Without placing implicit faith in such numerical estimates, and without pausing to inquire how one might best "exercise a factor", the reader will note the admitted dominance of heredity over all other forces. It will be observed that the deductions of Dr. Woods refer to the "mental life" and the "moral side" in general, and not merely to extraordinary manifestations or "genius," as in "Galton's theory". Surely there is little enough of the latter to be found in "all the royal families of Europe", and quite sufficient of something else. Besides, it seems clear that if genius be inherited, if marked deviations from the average in this direction or in that be transmitted, then _a fortiori_ must also the general average character be itself in detail determined by inheritance. For every example of "inherited genius" there lie close at hand, under common and immediate observation, a thousand examples of inheritance of qualities physical, mental, and moral that fall within the bounds of the normal. Such qualities have beneath them a far solider substructure of age, a far more settled and less mutable organic habit of centuries, than do the new growths, the spontaneous mutations, that we call genius, or any marked eccentricity. If, then, the latter be inherited, far more so the former. And such is precisely the foundation on which the whole fabric of the foregoing argument has been reared. Let the reader observe that the question, the only real question, regards the "mental gap" between the Negro and the Caucasian, for which we dare not substitute "between savage and civilized man". This matter is entirely another and entirely irrelevant. The "difference of mental capacity" between the savage Greek and the civilized Egyptian was indeed great, but was in favour of the savage youth and against the civilized ancient. So, too, the savage Teuton fully equalled or excelled in mental capacity his civilized Italian foeman. The defects of these savages were cultural, not mental proper, and culture was enough speedily to supply them. But where, we ask again, have real "mental gaps" been filled up by culture? Where have racial characteristics been transformed or abolished? Have equal opportunities raised the 150,000 Negroes in Pennsylvania to the white level? Or the 100,000 in New York? Or those in New England? Or in Chatham, Ontario? Or in Paris? When Greek culture led captive the Roman captor, did it arm him with Greek genius? Did it close up the "mental gap"? When the bow of Hellenic science fell into the hands of the Arab, was he quite able to bend it?