single point of mental development, but as a continuum of mental values with a certain range of variation. In comparing the different races we must, accordingly, apply the canons used by statisticians in comparing series of variable measurements. Here a matter of vital importance challenges our attention. Two series may have the same average value and yet differ considerably in range. Now it is obvious that, where the number of individuals considered is small, excessive values are less likely to occur than in a larger series. In a gathering of a hundred men, we are not likely to find a man above 6 feet 6 inches in height; the average stature of all New Yorkers will probably not be any greater than that of one hundred men selected at random, yet in the entire city we shall find a number of individuals of gigantic stature. When we apply this fact to our special problem we see at once that extraordinary deviations from the norm cannot be expected to occur in a tribe of 500 or even 5,000, while among the vast populations of India, China or the Caucasian countries of America and Europe such favorable variants are likely to occur with considerable absolute frequency. These variations, as has already been suggested, need not even be excessive to produce significant cultural results. Again, we may urge the principle of minimal variations. A little greater energy or administrative talent may be just sufficient to found a powerful state; a slightly greater amount of logical consistency may lead to the foundation of geometrical reasoning or of a philosophical system; a somewhat keener interest, above the purely utilitarian one, in surrounding nature may give a remarkable impetus to the development of science.

Now this puts an entirely different construction on the facts. Assume that racial differences are at the bottom of some of the observed cultural differences. This fact would not necessarily mean, then, that the average ability of the inferior races is less, but only that extreme variations of an advantageous character occur less frequently among them. This, for example, is the view taken by Professor Eugen Fischer, the physical anthropologist, a very firm believer in racial differences, but as regards variability rather than in point of average intellectual equipment. It is also essentially, if I understand him, the point made by Professor Thorndike. But precisely because the population of the several races differs so enormously, we are for many of them without a fair standard of comparison. Statistically, any actual number of measurements is only a small sample of an infinite series; but we have no means of ascertaining empirically what the extreme variations of which Veddas or Australians are organically capable, would be like. This, necessarily, leaves the ultimate problem of racial differences unsolved. Nevertheless, our considerations have not been in vain. They show, for one thing, how many factors have to be weighed in arriving at a fair estimate of racial capabilities, factors which are naively ignored in most popular discussions of the subject. We can, farther, say positively that whatever differences may exist have been grossly exaggerated. In the simpler mental operations, comparative psychological studies indicate a specific unity of mankind. Differences in culture are certainly not proportionate to mental differences, i.e., relatively slight differences in native ability may well have produced tremendous cultural effects. Since, finally, cultural differences of enormous range occur within the same race, and even within very much smaller subdivisions, the ethnologist cannot solve his cultural problems by means of the race factor. Even if an ultimate investigation should definitely fix the cultural limits to which a given race is hereditarily subject, such information could not solve the far more specific problem why the same people a few hundred years earlier were a horde of barbarians and a few hundred years later formed a highly civilized community. The supposed explanation by racial potentialities would be far too general to interpret the actual happenings. Racial psychology, no less than general psychology, thus fails to solve the problems of culture.

III. CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT[1-iii]

The influence of geographical environment on culture seems a matter not so much of logical inference as of direct observation. Taking our own continent, we know that cotton is raised in the South, that our wheat belt lies in Minnesota and the adjoining states and Canadian provinces, that the Rocky Mountain and some of the Plateau states are the seat of the mining industry while Florida and California form our tropical fruit orchards. With these obvious facts are combined correlations not so clear, perhaps, yet very convincing to the mind as yet undebauched by ethnological learning. What seems more natural than that culture in its highest forms should develop only in temperate regions, that the gloomy forests of the North be reflected in a mythology of ogres and trolls, that liberty should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and languish in the tepid plain, or that islanders should be expert mariners?

This geographical theory of culture bears a certain resemblance to the classical associationist theory in psychology. According to that doctrine, the mind is something in the nature of a wax tablet on which the outer world produces impressions and all the higher mental activities are, in the last instance, reducible to combinations of the represented impressions or ‘ideas’. Modern psychology, however, regards this system, fascinating as it appears at a first glance, as little better than an historical curiosity. The association of ideas itself is now conceived merely as a special manifestation of the synthetic nature of consciousness. In short, the tables are completely turned, and association, instead of explaining consciousness, is interpreted in terms of consciousness. The analogy with the geographical view of culture will become apparent in the course of our discussion.

To begin with the culture of our own country: The environmental features of southern California, of Nevada, and the South have not changed during the last few centuries. Yet, what do we find on considering the aboriginal cultures of these regions? Southern California and Nevada were unreclaimed desert wastes inhabited by a roving, non-agricultural population, the natural mining resources of the latter state remained untouched, no attempt was made to grow cotton in the Southern cotton area. How can such facts be interpreted on a geographical basis? Quite obviously, the reverse holds. The utilization of part of the environment, instead of being an automatic response, has for an indispensable prerequisite a certain type of culture. Granted the existence of an agricultural technique, attempts may be made to apply it even in a forbidding arid climate, where a more primitive culture would not be able to develop it. The unfavorable environment may have checked such development, and in so far forth exerted cultural influence at one stage, but it is unable to check it at another stage, where the preëxisting culture, instead of ‘remaining put’, molds the environment to its own purposes.

The case I have chosen is an extreme one because I have correlated environment with extremes of culture—one of the lowest forms of aboriginal North American culture and our modern advanced scientific methods of subduing nature to our will. But if we consider only the cruder forms of civilization the same point appears with equal clearness.

Professor Kirchhoff, by no means an extreme adherent of the geographical school since he does not reduce man to