404 EVOLUTION OF MENTAL CHAKACTERS 



habits, customs, and modes of life ; hunting and fishing races, 

 pastoral races, agricultural races, races predominately sea-faring, 

 all come into contact and conflict. Under conditions of these 

 kinds there is more tendency for advantage to accrue to intellect 

 not only as between members of different races but as between 

 members of the same race than in conflicts between races of 

 similar culture. Where these conditions have ruled, therefore, 

 there has been a tendency, though perhaps not a very marked 

 tendency, for a premium to have been set upon intellect. It so 

 happens, however, that this region of Western Asia is endowed 

 above all other regions with plants and animals that can be 

 domesticated and with other features offering rewards to skill. 

 In this region there was thus an additional premium upon intellect, 

 and it was apparently in this region that the races who initiated 

 the third period made their appearance. To the favouring of 

 intellect under these conditions we may thus attribute what 

 superiority of intellect the races of this group exhibit over the 

 races of other groups. But it is rather in disposition and tempera- 

 ment that the predominant races of this group differ from those 

 of the preceding groups. In them we meet with a power of 

 leadership, a resourcefulness, a versatility, that marks them off 

 from the primitive races, and it is precisely these qualities which 

 would be chiefly favoured in conflict and competition of the kind 

 described. The outward manifestation of these qualities may 

 indeed be largely a matter of tradition, but that they are also 

 in part innate in the modern European we have seen to be the 

 case, and the explanation of this further evolution is clearly to 

 be found in the conditions to which they have long been subject. 

 Turning to the conditions within the races of the third period 

 and neglecting the Asiatic races, those races which in fact have 

 been left in a backwater out of the main stream of progress, we 

 find ourselves faced with the difficulty that tradition has so far 

 come to overlay the innate qualities of intellect and disposition, 

 that we are only with great difficulty at present able to estimate 

 the result of any factors which we may see at work favouring 

 or otherwise particular types. We may note, however, that 

 success both between and within races has fallen rather to 

 character than to skill. There is, in other words, little reason 

 for thinking that intellect, so far as it is measured by skill, has 

 been markedly favoured. On the other hand, character as 



