Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/233

Rh passions and pains affect the white, yellow, brown and black races; the same motives influence their action, only the form in which the emotions are expressed and the way the actions are directed are different. Neither is this particular form of conduct and expression constant with any race or people, but varies under the influence of the most diverse factors.

2. Eaces exist only for the anthropologists. For a student of the customs of a people there are only social strata, and it is the task of the ethnologist to separate and identify these strata. And just as we mark out the lines of stratification in the mountain ranges of a geological sketch so ought we to mark out the social strata of the human race. And just as there are mountains whose summits do not reach to the highest strata of the geological system, so there are many people who do not reach the highest social strata, while the lowest strata are common to all of them. Even in the old established civilization of France and Germany a great proportion of the population forms a class which is upon the same intellectual level with the majority of the Tagals, and is to be distinguished from them only by the color of the skin, clothing and language. But while mountains do not grow higher peoples do gradually grow up into the higher strata of civilization and this growth does not depend upon the intellectual capacity alone of a given people, but is also due, to some extent, to good fortune, and to other factors, some of which can be explained and others not.

3. Since not only the statesmen who conduct colonial affairs but scientific men as well maintain that there are races of limited intelligence who could never attain the height of European culture, the real explanation must be as follows: The higher intelligence may be compared to wealth—there are rich and poor peoples just as there are rich and poor individuals. The rich man who believes that he was born rich deceives himself. He came into the world as poor and naked as his slave, but he inherits the wealth which his parents earned. In the same way intelligence is inherited. Races which formerly found themselves compelled, by certain special conditions, to exercise their mental powers to an unusual extent, have naturally developed their intelligence to a higher degree than others, and they have bequeathed this intelligence to their descendants who, in turn, have increased it by further use. Europeans are rich in intelligence but the present inhabitants of Europe could not affirm, without presumption, that their ancestors were just as rich in intelligence at the start as they themselves are now. The Europeans have required centuries of strife and effort, of fortunate conjunctions, of the necessary liberty, of advantageous laws, and of individual leading minds, to enable them to bequeath their intellectual wealth to their present representatives. The