In illustrating the improving effects of civilization through transmission, much weight is generally laid upon cases of relapse of individuals belonging to primitive races who have been educated. These relapses are interpreted as proofs of the inability of the child of a lower race to adapt itself to our high civilization, even if the best advantages are given to it. It is true that a considerable number of such cases are on record. Among these I will mention Darwin’s Fuegian, who lived in England for a few years and returned to his home, where he fell back into the ways of his primitive countrymen; and the West Australian girl who was married to a white man, but suddenly fled to the bush after killing her husband, and resumed life with the natives. Cases of this kind are true, but not one of them has been described with sufficient detail. The social and mental conditions of the individual have never been subjected to a searching analysis. I should judge that even in extreme cases, notwithstanding their better education, their social position was always one of isolation, while the ties of consanguinity formed a connecting link with their uncivilized brethren. The power with which society holds us and does not give us a chance to step out of its limits cannot have acted as strongly upon them as upon us. On the other hand, the station obtained by many negroes in our civilization seems to me to have just as much weight as the few cases of relapse which have been collected with much care and diligence. I should place side by side with them the cases of white men who live alone among native tribes, and who sink almost invariably to a semi-barbarous position, and the members of well-to-do families who prefer unbounded freedom to the fetters of society, and flee to the wilderness, where many lead a life in no way superior to that of primitive man. In the study of the behavior of members of foreign races educated in European society, we should also bear in mind the influence of habits of thought, feeling, and action acquired in early childhood, and of which no recollection is retained. If S. Freud is right in assuming that these forgotten incidents remain a living force throughout life,—the more potent, the more thoroughly they are forgotten,—we should have to conclude that many of the small traits of individuals which we ordinarily believe to be inherited are acquired by the influence of the individuals among whom the child spends the first five years of its life. All observations on the force of habit and the intensity of resistance to changes of habit are in favor of this theory.