SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS —J. 403 



ations of genes ; but for mental inheritance there are only certain potenti- 

 alities, not material things. It is like taking over the goodwill of a profession 

 which consists of reputation alone. We inherit only the ability to acquire 

 ability. Galton's researches led to the idea of certain superior human stocks 

 whose mental nature was independent 'of nurture. But more thorough 

 analysis shows that, even for identical twins, mental resemblances are over- 

 whelmingly dependent on nurture. Similarly, temperamental differences 

 and other personality traits are conditioned almost entirely by patterns of 

 culture. This is established by the study of primitive peoples, where the 

 traditional temperamental differences between the series of civilised societies 

 do not hold, and may even be reversed. As for ' racial ' inheritance the 

 term ' race ' is no longer applied to human aggregates by anthropologists who 

 know their own business. Differences between different nationalities are the 

 results of history, tradition and culture. Even the supposed ineducability of 

 negroes is largely the result of prejudice, and is not borne out by the latest 

 objective evidence, that of mental tests. Still less is there any scientific 

 evidence whatever for the comparative superiority of intelligence of any 

 European people over any other. 



Dr. W. Brown. — Freedom and moral obligation in the light of modern 

 psychology (11.30). 



Dr. W. Stephenson. — Type psychology (12.15). 



Afternoon. 



Dr. M. M. Lewis. — The beginning of reference to past and future in a child's 

 speech (2.0). 



Although a good deal of attention has been paid to the manner in which 

 grammatical forms arise in children's early speech, very little account has 

 been given of the manner in which new functions become differentiated. 

 In this paper an attempt is made to describe the growth of two of these 

 functions : reference to the past and to the future. 



The occurrence of either of these two functions is of great importance 

 in the child's linguistic growth — for with this advance the child's speech 

 begins to be freed from the dominance of the present situation. But in 

 neither case is there a sudden step, as has sometimes been suggested. In 

 the present paper several series of observations of a particular child are 

 considered, and in this instance it is shown that reference to the past and 

 to the future arise as the result of social intercourse acting upon the child's 

 needs, in the following manner : 



1 . (a) At an early stage the child's needs cause him to make rudimentary 

 reference in his speech to absent objects ; (b) he also responds, by his acts, 

 to references that others make to absent objects. 



2. Linguistic intercourse begins : the child learns to respond to speech 

 by speech. 



3. Persons addressing the child will constantly refer to some past event ; 

 and both the words spoken to the child and his recall of the past event will 

 tend to evoke some remark from him. Speech of this kind will gradually 

 come to refer definitely to the past. 



4. The child's needs cause his activities and accompanying speech to be 

 forward-directed ; when at such a moment someone addresses the child, 

 his reply will tend to take on a more definitely future reference. 



