeolithic 

 man in the Middle Palaeolithic were little inferior in mental 



