p is due to the plasticity of the
infant mind and brain, which is wonderfully capable of acquiring the
language, thought forms, and differentiating characteristics of any
group in which it may be reared. To what extent this plasticity
extends only carefully conducted experiments can show. In the higher
Asiatic and European races we find it to be much greater than is
generally supposed to be the case, but it is not improbable that the
lowest races possess it in a much lower degree.

The relative fixity of a psychic group is due to the fact that in
full-grown adults, who form the majority of every group, function has
produced structure. Body, brain, and mind have "set" or crystallized
in the mold provided by the social order. Influences sufficiently
powerful to transform the young have little effect on the adult. The
relative fixity of a psychic group is also due to the
difficulty--well-nigh impossibility--of bringing new psychic
influences to bear on all members of the group simultaneously. The
majority, being oblivious to the new psychic forces, maintain the old
psychic regime. The difficulty of reform, of transforming a social
order, is principally due to these two causes.

The "character" of a people (psychic group) consists of its more or
less unconscious, because structuralized or incarnate, ideas,
emotions, and volitions. Chief among them are those concerning the
character of God, the nature and value of man and woman, the necessary
relation of character to destiny, the nature and meaning of life and
death, and the nature and the authority of moral law. In proportion as
the social order incorporates high or low views on these vital
subjects, is the character of the people elevated and strong, or
debased and weak.

The destiny of a people, and the role it plays in history, are
determined not by chance nor yet by environment, but in the last
analysis by its own character. Yet this character is not something
given it complete at the start, an intrinsic psychical inheritance,
nor is it dependent for transmission on biological heredity, passing
only from parents to offspring. Character belongs to the sphere of
social psychic life and is the subject of social heredity. Through
social intercourse the moral character dominating a psychic group may
be transmitted to members of an alien psychic group. This usually
takes place through missionary activity. The moral character of a
psychic group may in this way be fundament