Those who, like Mill, attribute to the social environment unlimited power of moulding individuals and who regard the influence of race as insignificant, are misled by the contemplation of such nations as we have been considering, the class of which our own is the most notable example, nations in which a strongly organised social environment makes in the direction of the innate tendencies. They overlook the fact that in any such nation the social environment, the body of institutions and traditions, is in the main the outcome and expression of these innate tendencies; they fail to see that the racial tendencies exert their strongest influence on national thought and action by means of the institutions, customs, and traditions on the growth of which they have exerted a constant directive pressure throughout many generations. In order to realise fully the influence of race, we must consider peoples whose culture and much else that enters into their social environment has been impressed upon them from without. We then see how little the social environment can accomplish in the moulding of a people, when it is not congenial to and in harmony with the racial tendencies. The modern world contains certain instructive instances, of which Hayti is perhaps the most striking. There a circumscribed population of negro race has had a political and social and religious organisation and the elements of higher culture impressed upon it by Europeans, in the belief that it would be possible to construct a social environment which would mould the people. France, at a time of revolutionary enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity, withdrew from the island and granted the people self-government. The consequence has been a rapid relapse into barbarism and savagery of the worst kinds[58]. It was the ignoring of the importance of race and the overestimation of the moulding influence of culture and institutions, eloquently voiced by Lord Macaulay, that led England eighty years ago to set out on the task of endowing the millions of India with British culture and institutions. The task has been pursued in a half-hearted manner only; but already we see some of the incongruity of the results of these efforts; and the best observers assure us that, were the task accomplished and the reins of a representative government left in native hands, it would be but a few years before the whole country would be reduced to a chaotic anarchic condition no better than that in which we found it. Others go further and assert with some plausibility that Western culture is positively injurious to the intellect and moral nature of Indians[59].