Civilizational traits were believed to be heritable brain cells that could atrophy

Evidence

Progress involved the steady growth of an elite and its achievement of civilisation by long hereditary accumulation. Yet this accumulation, warned Le Bon, although inherited in the very cells of the brain, could be quickly and easily lost. These cells were subject to physiological laws just like those of any other organ, and when no longer employed to fulfil its function the brain atrophied very quickly. Those qualities of character accumulated over centuries by an avanced people, namely ‘courage, initiative, energy, the spirit of enterprise’, could very quickly disappear. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 399

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the Lamarckian-style heredity of acquired character that undergirded Le Bon’s racial elites — inherited in the cells yet quickly lost through disuse.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did this ‘atrophying brain cell’ doctrine influence eugenic anxieties about hereditary decline, and does it echo in any later colonial policy?