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BOOK REVIEWS
qualities (p. 119) in the negative, and I refer to the investigation of
Boas on the changes in the stature and cranial index of American im-
migrants as a striking and well authenticated corroboration of Lamarckian
ideas. But even the most extreme exponents of race theories must
assume that races acquired the qualities they actually possess in some
prehistoric phase of their development. We can perhaps help to bridge
over difficulties by applying what we know of the evolution of the in-
dividual to the evolution of the race. A man is formed by the im-
pressions ol the child, and it has been reserved for psycho-analysis to
show how .our infantile life determines our whole life-history. In the
same manner we must also accept the idea that the plasticity of the
race is greatest at the dawn of its history, though the possibility of
adaptation to environment is never quite lost; if it is, the nation or
race must perish. Thus the racial peculiarities and ideals would represent
the unconscious survivals not so much of histoi-y in the usual sense of
the word but of phylogenetic infancy. It is remarkable how the memory
of the dawn of nations which must in reality have been a very humble
one is transformed and glorified into an heroic age by secular repression
and national narcissism, just as the defeats of the infantile sexual life
aie transformed into so many glorious achievements in dream life {See
Freud: Kleine Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV. 1918. 'Aus der Ge-
schichte einer infantilen Neurose'). A case of this phenomenon in racial
history has been demonstrated by the researches of the well-known
Hungarian ethnologist J. Sebestyen. He shows that the Hungarian
traditions which recount the victories of their ancestors (identified by
tradition both with the Huns and Avars) over the 'Romans' do not
refer to the really victorious inroads of the Huns on Western civili-
sation, but recount the national catastrophe suffered by the Avars at
the hands of Charlemagne and his successors. Only with this difference:
the events are faithfully recorded, but with a reversal; victories are
substituted for defeats, and the campaign goes from east to west instead
of from west to east,
McDougall goes on to discuss the part played by leading individuals in national life, but without arriving at a deterministic view of the relation between these individuals and the masses. Chapter X tells us that geographical contiguity and common origin alone do not make a nation in the modern sense unless we add to these tiia dominant idea of a common purpose. This psychical attitude is often attained in a national war. The danger which threatens the organism in disease results in what Ferenczi has called a pathoneurosis, a condensation of narcissistic libido in the imperilled part of the body, and a similar superabundance of national narcissism is also the usual reaction of a people in threatening danger (see pp. 142, 143). Hence perhaps we may by arguing from the present to the past conclude that the nation
