The same facts are illustrated by the political life of the European peoples. Only those among whom the northern race is predominant have developed individualistic forms of political and social organisation. Among the rest there appears clearly the tendency to rely upon the supreme authority of the state and to look to it for all initiative and guidance, a tendency to centralised and paternal administration; and this is the same, whether the external form of the political organisation be a monarchy or a republic. Thus France, in becoming a republic, did not overthrow the centralised system perfected by Henry IV, Louis XIV, Richelieu and Napoleon; for that system was congenial to the innate qualities of the mass of the people. It is clear that the centralised and therefore rigid system of government tends to accentuate, among the people subjected to it, their tendency to rely on authority and to repress individual initiative; while the other form, such as obtains in this country and still more in the United States of America, tends to the development of the initiative and independence of individuals, giving them free scope and throwing them upon their own resources. Among any people, an institution or other cultural element that has had a history of this kind will, then, cause a great development in the mass of individuals of just those innate or racial tendencies of which it is itself the slowly accumulated result or product. If a nation is composed from stocks not too diverse, or if the original stocks have fused by intercrossing and have produced a fairly homogeneous people; and if this nation has enjoyed a long period of natural evolution undisturbed by violent influences from outside, conquests or invasions or immigrations on a great scale; then the social environment will have been brought in the main into harmony with the innate qualities of the people, and it will mould the individuals of each generation very strongly, accentuating and confirming those innate tendencies. This for two reasons. First, the social environment will be strongly organised and homogeneous; that is to say, the various elements, the beliefs, customs, institutions, and arts that go to compose it, will be in harmony with one another and of strongly marked character; and they will be almost universally accepted by that people as above criticism. Secondly, the institutions and customs have not to fight against the innate tendencies of the people in the formation of the adult minds, but co-operate harmoniously with them. Now, when authors dispute over the question of the influence of race in determining the nation, they usually fail to distinguish clearly between the direct effects and the indirect effects of racial qualities.