TKADITION AND HEEEDITY 451 



But it is not to this peculiar germinal constitution but to the 

 motherhood of the South African veldt acting upon a peculiar 

 tradition that what is distinctively Boer is to be attributed. 

 So, too, there are no mental characteristics as manifested so 

 definite as those which are associated with Americans. But it 

 is impossible to think that they are the product of the influence 

 of the various racial stocks which have gone to make the modern 

 American population. Clearly enough these characteristics are 

 almost wholly traditional, and it can without much difficulty 

 be shown how the peculiar geographical, social, and political 

 environment has given rise to them. 



Can we further understand how these distinctive accumula- 

 tions of tradition are maintained ? Let us remember that a man 

 requires not only a home in the usual sense of a roof over his head, 

 but what we may call a home in the world of tradition, and that 

 just as most men find a dwelling-place in the country in which 

 they are born, so most men at the same time find a home in the 

 world of tradition in the same country. Now in any area, where 

 men have for a longer or shorter time acted together, there has 

 been evolved a certain tradition under the influence of those 

 elements in the surroundings enumerated above. If another 

 group of men has been associated together in a very similar 

 area, the tradition there elaborated will show a likeness to that 

 in the former area. But there may be considerable differences. 

 Small differences in the aggregate of influences sometimes have 

 far-reaching effects, and again what we regard in our ignorance 

 as ' chance ' happenings may have, as we shall point out later, 

 profound consequences. Small differences and apparently unim- 

 portant happenings give turns and twists to the direction in which 

 tradition is built up, and the individual differences between 

 one tradition and another become exaggerated by the tendency 

 of tradition to move in grooves. The peculiarities of a tradition 

 become embodied in the sum of all the institutions using that 

 term in the widest sense characteristic of a race and, as each 

 man passes under the influence of those traditions, so these peculi- 

 arities are maintained. As often pointed out language is of less 

 importance than might be supposed. A common language does 

 not imply a common tradition, and on the other hand a diversity 

 in language does not imply a diversity in tradition. Institutions 

 of another kind are of more importance. It is institutions like 



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