in measure of plasticity
has to be counted in as part of their very nature. Even in the bee,
with its highly definite instincts, there is a certain flexibility
bound up with each of these; so that, for instance, the inborn faculty
of building up the comb regularly is modified if the hive happens to
be of an awkward shape. Yet, as compared with what remains over, the
characters that we are able to distinguish as racial must show fixity.
Unfortunately, habits show fixity too. Yet habits belong to the plastic
side of our nature; for, in forming a habit, we are plastic at the
start, though hardly so once we have let ourselves go. Habits, then,
must be discounted in our search for the hereditary bias in our lives.
It is no use trying to disguise the difficulties attending an inquiry
into race.

* * * * *

These difficulties notwithstanding, in the rest of this chapter let
us consider a few of what are usually taken to be racial features of
man. As before, the treatment must be illustrative; we cannot work
through the list. Further, we must be content with a very rough division
into bodily and mental features. Just at this point we shall find it
very hard to say what is to be reckoned bodily and what mental. Leaving
these niceties to the philosophers, however, let us go ahead as best
we can.

Oh for an external race-mark about which there could be no mistake!
That has always been a dream of the anthropologist; but it is a dream
that shows no signs of coming true. All sorts of tests of this kind
have been suggested. Cranium, cranial sutures, frontal process, nasal
bones, eye, chin, jaws, wisdom teeth, hair, humerus, pelvis, the
heart-line across the hand, calf, tibia, heel, colour, and even
smell--all these external signs, as well as many more, have been
thought, separately or together, to afford the crucial test of a man's
pedigree. Clearly I cannot here cross-examine the entire crowd of
claimants, were I even competent to do so. I shall, therefore, say
a few words about two, and two only, namely, head-form and colour.

I believe that, if the plain man were to ask himself how, in walking
down a London street, he distinguished one racial type from another,
he would find that he chiefly went by colour. In a general way he knows
how to make allowance for sunburn and get down to the native complexion
underneath. But, if he went off presently to a museum and tried to
apply his test to the pre-hi