The term “regressive,” therefore, is to be understood as applying to a physiological and healthy process, by which the sum of nutrition in an organism is expended more upon one or several elements of that organism at the expense of other elements. The latter, therefore, reduced in sustenance, undergo “regressive” changes, atrophy, or diminish. In mental life this is paralleled by the cultivation of some faculties to the neglect of others. Those to which we “pay attention,” as the phrase is, improve, while those which we neglect are weakened. What is here noted of the individual is true of the group. Indeed, it is a leading fact in the psychical history of the species. Man has paid heavily for all his winnings in the intellectual field by losses of many a power which would serve him well had he retained it. He has forfeited the instincts which once were his guides, the acuteness of his senses has gone, the happy carelessness of his youth has deserted him. We may all join in the lament of Mrs. Browning: “I have lost, ah, many a pleasure, Many a hope and many a power.” In applying these general facts to the variations of the ethnic mind, the principal distinction to observe is between _relative_ regressive and _actual_ regressive changes. The former are not only consistent with general progress, but in some sense a condition of it. In following the steep ascent of advancement, we must cast aside some of our baggage. We must husband our resources and spend them where the return will be most bountiful. Where we strike the balance of our mental losses and gains and find it in favour of general improvement, we may rest content. _1. Absorption through Concentration Elsewhere._—The concentration of the ethnic mind on the cultivation of one group-trait infallibly leads to a diminution of other faculties. The group has a fixed amount of time, activity, and mental force, and if this is concentrated chiefly on one purpose, others must suffer. History offers numberless examples of this. A few will suffice. The Vikings of Norseland had but one vocation—war; and though they repeatedly founded kingdoms in the south, not one survived. The capacities for peaceful life were lost in them, but for generations they were the terror of the more numerous and highly cultured nations of the south. Exclusive devotion to the religious sentiment has reduced many peoples to practical imbecility, especially where the State has used its powers to force a particular church upon the community. Nothing, indeed, has brought about more complete intellectual atrophy.