Section I.E. Morselli.
Quando fosse divenuto possibile creare ed applicare una scienza
Eugenistica universale, cioe comune a tutti i popoli civili, ciascuno di questi
dovrá segnare ¡le linee direttive di una Eugenistica etnológica, che abbia di
mira la difesa e la propagazione del proprio tipo -física sempre piü
differenziato e della propria mentalita sempre piü caratteristica. Come fra
gli individui il successo nella vita é assicurato soltanto a quelli che meglio
sanno formarsi e mantenere una propria personalitá, cosi, fra le nazioni e le
razze, le piü vitali e dominanti saranno sempre quelle che si creeranno e si
conserveranno gelosamente un tipo proprio di struttura e di coltura,
imparando a regolarne la propagazione nelle unioni sessuali.
ETHNIC PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SCIENCE OF EUGENICS.
Subject: “ The Persistence and Variation of Racial Characters especially in
Relation to Ethnic Psychology.”
Prof. Enrico Morselli,
Director of the Clinic for Mental and Nervous Diseases in the Royal
University, Genoa, Italy.
The conclusions of the contribution of Professor Enrico Morselli, of
Genoa, are as follows :—
(i.) However the natural and social groupings of man are understood
and classified in the ethnological sense, every student of anthropological
science must admit the principle that all varieties and races of man vary
not only in their physical, but also in their mental characters.
(ii.) Also, if we cannot yet find the exact expression to define and
estimate the intellectual capacities, the feelings and dispositions, the char
acteristics and the active tendencies of each race, that fact does not invalidate
the conclusion that there must be an Ethnic Psychology, parallel to the
Ethnic Somatology: nevertheless, a complete Science of Anthropology is
that which proposes the task of describing, distinguishing, and classifying
the human races and populations upon the basis of both the inseparable sides
of human personality, ie., the physical and the moral.
(iii.) The psychological characters of races obey the same laws which
govern their bodily characters : therefore there are characters in part original,
corresponding to the primordial structure of each ethnic type, and char
acters in part acquired through the agency of adaptation. The factors which
operate to adapt the mentality of a race or a people to its conditions of life
