e Mongolian, some Aryan,
I have tried to prove how small contrasting groups would certainly
spring up within each--some to last and some to perish. These are the
eddies in each race-stream which vary its surface, and are sure to last
till some new force changes the current. These minor varieties, too,
would be infinitely compounded, not only with those of the same race,
but with those of others. Since the beginning of man, stream has been a
thousand times poured into stream--quick into sluggish, dark into
pale--and eddies and waters have taken new shapes and new colours,
affected by what went before, but not resembling it. And then on the
fresh mass, the old forces of composition and elimination again begin
to act, and create over the new surface another world. 'Motley was the
wear' of the world when Herodotus first looked on it and described it
to us, and thus, as it seems to me, were its varying colours produced.

If it be thought that I have made out that these forces of imitation
and elimination be the main ones, or even at all powerful ones, in the
formation of national character, it will follow that the effect of
ordinary agencies upon that character will be more easy to understand
than it often seems and is put down in books. We get a notion that a
change of government or a change of climate acts equally on the mass of
a nation, and so are we puzzled--at least, I have been puzzled--to
conceive how it acts. But such changes do not at first act equally on
all people in the nation, On many, for a very long time, they do not
act at all. But they bring out new qualities, and advertise the effects
of new habits. A change of climate, say from a depressing to an
invigorating one, so acts. Everybody feels it a little, but the most
active feel it exceedingly. They labour and prosper, and their
prosperity invites imitation. Just so with the contrary change, from an
animating to a relaxing place,--the naturally lazy look so happy as
they do nothing, that the naturally active are corrupted. The effect of
any considerable change on a nation is thus an intensifying and
accumulating effect. With its maximum power it acts on some prepared
and congenial individuals; in them it is seen to produce attractive
results, and then the habits creating those results are copied far and
wide. And, as I believe, it is in this simple but not quite obvious
way, that the process of progress and of degradation may generally be
seen to run.