548 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
influences its followers, not only by its distinct doctrines, but even more by the method by which the doctrines are taught. Some methods of religious training permit much greater intellectual freedom than others, even when the doctrines are much the same. Tfyus the Protestant section of the Christian religion imposes fewer restrictions than the Greek church. A little thought makes it evident that every race is enlightened and progressive, and pro- duces men of distinguished achievement, precisely in proportion to the intellectual freedom permitted by the religion it follows. Mahomedans, Buddhists, and Hindus produce few great men. Mediaeval Europe produced few. Modern Christianity is divided into three great sections. For the last century and a half almost every man who has achieved world-wide fame has arisen from among members of only one of those sections, or has been a rebel against the doctrines and restrictions of the other two. This sec- tion of Christianity has not a monopoly of innate genius, but it has a large monopoly of effective genius.
All this evidence renders it abundantly plain that mental power is not a mere matter of innate capacity, but is very largely a matter of intellectual training. No doubt, men differ as much in their inborn mental capacity as they do in bodily powers ; but the former is much more difficult to detect. You can train a man of great innate capacity to have every appearance of a fool. You can so train a man of comparatively mean capacity that among worse-trained men he has every appearance of ability. When, therefore, we meet a distinguished man, it is unsafe to jump to the conclusion that he is necessarily of great mental capacity. And when we see a distinguished son follow a distinguished father, it is not entirely safe to conclude that great innate capacity has been inherited. We must remember the child's imitative instincts and the environment in which he has been reared an environment in which his father, with his own intellectual methods and his energy, bulked large. Statistics of distinguished families illus- trate the power of training quite as much as they do the power of heredity.
Since, with rare exceptions, variations of offspring from par- ents are spontaneous, it is obvious that we can improve a race
