Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/384

 however, in claiming that the characteristics of one race would be an advance over those of another, although they would be different.

This question has also been approached from the standpoint of racial achievement. It has been pointed out that only the white race and the Mongolian race have reached any high grade of cultural development, and on this basis it has been assumed that the other races of man have not the ability to reach the same grade of civilization. It has been shown, however, that the retardation of the other races is not necessarily significant, because the amount of retardation is small as compared to the time consumed in reaching the present stages. It would seem, therefore, that the weight of evidence is, on the whole, in favor of an essential similarity of mental endowment in different races, with the probability of variations in the type of mental characteristics. Further inquiries into this subject must be based not only on sociological studies, but also on anatomical, physiological, and psychological inquiries among individuals belonging to the distinct races of mankind.

While the problem that I have just outlined relates to hereditary racial differences, a second fundamental problem of anthropology relates to the mental characteristics of social groups regardless of their racial descent. Even a superficial observation demonstrates that groups of man belonging to distinct social strata do not behave in the same manner. The Russian peasant does not react to his sense experiences in the same way as does the native Australian; and entirely different from theirs are the reactions of the educated Chinaman and of the educated American. In all these cases the form of reaction may depend to a slight extent upon hereditary individual and racial ability, but it will to a much greater extent be determined by the habitual reactions of the society to which the individual in question belongs.

The reaction of a member of a society to the outer world may be twofold. He may act as a member of a crowd, in which case his activities are immediately determined by imitation of the activities of his fellows; or he may act as an individual; then the influence of the society of which he is a member will make itself felt by the habits of action and thought of the individual.

I have discussed the racial question repeatedly at other places. The problem of the psychology of the crowd is a peculiarly intricate one, based largely upon the data of social psychology in a wider sense of the term, and upon data of individual psychology. I may be allowed for these reasons to confine myself to-day to the third of the problems which I have