372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



appreciable extent our anatomical make-up. A Chinaman's skin will 

 remain yellow, a Negro's skin will remain black, no matter what we 

 may do to alter them, so long as the races remain pure. The only way 

 we can modify the color of the skin or the facial angle or the texture 

 of the hair in any great number of individuals is by crossing with 

 another race. And the product of this crossing, should it become perma- 

 nent, is a different race. 



From the point of view of psychology, on the other hand, we have 

 assumed that this principle is not true. We know that we can not 

 change a Negro's physical characteristics, so as to make him like our- 

 selves, by bringing him to live among us. But we believe we can change 

 his mental characteristics. In other words, while we are certain that 

 we can not change the Negro's facial angle, we are equally certain that 

 we can change his mental angle and make it like our own; while we 

 consider it absurd to think that we can do anything to make the Negro's 

 physical skin become white, we believe firmly that we can make the 

 psychical analogue of his skin exactly like our own. 



But is this a fact? Bacial psychology says no. Mental character- 

 istics are as distinctly and as organically a part of a race as its physical 

 characteristics, and for the same reason: both depend ultimately upon 

 anatomical structure. Bacial mental-set, racial ways of thinking, racial 

 reactions to the influence of ideas, are as characteristic and as recog- 

 nizable as racial skin-color and racial skull-conformation. This does not 

 mean that mental characteristics and superficial anatomical character- 

 istics necessarily bear any relationship to each other, as has sometimes 

 been assumed; that is to say, the shape of the head, the weight of the 

 brain, the cranial capacity, the length of the arms, the arrangement 

 of the muscles in the calf of the leg, do not determine mental charac- 

 teristics: physical and mental characteristics are, however, parallel ex- 

 pressions of the particular evolutionary process which has resulted in 

 the formation of a race; each set of characters is the specific result, 

 in different structures, of the evolutionary process. Ultimately, mental 

 differences must depend upon anatomical and physiological differences; 

 but these differences are differences in the structure of the brain itself. 

 If we are to assume any relationship whatsoever between brain and 

 mind (and such a relationship, whatever it may be, certainly exists), we 

 must assume some anatomical and physiological differences in brains if 

 we are to account for mental differences. 



The more the races of men are studied, the more certain becomes the 

 evidence to show that races have characteristic mental peculiarities, 

 which would serve to distinguish species and varieties almost as well as 

 physical characteristics. In practical life, in jurisprudence, in language 

 itself, we empirically allow for these racial mental differences. But we 

 have never taken the trouble to study them nor to understand their 



