440 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



or biological value of the nation. Tradition may have great 

 influence in moulding national character ; but tradition goes hand 

 in hand with biological factors, which must not be lost sight of. 

 Tradition has to-day enormous influence in the moulding of the 

 character of the East Indian ; but it must have exercised not less 

 influence on the Japanese of the ancien regime. And yet while 

 Japan has been able to throw aside the traditions and institutions 

 of centuries, India remains to-day pretty nearly where she was 

 a thousand years ago. The institutions of modem Japan are 

 suited to the biological superiority of her people, those of India 

 to the biological inferiority of hers. The Indian, it will be 

 objected, is not physically inferior to the European or to the 

 Japanese. But it has yet to be shown that the Indian possesses 

 the power of adaptation, of organisation, of assimilation possessed 

 by the Japanese. Until we have proof of this we are justified 

 in considering him as biologically inferior. 



To return to our subject, the rate of evolution in society must 

 conform to the possibilities and also to the needs of that society. 

 History furnishes so many examples of a radical change effected 

 in the institutions of a people which is not ripe for these changes 

 that the details of them woixld fill a bulky volume. The internal 

 evolution of society must be determined by the shifting of the 

 balance between the different elements of that society. It must 

 be directed in such a way that it conforms to the historical 

 institutions of the society, and also to the modifications of power 

 effected within the society. As Anton Menger, the late dis- 

 tinguished Rector of Vienna University, expressed it : " Every 

 system of law is a reflection of the balance of power which has 

 developed within a society in the course of that society's his- 

 torical evolution. The interests of the governing classes, when 

 they are able to maintain their supremacy during long periods, 

 become transformed into laws and criteria of right and wrong, 

 which claim recognition from the other classes of society as 

 objective truths. Should, however, the balance of power be 



