Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/562

 546 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

learned what to fear. We hear of the " instinct " to scratch an itching spot; but, unlike the bird or the rabbit, no baby ever scratches until he has learned how and when and where to scratch. Man is almost the one mammal who is unable to swim instinct- ively. It is, indeed, very plain that instincts have greatly dwindled in man. It is fortunate for him that they have dwindled. The loss of them has rendered him all the more adaptable. Reason is a greatly superior substitute, provided his parents tend and pro- tect him till he has acquired it.

We know that different individuals and races of man differ greatly in body and mind. Thus the Englishman has one set of physical and mental characters, the Chinaman another, and the west-African black a third. We know that, to a large extent, the physical differences between races are inborn, and we are apt to assume that the mental differences are also innate. But when we remember how little is instinctive in the mind of man, and how much acquired, a strong suspicion is raised that we are mistaken in supposing that inborn mental differences between races and individuals are so great as are commonly supposed, or, at any rate, are of the kind that most people think they are. In practice, we assume that mental training is everything, and for that reason we carefully educate our children, seeking to endow them with a fund of useful knowledge, with energy and ability, and with high ideals. But if we meet a man who is clever or stupid, or energetic or slothful, or morose or amiable, and so forth, we almost invari- ably assume he has been made what he is by nature, not by the experiences through which he has passed. We cannot settle the question as to whether nature or nurture plays the more important part in molding character by observing individuals, for, after training a man under one system, we cannot make him young again so as to train him under another. But what we cannot observe in the case of individuals we can observe in the case of races, which, after all, are only aggregates of individuals. Races are perpetually young, for each generation starts afresh. The so-called old races are only races whose history is known for a great length of time.

Many races quite suddenly changed their mental environment.