CULTURE AND CHARACTER 247 



able to transform, for instance, the disposition 

 of a Dane to that of an Italian ? So far as present 

 knowledge goes we must reply in the negative. 

 With however much artistic training, Englishmen 

 will not catch the ecstatic abandon of the Mediter- 

 ranean temperament. In external behaviour 

 culture may produce striking resemblances be- 

 tween different individuals and races. But it 

 appears to leave the original character funda- 

 mentally unchanged. The force of habit has, in 

 fact, its limitations. It regularizes our impulses 

 not, it would seem, by modifying their innate 

 strength, but by facilitating their emergence into 

 action. If we imagine the various instincts of 

 humanity confined like the winds of ^Eolus, and 

 able to free themselves, each through an orifice 

 of its own, habits increase the influence of certain 

 of them by widening the outlets for their emer- 

 gence, and so augmenting the stream of their 

 activity. Within the receptacle their innate 

 strength, or potential, remains unchanged. So 

 we may observe that, under the influence of a 

 strong excitement, such as is occasioned by war, 

 love or acute emulation, the passions of the race 

 display themselves in their innate peculiarity. 

 When an impulse is innately weak, no enlargement 

 of outlet will avail to give it sufficient strength 

 to overcome competing impulses : when it is 

 innately strong, it does not need the assistance of 

 habit to flood the disposition with its activity. 



But it has been the theme of this chapter to 

 explain that, although culture does not alter the 

 strength of man's heritable impulses, it regulates 

 their action upon his conduct, and works extra- 

 ordinary changes not only in behaviour but in 

 habits of mind, or ideals. If a further illustration 

 is required, we may find it in the lives of Christian 

 converts. Changes of religion undoubtedly leave 



