438 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
ing a bargain would be by quietly refusing all your offers, or even going away without saying another word about the matter, unless you advanced your price to what they were willing to acc€pt.^
Wallace further remarks that "these moral features are more striking and more conclusive of absolute diversity than even the physical contrast presented by the two races, though that is sufficiently remarkable."
From temperamental differences to diversity of mental taste and capacity is a short step.' Tastes in ornamentation, music, art, forms of courtesy, are as clearly traceable in groups as in individuals. With reference to total mental faculty the degree of difference is not so clearly established as in the case of par- ticular traits. It IS probable that some individuals of all races are capable of any level of achievement attained anywhere, nor can it be disputed that any ethnic group as a whole may acquire ability in some lines in which it is now deficient. It is true that differences in psychic type would be reflected in the forms and methods of achievement, for racial groups like individuals vary in mode of procedure according to temperament. Boas is con- vinced that physical differences may and probably do produce differences in faculty, but that we have as yet no unquestionable evidence that it will be impossible for certain races to attain a higher civilization than they now possess. He asserts that, while none of the dark races may now be producing as large a proportion of great men as our own, there is no reason to doubt their capacity to reach the present level of civilization of the whites.^ ^
Actual intellectual capacity at any given time may be con- sidered a matter of hereditary momentum. Missionaries report that in schoolwork the children of backward races often exhibit a surprising degree of efficiency up to a certain age, but that thereafter they show the same stolidity and distaste for advance which characterizes the group in general. The hereditary push carries only up to or a little beyond the age of puberty. Racial progress would be possible if the strength of this inherited im-
^The Malay Archipelago, loth ed., 318.
"American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1894, ^^7'
