Such branches were constantly blending in peace or colliding in war, leading to a perpetual interaction of the one growth with the other, engendering a complexity of relation to each other and to the primitive substratum. But the ethnic character, once crystallised, remained as ingrained as the national life or the bodily stigmata. It compelled the members as a mass to look at life and its aims through certain lights, to comprehend the world under certain forms, to move to a measure, and dance to a tune. Such is the power of the Ethnic Mind, fraught with weal or woe for the nation over whom it rules, tyrannical, portentous, a blind natural force, which may lift its helpless followers to skyey heights or drag them into the abyss. How it is formed and what decides its fateful beneficent or maleficent decrees, I shall consider in detail in the next chapters. CHAPTER II _THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GROUP. THE ETHNIC MIND_ The ethnic character becomes more fixed with advancing culture, and its component parts—that is, the individuals who compose it—more uniform. This has not been understood by one of the latest writers on the subject, Professor Vierkandt, who maintains that in savage groups there is a much greater sameness between the individuals who compose them. Superficially, this is true on account of the limited range of their activity; but in proportion to that range the individuals differ more widely, because they are so much more subjected to external influences and emotional attacks. Dr. Krejči is more correct in his opinion that the sum of the differences between cultured individuals and peoples is less than that between the uncultured. This obviously flows from the fact that cultivated minds are governed by reason and knowledge, whose prescriptions are everywhere the same; while illiterate minds are victims of ignorance and passion. All who learn that twice two are four act on the knowledge of it; but the Brazilian Indian, who has no word in his language for numerals above two, may disregard it. Some have maintained that the promptings of the group-mind as felt by the individual belong in the unconscious or involuntary part of his nature, and partake of the character of mechanical necessity. There is indeed this tendency, but it is not by any means a necessary character of the collective mind, as an example easily shows. I may adopt a prevailing custom or belief merely through imitation, which is a mechanical procedure; or I may adopt it, being led to examine it from its prevalence and to approve it from my examination,—and this is a voluntary action. In this we see the contrast of cultured and uncultured group-minds. The latter demand assent merely from their unanimity, the former wish it only from enlightenment; the latter ask faith, the former knowledge; the latter command obedience, the former urge investigation.