322 PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION. [PART II. 



fended, that there were no differences whatever in the mental en- 

 dowment of races; 1 that mental dispositions are not transmitted, 

 but are alike in all races ; that their development depended 

 entirely on surrounding nature, and on education, the former 

 determining the wants of man, and thus compelling him to 

 greater or less efforts in order to supply them. It cannot be 

 denied that a great part of the most striking differences which 

 human beings exhibit may be ascribed to the above conditions, 

 but the failure of the attempts to educate the little children of 

 some savages prove, at any rate, that there is no absolute 

 equality of mental disposition either among peoples generally, 

 nor among individuals of the same people. If, by original dis- 

 position, be meant that mental capacity which a people pos- 

 sessed before any cultivation, it cannot be proved that it was 

 specifically different in individual races, since in all probability 

 they must for a long time have remained without cultiva- 

 tion, and have only developed themselves from the primitive 

 state which must have been the same in all. If, on the 

 other hand, we speak of the mental endowment of a people at a 

 certain period of its history relating to a stage of its devel- 

 opment, we must keep in view that it continually changes, 

 and that this endowment cannot be considered as something 

 permanent. It is only the continuity of the vital develop- 

 ment of a people, or of an individual, which suggests to us that 

 this development, even before its accomplishment, was a 

 pre-formed capacity. Now, it is by the other side readily 

 admitted, that the mental performances of an individual, or 

 a people, do not depend on mental endowment so much as 

 on external circumstances, education, etc. : it is also admitted 

 that the same individual if at the beginning acted upon by 

 different external circumstances, would either have been better 

 or worse developed, would have evinced higher or lower mental 

 and moral qualities, and would have acted quite differently than 

 he does at present. 



We can only avoid this dilemma by its being understood 

 that when we speak of mental capacity and mental endowment, 



1 Frankenheim, Volkerkunde, p. 134, 1852. 



