274 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
with populations whose characteristics are determined by environment. In Scotland the line of continuity is perfect between the Highlanders and the Lowlanders.
A strike may seem to exhibit conflict of classes. Modern social classes have no stable composition. The same individuals may be engaged in the struggle of two different classes. Conflict of classes signifies collective action which tends to repair social injustices. In this sense much that savors of a conflict of classes is bare-faced effrontery.
Man has always been essentially selfish, and this enabled him to survive. He has, however, learned to defer immediate utility to a future superior utility. Even the existence of society is due to utility. Man has unconsciously conformed to society in order more fully to satisfy his needs.
The civilization which arose along the Mediterranean was due to geographic con- ditions. Communication and contact between the three continents of the ancient world was here possible, and made possible the cosmopolitan civilization which it gave to the world. This is in addition to the influence which natural conditions have exer- cised upon the character of individuals. "Why is the German more of an idealist than the inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin ? If we exclude the different influ- ences which the conditions of a natural environment exercised upon the development of the two characters I do not know where we should go to find any other cause."
The South American character is a mixture of the European and Indian character with a predominance of the apathy of the latter. Indian apathy can only be explained by environment. The new environment has exercised an influence upon the immi- grants of South America which effected a change by intensifying the Indian traits.
" If, instead of comparing the intellectuality of the colored race with that which the white race has acquired, it were possible to take the intellectual development of the white race many years ago, when the social-economic system was at the same level with that of the real colored races, I am convinced that many of the illusions in regard to the superiority of the white, race would be destroyed. The truth is that certain nations belonging to the white race, and called superior, have founded civiliza- tions much inferior to the civilization of the yellow race, or even of the black. There is no people belonging to a race originally superior." The intelligence of the white race its seeming superiority is a product of development. The psychical and physiological superiority of the white man has been slowly acquired.
The so-called human races are different because they lived in different environ- ments natural and social. "That which is improperly called a race is never an ethnological unit, but an historical, intellectual, or a moral unit." The difference in cranial capacity of the white and colored races is due to the fact that the intellectual conquests of the white race have been consolidated in the human brain through heredity. The same is possible for every other race in the same condition of life.
Race exclusiveness finds its basis in ignorance. " The cautious human egotist sees that the only source of welfare and of wealth is labor, and for two individuals who find it profitable to work together in order to increase their mutual welfare, diver- sity of race, of color, of form of the head, of nationality or social class constitutes no impediment." When this is once fully realized then the question of the origin of races and of civilizations will no longer command present interest. G. FIAMINGO, Monist, April 1897.
Genius, Fame, and the Comparison of Races. "Genius is that aptitude for greatness that is born in a man ; fame is the recognition that greatness has been
achieved One is biological, the other social; to produce genius is a function
of race ; to allot fame is a function of history."
" Every able race probably turns out a number of greatly endowed men many times larger than the number that attains to fame." Which are to achieve fame is determined by historical conditions. Genius is wonderful, but not miraculous. A little suggestion, a little opportunity will go a great way with it, but something of the sort there must be. A man can hardly fix his ambition upon a literary career when he is perfectly unaware, as millions are, that such a thing as a literary career exists. Between illiteracy and the ability to read a few good books there is all the difference between blindness and sight. Underfeeding in childhood and the subjection of children to premature and
