THE KEDE: A RIVERAIN STATE IN NORTHERN NIGERIA 195
them the same 'stimulating' environment, appear to have remained unresponsive to it. I have no explanation to give. Does this mean, then, that we have to fall back on the psychological interpretation of the kind quoted above ?
But the environmental and economic determinism' which these conclusions have put forward was not meant to exclude completely the contribution of psychological factors—that is, the social motive power that may lie in the temperamental and general psychological dispositions typical of a group. Nor was it intended to minimize the decisive part that enterprising and far-seeing individuals must have played in the creation of the Kede State. The river colonization was undoubtedly the work of a people fully deserving the attributes 'adventurous', 'courageous', or 'possessed of a spirit of enterprise'; it must also have been closely bound up with the leadership of certain outstanding individuals: think of the man who was responsible for the Kede throwing in their lot with the British, or the Kede chiefs who so successfully utilized the encouragement of the Niger Company for the expansion of their country. But two facts must be borne in mind when defending this psychological and 'individualistic' theory of social origins. First, the psychological characteristics which might be made responsible for the achievements of the group are not racially determined (i.e. by heredity)—the dissimilar social system of the upper-stream Kede proves this to the full; they remain an expression of, and a perfect adjustment to, environmental conditions. And, second, these psychological characteristics do not reflect the effectiveness of some spontaneous, as it were, self-contained, psychological force, but .are fostered and formed planfully by the existing social system and its cultural demands, to which the individuals, generation after generation, learn to adjust themselves. How much in the gradual social development of the Kede State was due to the selective effects of environment, and how much to the spontaneous actions of exceptionally gifted individuals who, at one point of Kede history, may have shown their people a new way of life, is one of these questions of social origins to which, again, we have no answer.