On the other hand, popular humanitarianism would regard all men and all races as alike and equal in respect of native endowment; and we have seen so distinguished a sociologist as Durkheim denying any importance or influence to racial composition of a people. Many others put aside all explanations based on racial differences as cheap and meretricious means of avoiding difficulties. J. S. Mill, for example, wrote “Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences”; and Buckle, in his great work on the _History of Civilisation_, quoted this remark with cordial approval[54]. Both these extreme views are false; the truth lies somewhere in the midst between them. At the time when Mill and Buckle wrote, biology and anthropology had not shown, as now they have, the enormous power of heredity in determining individual character and the great persistence of innate qualities through numberless generations. Buckle especially overrated the power of physical environment, and Mill the power of education and of social environment, to change the innate qualities of a people; and it was this overestimation that led them, and leads others still, to underestimate the importance of racial composition. There are involved in this dispute two theses which are often confused together. When people speak of the influence of ‘race’ on national character and institutions, they may, and sometimes do, mean by ‘race’ the sum of innate inborn qualities or tendencies of the people at any given point of history. On the other hand, by influence of race they may mean the influence of the prehistoric races which have entered into the social composition of the nation—that is, those races from which its population is descended. Some authors mean to deny importance to race in both these senses; Buckle and Mill and Durkheim meant, I think, to deny it in both, because they believed that human nature is very plastic and easily moulded as regards its innate qualities by its environment; they believed that, if only a system of institutions, especially educational institutions, adapted to promote the intellectual and moral development of each generation of a people, can be established among it, then the influence of such institutions will so vastly predominate over that of innate qualities that these become a negligible quantity. From this it would follow that we should expect to see any two or more populations endowed with similar institutions form nations of similar character which will continue to develop along similar lines, except in so far as minor unessential differences of physical environment produce differences of modes of occupation, dress, food and so forth.