When we honestly ask ourselves in what particular connections we most readily tend to use concepts of nationality, race, and so forth, on what occasions we feel inclined to talk or write of something as being typically German, English, Irish, American, or Jewish, we soon discover that in the frightening majority of instances, some strong (if not altogether conscious) motive in our mind prompts us to employ these alleged characterisations as terms of either favourable evaluation or devaluation, the latter tendency being perhaps the more frequent. The reasons for these irrational attitudes, which even the most sophisticated amongst us are likely to adopt, are twofold and, genetically speaking, primitive.