of these opportunities, plunge him into the social environment of present primitive man, and what difference in thinking power will be left between them?

The answer to this question brings me to the second point of difference which I have mentioned-difference in variability. I have already alluded to the divergencies in temperament to be found among the members of every primitive community. But well marked as are these and other individual differences, I suspect that they are less prominent among primitive than among more advanced peoples. This difference in variability, if really existent, is probably the outcome of more frequent racial admixture and more complex social environment in civilised communities. In another sense, the variability of the savage is indicated by the comparative data afforded by certain psychological investigations. A civilised community may not differ much from a primitive one in the mean or average of a given character, but the extreme deviations which it shows from that mean will be more numerous and more pronounced. This kind of variability has probably another source. The members of a primitive community behave towards the applied test in the simplest manner, by the use of a mental process which we will call A, whereas those of a more advanced civilisation employ other mental processes, in addition to A, say B, C, D or E, each individual using them in differing degrees for the performance of one and the same test. Finally there is in all likelihood a third kind of variability, whose origin is ultimately environmental, which is manifested by extremes of nervous instability. Probably the exceptionally defective and the exceptional genius are more common among civilised than among primitive peoples.

Similar features undoubtedly meet us in the study of sexual differences. The average results of various tests of mental ability applied to men and women are not, on the whole, very different for the two sexes, but the men always show considerably greater individual variation than the women. And here, at all events, the relation between the frequency of mental deficiency and genius in the two sexes is unquestionable. Our asylums contain a considerably greater number of males than of females, as a compensation for which, genius is decidedly less frequent in females than in males.

This brings me to the difficult problem of the effect of environment. For it will be urged that these and other sexual mental differences are mainly the result of past ages of different environment. I shall be asked to consider the undoubted increase in stature among women, which has followed from their modern training in athletics. Stature is admittedly one of the most easily modified physical characters, but may it not be that the present sexual mental

differences would similarly dwindle and perhaps finally disappear with a gradual equalisation of the environment to which man and woman are exposed?

This is, indeed, a hard question to decide. Who knows the degree of mental power to which any community might attain if only the environment could be appropriately modified? Who could have foreseen the powers of discrimination which practice develops in the wine-expert or the tea-taster? With what surprise do we learn that the children of Murray Island, taught at the present day by a Scotsman, are judged by him to be superior in arithmetical ability to those of an average British school, despite the fact that their parents' language contained words for one and two only, and expressed three by one-two, and four by two-two! Who knows what mental powers may be dormant even in primitive communities, ready to burst into full flower as soon as the environment becomes appropriate?

Against this point of view must be set another. For aught we know to the contrary, the essential functions of womanhood may be the determinants not only of their special sexual physical features but also of a greater uniformity of mental character. So, too, the particular environment in which the colour and physique of the negro have been evolved may have induced a still more uniform mediocrity of mental ability. Or there may be some direct but obscure correlation between rareness or absence of genius and insanity, on the one hand, and the feminine or negro physical form, on the other. Certainly there is not an instance of first-class musical genius, by which, of course, I mean originality in musical composition, among European women, despite centuries of opportunity. And so, too, there is not an instance of first-class genius in a pure-blooded American negro, despite the numbers of them who receive a university training in the United States. It is true that their adopted environment-social status and climate, in particular-have to be taken into account. We well know the type of individual which contempt and persecution produce; but these influences are surely limited to the moral, and hardly affect the intellectual, development of the individual. We have also to bear in mind the paucity of genius among the white population of the really southern States. All recent work goes to show that the influence of environment on biological characters is far more potent and direct than has hitherto been supposed. In organic growth and development a state of equilibrium has to be maintained, and if the internal or external conditions affecting the organism are changed, its unit-characters must alter, either by analytic or synthetic change. If they do not alter, or if the alteration is not a suitable one, the organism is no

longer adapted to the environment, and sooner or later (it may be immediately or in the first, second, or third generation) must perish.

Whether or not the variations thus produced are dependent on such deeply ingrained internal conditions that they are inherited despite subsequent further changes in outward environment is for our present purpose of little concern. It is sufficient to have secured the admission that variations only occur when there is a disturbance in the usual course of equilibrium between the growing organism and the internal and external conditions to which it is exposed. The sum total of the internal and external conditions is the environment. Through such disturbances the different races of mankind have been evolved. By fresh appropriate disturbances they are being modified to-day, and will be modified in the future. When the conditions are too sudden, the race dies out. I have no intention here of discussing to what extent, if at all, the modifications in external conditions are immediately or ultimately inherited. This, it appears to me, does not affect the truth of my fourth proposition, that if only the environment can be gradually changed, perhaps with sufficient slowness and certainly in the appropriate direction, both the mental and the physical characters of the lowest races may ultimately attain those of the highest, and vice versa. If we assume, as I think we must assume, that the white and negro races owe their respective characters ultimately to their environment, there is no à priori reason, it seems to me, for denying the possibility of a reversal of their differences, if the environment to which they are respectively exposed be gradually, in the course of many hundreds of thousands of years, reversed.

