Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/449

 RACE AND MARRIAGE 435

ern Italy. If the races are physically farther apart, fusion of the masses may ensue while the dominant type survives in greater or less purity among the ruling classes, a result which will con- stantly be aided by sexual selection. Among the ancient Mexi- cans and the Polynesians* the nobility were distinctly fairer than the masses. Ripley shows that the upper classes of western Europe have lighter hair and eyes than the peasantry."* In this case even pronounced cultural differences like language or re- ligion cannot permanently withstand the attrition of social con- tact. But when the original difference of social status is marked off by some pronounced physical trait like skin color, race separa- tion is likely to be not only rigorous but enduring.

The rigidity of group forms, when based on such marked differences, becomes intensified rather than softened with the passing generations. There is clear evidence that the caste sys- tem of India only gradually acquired its fanatical and religious character in the period after the first generations of Aryan in- vaders. The Sanskrit word for caste, varna, meaning color, seems to point to the ethnic origin of the system. Between the Brahmans, the highest caste, and the Sudras, the lowest, there is even yet traceable a gradual shading from white toward black. In a static society like that of India, color prejudice would naturally crystallize into the social taboos that are found in the actual historical period. But color prejudice is here only the instinctive expression of a sense of cultural difference and of social status. Ratzel remarks that the ethnographer is often puzzled, in considering some of the groups in India, to know whether he has before him a race or a class.® Racial choices become fixed instincts and accept or reject certain traits with the same emphasis which characterize individual choices.

Language, religion, occupation, and social status may become the basis of caste distinctions as readily as may physical traits, although they are not likely to be as enduring. The oration against Neaera which passes under the name of Demosthenes


 * Ellis, Polynesian Researches^ I, 82.

'History of Mankind, III, 390.
 * Races of Europe, 469.