480 CONCLUSION 



But it is at the same time true that achievement is in very large 

 degree governed by tradition. This is true if the criterion of 

 achievement is an historical criterion, as, for instance, when a man 

 of one race is compared with another man of the same race belong- 

 ing to a different epoch or when a man of one race is compared 

 with a man of another race. It is not true when the comparison 

 is made between two men of the same class within the same race 

 because within classes in a race tradition is more or less equalized. 

 And where tradition is equalized, there achievement is a measure 

 of innate endowment, and it is within a class usually so equalized 

 that at any given time the outward manifestation of mental 

 characters is nearly as much a measure of native endowment as 

 are those of physical characters. Therefore not what a man 

 achieves as judged by historical standards, not whether his 

 thought will follow primitive or common-sense lines, is dependent 

 upon his endowment, but what he will make of the tradition of 

 his time — his performance, in other words, compared with that 

 of men around him. 



Achievement, therefore, as judged historically, is in very large 

 measure to be explained as due to the influence of the environment 

 upon the origin and transmission of tradition. Up to a certain 

 stage, however, and, when the whole of human history is taken 

 into account, up to a late stage, achievement was in the main 

 dependent upon germinal change. But this late stage is anterior 

 by many thousands of years to the beginning of history in the 

 usual meaning of that term. Beginning not later than the last 

 period of the Palaeolithic, the explanation of the course of events 

 is in the main to be sought not in germinal change but in the 

 influence of environment upon tradition. The importance of 

 germinal change in the later stages is by no means negligible. 

 Germinal change, however, was not so much the cause of the 

 course which events followed as a consequence of these events. 

 The effect reacted upon the cause and accelerated the process. 

 Finally when considering the latest phase of history — the latest 

 phase, that is to say, when taking a broad view — we reach the 

 following conclusion. We find that the great acceleration of the 

 rate of progress which characterizes the history of the period is 

 to be explained, not by a change in quality, but by the growth in 

 quantity of the population which, though it does not of necessity 

 lead to, is the indispensable condition precedent to, the break-down 



