Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/79

Rh organs, that even with equal cerebral capacity they never could rival its results by equal efforts.

Again, there is in some stocks and some smaller ethnic groups a peculiar mental temperament, which has become hereditary and general, of a nature to disqualify them for the atmosphere of modern enlightenment. Dr. Von Buschan has recently pointed out this as distinctly and racially pathologic; an inborn morbid tendency, constitutionally recreant to the codes of civilization, and therefore technically criminal.

Once more, one can not but acknowledge that the relations of the emotional to the intellectual nature vary considerably and permanently in different ethnic groups. Nothing is more incorrect than the statement so often repeated by physicians that the modern civilized man has a more sensitive emotional system than the savage. The reverse is the case. Since the dark ages, Europe has not witnessed epidemic neuroses so violent as those still prevalent among rude tribes.

These and a number of similar traits separate races and peoples from each other by well-marked idiosyncrasies, extending to the vast majority of their members and pregnant with power for weal or woe on their present fortunes and ultimate destinies. The patient and thorough investigations of these peculiarities is therefore one of the most apposite aims of modern ethnology.

In this sense we can speak of the Volksgeist and Völkergedanken, a racial mind, or the temperament of a people, with as much propriety and accuracy as we can of any of the physical traits which distinguish it from other peoples or races.

For the branch of anthropology which has for its field the investigation of these general mental traits the Germans have proposed the name "Characterology" (Karakterologie). Its aim is to examine the collective mental conditions and expressions of ethnic groups, and to point out where they differ from other groups and from humanity at large; also to find through what causes these peculiarities came about, the genetic laws of their appearance, and the consequences to which they have given rise.

This branch of anthropology is that which offers a positive basis for legislation, politics, and education as applied to a given ethnic group; and it is only through its careful study and application that the best results of these can be attained, and not by the indiscriminate enforcement of general prescriptions, as has hitherto been the custom of governments.

The development of humanity as a whole has arisen from the differences of its component social parts, its races, nations, tribes. Their specific peculiarities have brought about the struggles which in the main have resulted in an advance. These peculiarities, as ascertained by objective investigation, supply the only