Since writing this paper, I have read the very interesting and important work entitled Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures, which has recently been written by Professor Lévy-Bruhl. In this book he takes up an attitude that differs in some respects diametrically from mine. He shows how often and widely anthropologists have erred by endeavouring to explain the mentality of primitive peoples in terms of our own advanced mentality. With this I am in complete agreement. Primitive man does not regard the world just as we, educated members of a highly complex civilisation, come to regard it. But when Professor Lévy-Bruhl goes on to affirm that there are important differences between the least cultured members (the peasant class) of European communities on the one hand, and primitive peoples on the other, there I part company with him. I am inclined to admit the "mystic" and "pre-logical" tendencies which he ascribes to primitive mentality, although I think that he has grossly exaggerated their importance at the present day, and has not sufficiently distinguished the very different stages of mental development to which various primitive peoples have now attained. I recognise fully the force of what he calls "collective representations"-the outcome of social tradition and organisation. Indeed I am disposed to attribute rather to the force of social tradition than to a pre-logical condition of the primitive mind the illogical and mutually contradictory beliefs which are held by the savage at the present day. There is not a savage who cannot talk logically about matters of everyday life. He can reason as we do. He will not, where the force of social tradition is so strong,

where the contradictory beliefs which he holds are so unquestionable that they can never be allowed to appear incompatible. I am willing to admit the possibility that primitive peoples may be found whose mental peculiarities are as extreme as those which he insists on. But such cases, if they occur, are exceptional, and we have throughout to bear in mind the danger of deducing the mental attitude of a people from the customs, ceremonies, and general behaviour described to us by travellers and missionaries. Into what error would a people far more cultured than we are fall, if they deduced our own mentality from the social and religious institutions which they observed among us, or from the statements made by one or two selected individuals in our midst !

My remarks refer to the peasants of Europe taken as a whole, and to the inhabitants of primitive countries taken as a whole, and contrary to Professor Lévy-Bruhl I insist that there is no essential mental difference between them. We have in each the same native disinclination for logical thinking, especially where the forces of tradition-or, in the terminology of the French Anthropological School, collective representations-are antagonistic to it. In each we see the same readiness to accept statements which are utterly contradictory, the same faint line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. Professor Lévy-Bruhl alludes (p. 448) to the "frightful rubbish" contained in the innumerable encyclopedias of the Chinese on astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, &c. How is it, he asks, that so many centuries of application and ingenuity have resulted in nothing? He answers, chiefly because each of these so-called sciences was faced at its beginning with certain crystallised ideas which no one ever dreamed of putting sincerely to the test of experiment. Quite so, but precisely the same "rubbish " is to be found in European scientific works, on alchemy and natural history, for example, during the Middle Ages. Until comparatively recently, the same vague representations," the same "mystic pre-connexions," as M. Lévy-Bruhl terms them, reigned even in the highest European culture as they still reign in the Chinese.

Again, he says (p. 426) that "the mentality of primitive man does more than represent to itself its object: it possesses it or is possessed by it. It holds communion with it. . . . It lives it. The ceremonies and rites lead in a great number of cases to the realisation of a grand symbiosis, e.g., between the totemic group and its totem." In his view (p. 427) this form of mental activity is, "radically different from what our own society affords us opportunity for studying." Here, again, is surely a manifest error. This symbiosis, the unity between man and God, this Communion-what is it but the highest development of the mystical element in the most advanced religions?

Thus I find nothing in this highly interesting, in many ways psychologically valuable, work to induce me to change the propositions which I maintain and have introduced for your consideration to-day.

[Paper submitted in English.]

THE INTELLECTUAL STANDING OF DIFFERENT RACES AND THEIR RESPECTIVE OPPORTUNITIES FOR CULTURE

By JOHN GRAY, B.Sc., A.R.S.M., F.R.A.I., London.

THE aim of this paper is to discuss the possibility of arriving at some numerical evaluation of the Intellectual Standing and Respec

tive Opportunities for culture of a population, and to apply the method to the leading Races and great Nations of mankind.

Such evaluations, even though, at the first attempt, they may not have a very high degree of precision, are much to be preferred to the general impressions with which the essayists who have written on this subject have hitherto been content. The widely differing conclusions of the authors of books on such questions as the relations of the coloured and white races illustrate the danger of relying on general impressions.

There are several methods by which we may arrive at an estimate of the average intellectual standing of a population. Without attempting an exact definition of intelligence, it may be assumed that this mental character is possessed in the highest degree by the leaders of the people. If we could obtain statistics of the number of men per unit of the population who, in each country, had risen above a fixed standard of eminence in literature, science, politics, war, engineering, &c., we could from these data obtain very good numerical values of the intellectual standing of the different peoples. But such statistics could be obtained for only a very few of the most advanced and highly organised nations.

I have found it most convenient to make use of educational statistics.

Education, in the school and universities of a country, may be regarded as the means employed to develop to the highest practical limit the natural intellectual capacity of the people.

The number of pupils and students per unit of the population may be regarded as an approximate measure of the Opportunities for Culture offered to the people.

The number of university students per unit of the population is taken as a measure of the average Intellectual Standing of the people. The justification for this is that the majority of the leaders of a people come from its universities, and the average standard of intelligence required of the university student is much the same in all countries where universities exist. The few exceptions will be indicated in dealing with the values obtained.

Having indicated methods of obtaining, from educational statistics, numerical values, of (1) the Intellectual Standing, and (2) the Opportunities for Culture, it now only remains to find a method of calculating the Natural Capacity.

The Intellectual Standing of a people may be regarded as the product of two factors, namely, its opportunity for culture and its natural capacity to acquire culture. If there is no opportunity for culture there will be no culture, however high the natural capacity may be. As we have taken intelligence to be represented by the