IV
THE BOHEMIAN CHARACTER
By Herbert Adolphus Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Oberlin College, Ohio[1]
THE mental and moral characteristics of any social group are the product of a wide variety of complex influences of a preeminently psychological nature. The suggestions that come through tradition and history result in mental reactions that become so typical of the group that it is popular to call them inborn and racial. The easy assumption of this explanation hinders the more fundamental discovery of why certain characteristics prevail. The Bohemians illustrate this principle of the creative influence of definite ideas.
A Bohemian is a Slav. The influence of this relationship is the broadest and most general. It has become self-conscious only in comparatively recent times, i.e., two or three generations. Previ-
- ↑ Professor Miller has traveled in Bohemia and is gathering material on the history of that country.
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