Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/563

 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY $47

That is to say, the new generations have been differently trained, have developed under different sets of mental experiences, as com- pared to their ancestors. If, under these circumstances, the race has changed its mental characters, we may be sure that the alteration is an acquired, not a germinal, one; for the latter can occur only under a very slow process of evolution or degeneration extending over many generations. The Greeks are a case in point. At first they were rude barbarians, apparently in no way distinguished from the surrounding tribes. Then quite suddenly, in quite a few generations, they became the most splendid race of which history holds record. Subsequently, with equal sudden- ness, they became an exceedingly wretched and degraded people. Obviously, these great mental differences were due in the Greeks to mere training, not to a process of evolution. A remarkable thing about Greece, in its period of greatness, was the vast num- ber of able men that it produced. Among a population hardly equal to that of an average English county more really great men arose in a couple of hundred years than all Europe produced in fifteen centuries. Ancient Rome is another case in point. It also produced numbers of able men in quite a short time. Much the same thing happened in western Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Flocks of great men arose in all countries that the Renaissance touched ; that is, in all countries in which Greek learning and Greek methods of thought were revived. The doc- trine of averages and the theory of evolution forbid the belief that these crowds of great men were due to sudden innate, that is germinal, changes in the races that produced them. On the con- trary, we are forced to the conclusion that they occurred in greater numbers in some generations than in others, because in those particular generations the youth were better trained men- tally than in preceding and succeeding generations. And this belief forces on us the corrollary that the mental status of any individual or of any race is not necessarily in accord with the innate mental powers. It may be due, and generally is due, largely or wholly to mere training, to mere education.

The truth is vividly illustrated by a study of the mental effects produced on their followers by various religions. Every religion