Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/566

548 which environment plays little or no rôle. Hence the souls of races are something like the windowless monads of Leibniz. "It is impossible to arrive at any understanding of history unless it be continually borne in mind that different races can not feel, think, or act in the same manner, and that in consequence, they cannot comprehend one another." This is surely a hard blow to the claims of general science, but what must be the despair of co-educational efforts when we are assured that man and woman never have like chains of thought and that "the difference in their logical faculties is alone sufficient to create between them an insuperable gulf." We are told that the formation of French people of to-day, very heterogeneous as compared with the English, has required more than ten centuries, and that this development has been so rapid as only to be explained by the mathematical principle that when a cause persistently produces the same effects the causes are the logarithms of the effects. This position seems somewhat strained in view of the sudden rise of such peoples as the Greeks, the Scots, and the Japanese. Indeed, M. Le Bon himself asserts that a great change came over the Frenchmen of the eighteenth century caused by "the fact that in the lapse of a century theology had given way to science, reason had taken the place of tradition, and observed truth that of revealed truth." But as the author holds that sudden deterioration is possible, while sudden advance is impossible, the above instance may not be inconsistent with his theory.

It is to be noted that, while M. Le Bon asserts the irreducable differences in the souls of races, he does not come to close quarters with general ethnology, but confines himself in the main to the racial disparity of the Kelts and the Anglo-Americans. In his exposition and valuation of these differences, he has much in common with Nietzsche. Over against the 'imbecilities' of socialism he depicts the glories of ruthless individualism. While, in truth, everything is moving into the more heterogeneous, realizing greater inequality, the dominant theory of the day is that of socialism and collectivism which "will prove the destruction of the people that permanent armies and bankruptcy shall have spared." Socialism is sapping the life and energy of Keltic and Germanic Europe. "No people is so well prepared as Germany to accept its yoke. No people of the present age has more entirely lost its initiative, its independence, and the habit of self-government." M. Le Bon does well in ringing the changes on the all importance of character. The destiny of both individuals and nations lies in character. Environment and intelligence are of very little importance. Ideas exert an influence only when they have been transformed into sentiments, and become a part of character. Over-culture or intelligence weakens or destroys character. The barbarian with energy of will has always been mightier than a sceptical civilization. Great intellectual superiority leaves degenerate offspring behind it. "The real danger to modern societies lies precisely in the fact that men have lost confidence in the worth of the