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 fundamentally transformed, and with character, destiny.

Floating ideas, not yet woven into the warp and woof of life, not yet incarnate in the individual or in the social order, have little influence on the character of the individual or the group, however beautiful, true, or elevating such ideas may be in themselves.  The character of a people is to be judged, therefore, not by the beauty or elevation of every idea that may be found in its literature, but only by those ideas that have been assimilated, that have become incorporated into the social order.  These determine a people’s character and destiny.  According as these ideas persist in the social order, is its character permanent.

Progress consists of expanding life, communal and individual, extensive and intensive, physical and psychical.  True progress is balanced.  High communal development, that is, highly organized society, is impossible without the wide attainment of highly developed individuals.  Progressive mastery of nature likewise is impossible apart from growing psychic development in all its branches, emotional, intellectual and volitional, communal and individual.

Historically, communalism is the first principle to emerge in consciousness.  To succeed, however, it must be accompanied by at least a certain degree of individualism, even though it be quite implicit.  The full development of the communal principle is impossible apart from the correspondingly full development of the individual principle.  These are complementary principles of progress.  Each alone is impossible.  In proportion as either is emphasized at the expense of the other, is progress impeded.  Arrested civilizations are due to the disproportionate and excessive development of one or the other of these principles.

Personality, expressing and realizing itself in communal and individual life, in objective and subjective forms, is at once the cause and the goal of progress.  Social and psychic evolution are, therefore, in the last analysis, personal processes.  The irreducible and final factor in social evolution and in social science is personality; for personality is the determinative factor of a human being.