generation, like that of modern Germany. But these differences are
temporary and outward and not inwardly heritable. The difference between
the mind of the philosopher and the plough-boy is one not of kind, not
even of degree, but of content. The things that occupy the mind of the
peasant farmer are not the same that fill the mind of the university
don, but if the respective environments of the two types had been
reversed the professor might have thought about manure and the farmer
about metaphysics. And this holds good also of nations and races.
Consider, for instance, the German people who before the rise of
Bismarck were looked upon as a nation of peaceful peasants and
_Gelerhten_, "_ces bons Allemands_," in contemporary French parlance,
and how they became within a few years through being made to think
constantly about their own national supremacy, a race of ruthless
warriors that terrorised and nearly conquered Europe in the Great World
War. The mind of the German race had not been changed, but the main
business of that mind had been changed through the imposition on the
growing masses of a new ideal, the ideal of dominion in the hands of the
German people.

The difference between the mental status of the white man and the Native
is the same as that which we notice between the man who has had a
liberal education and the man who has not, and it lies mainly in the
fact that the one is given to introspection, analysis and criticism
whereas the other, whether he be a European peasant or a Bantu herdsman,
looks outward, takes things for granted and asks no questions, so that
with the Bantu as with the illiterate European, the primitive thoughts
and ways of their forefathers are held good enough by their sons, but
this does not preclude the latent potentiality in both for the
understanding and acquisition of new thoughts and ways once the shackles
of conservatism have been loosened and cast aside.