1 08 Heredity. 



in the absence of such works, our researches would necessarily be 

 long, tedious, and often without result, all that we have been able 

 to do here is to indicate roughly the part of heredity in history, as 

 a physiological and psychological law. We have had to content 

 ourselves with showing its existence, for we have no means of 

 telling, save in a vague way, in what measure a given quality has 

 descended from one generation to another, whether it has varied, 

 or why it has varied. 



We have now to treat of the influence of heredity, not on indi- 

 viduals, but on masses. We shall see how it transmits and fixes 

 certain psychological characters in a people as in a family. 



The habit of our times is to regard the State as an organism. 

 Herbert Spencer has even shown that this simile holds good at 

 every point ; that there is in nature a hierarchical series of organ- 

 isms parallel to the hierarchical series of states, the one from the 

 protozoon to man, the other from the savage tribes of Australia to 

 the most highly civilized nations of Europe; and that in the 

 organism, as in the State, progress consists in division of labour, 

 and in the increasing complexity of functions. The organism 

 subsists only by a continual assimilation and disassimilation of 

 molecules : the State by continual gain and loss of individuals. 

 But amid this incessant whirl, which constitutes their life, there is 

 ever something fixed, which is the basis of their unity and their 

 identity. In a people, that sum of psychical characteristics which 

 is found throughout its whole history, in all its institutions, and at 

 every period, is called the national character. 



The national character is the ultimate explanation, and the only 

 true one, of the virtues and vices of a people, of its good or bad 

 fortune. This truth, simple though it is, is hardly yet recognized. 

 The successes and reverses of a people do not depend on their form 

 of government, but are the effect of their institutions. Their 

 institutions are the effect of their manners and their creeds ; their 

 manners and creeds are the effect of their character. If one 

 people is industrious, another indolent ; if the one has an internal, 

 moral religion, and the other an external, sensuous religion, the 

 cause is to be looked for in their habitual mode of thinking and 

 feeling that is to say, in their character. Nor can it be seriously 

 doubted that character itself is also an effect. It is extremely 



