36 



DISCOVERY 



out in some one region, and the " race " may thus be 

 a group which has arisen from ancestors which may 

 have differed both from their descendants and from 

 one another ; but this must not be interpreted too 

 crudely, for all serious study goes to show that many 

 phj-sical characteristics of man are inherited almost 

 unchanged through many generations. Boas's suf)- 

 position that descendants of immigrants into the 

 United States are speedily modified into a physically 

 distinguishable American type is held to be discarded ; 

 his analyses were not adequate to his conclusions. 



It is important to keep this picture of " race 

 character " in mind when stud\-ing mental characters, 

 because it enables the worker to avoid the extreme 

 view of races as units which ha\'e continued unchanged 

 from very early times and have their mark on all the 

 features of all their members, as well as the other 

 extreme view, which looks upon physical characters 

 as fleeting expressions of the influence of the conditions 

 under which a race lives. 



The question for study is not so much whether a 

 given race has a certain mentality, as whether physical 

 and mental characters are linked together. This 

 article will try to suggest that they are so linked, but 

 it is well at the outset to note the wish of a cautious 

 psychologist that the question might stand over for 

 another century or two until more is known about 

 mental character. The classifications used in psycho- 

 logical discussions may well be chance combinations 

 and not by any means fundamental unities. For 

 instance, a mental characteristic such as " bad temper " 

 may be a compound of several mental characteristics, 

 which are themselves the true unit qualities of the mind. 

 On the other hand, one might argue that the study 

 of the association of mental and bodily characteristics 

 is as likely as any other line of research to lead to better 

 analysis and determination of fundamental factors. 

 In any case, it is not amiss to try to look out upon a 

 field of scientific study which is as yet hardly touched. 



The skin is one organ of contact with the outer 

 world, and its character, colour, and development of 

 its pores and hair in different groups is linked up with 

 circumstances of regions which those groups of peoples 

 occupy. The dark- brown pigment and turgid skin of 

 the African exuding invisible sweat, the dry tough 

 skin of the Eastern Asiatic, the sensitive skin of the 

 men of North-west Europe, the red- brown skin of wan- 

 derers on Arctic icefields, are all related to physical 

 conditions — to the glare and heat of the Equatorial 

 regions, the long duration of bitter and dry cold in 

 the interior of East Asia, and so on. But they also 

 imply differences of sense perception, of irritabilitv, 

 and so suggest possibilities of temperamental differ- 

 ences which, especially as between Orientals and our- 

 selves, are very well known. 



Again, climate, and especially temperature, has 

 a strong influence on sex-aspects of our organisation. 

 In warm regions sex-maturity is hastened, save among 

 nomads, some of whose males undergo long fasts and 

 other strenuous forms of training. Growth takes on 

 a spvu't at the advent of sex-maturity and then ceases. 

 It thus happens that the cessation of growth, at 

 least of mental growth, comes at an early age, before 

 experience has had time to accumulate very much, 

 among the natives of West Africa and the Equatorial 

 forests. And, obviously related to this, is the marked 

 contrast in mental adaptability and power between 

 those natives on the one hand and Western Europeans 

 on the other. 



A third point concerning the association of mental 

 and bodily characteristics is brought out when we 

 reflect that most human races are most active 

 mentally when the temperature varies about 60° to 

 64° Fahrenheit, with occasional short intervals of 

 bracing cold. In those regions in which temperature 

 is for long periods far above or especially far below 

 this level, it is difhcult to keep up intellectual initia- 

 tive unless men are living very protected lives. They 

 tend to rely upon routine even more than we do ; 

 the effort of thought is often beyond their physical 

 powers. So the people of certain regions with certain 

 physical characters may tend more towards initiative 

 or more towards ingrained habit according to external 

 circumstances. 



Enough has now been said to show that there is 

 a prima facie case for the distribution of mental 

 characteristics in particular regions, were we but 

 better able to diagnose them, as well as for certain 

 regional distributions of physical characteristics and 

 for a connection to some extent between one set and 

 the other. 



But the case is much complicated by the fact that 

 man is a migratory animal and that, if he moves 

 from one region to another very different one, he b^' 

 no means discards his old characteristics in the new 

 environment. Migration brings intermixture, and 

 men who migrate make the mosaics of inheritance in 

 a population very complex indeed, so that human 

 organisms are produced with, perhaps, possibilities 

 of differing response to many diverse contacts on the 

 one hand, but with the probability on the other hand 

 of very weak spots when, to put it crudely, the frag- 

 ments of the mosaic do not quite fit. It is generally 

 acknowledged that the mosaic of inheritance among 

 the Japanese is a very complex one, including elements 

 of \'ery diverse origins. They have demonstrated 

 their educability in a way which has thrilled the world, 

 but they find it very difficult to establish themselves 

 save within comparatively closely restricted climatic 

 limits. In most parts of the world, as a result of 



