Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/484

 468 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Leaving now the inter-individual that is to say, the strictly 'social" division of our science, we come to the special psy- chology of nationalities and classes, in so far as they are of societal rather than natural origin.

One of our first tasks is to settle whether national character- istics should be dealt with by Social Psychology or handed over to ethnology. This depends on whether differences in national traits are due primarily to race-endowment or to situation and history. It is certain that "blood" is not a solvent of every problem in national psychology, and that " race" is no longer a juggler's hat from which you can draw explanations of all manner of moral contrasts and peculiarities. Nowadays no one charges to inborn differences the characteristic contrasts between Englishmen and Russians, between Jews and Christians, between Javanese and Japanese. The marvelous transformation, today of Japan, tomor- row perhaps of China and Siam and the Philippines, makes one doubt if even the impassive oriental is held fast in the net of race. Perhaps the soul-markings of Anglo-Saxons or Slavs or orientals are of societal origin, due to the capitalization of centuries of experience in unlike situations, and to the injection and saturation of individual minds with these transmitted products by means of social circumpressure. When the Apache youth returned from Hampton, the Hindoo back from Eton, or the Chinaman home from Yale reverts to ancestral ways, everybody cries " Race ! " But why ignore the force of early impressions? If we had caught them as sucklings instead of as adolescents, perhaps there would be no reversion. Why should we expect a few years of schooling to bleach those who for a decade or more have been steeped in a special environment and culture ?

The broad moral contrasts between German, Turk, and Gipsy must be due to Race, or to Environment, physical and social. Now, how much weight ought we to assign to the race- factor? For my own part, I doubt if ideas ever get into the blood, or feelings and dispositions that depend on particular ideas. The Chinaman is not born a conservative, the Turk a fatalist, the Hindoo a pessimist, the Semite a monotheist. Notions and beliefs do not become fixed race-characters, nor do the emotions and conduct