Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/451

 RACE AND MARRIAGE 437

primitive family." Finot, intent on minimizing the importance of race distinctions, proposes to substitute the term "human variety," which he defines as a "group of individuals bound to- gether by certain permanent characteristics and distinguished by other passing traits from other human groups."^^ Pichard also is careful to indicate that the definition should contain noth- ing more than the characteristics of the present status, the origin of these characteristics being an unsettled question.^ ^

But any definition which includes only somatic characters is evidently too narrow to cover all the phenomena which in prac- tice properly fall into the category of race. On the border land between somatic and psychic characters are numerous traits that give color to the group life. In the case of individuals there is a more or less definite fusion of those physical and mental characters which are described by type-terms like san- guine, phlegmatic, austere, sensuous. Racial groups also are marked off into temperamental categories corresponding to those of the predominant mass of their constituent individuals. Alfred Russell Wallace graphically describes the contrast between the Papuans of the Ke Islands and the Malays:

Had I been blind I could have been certain that these islanders were not Malays. The loud, rapid, eager tones, the incessant motion, the intense vital activity manifested in speech and action are the very antipodes of the

quiet, unimpulsive, unanimated Malays These forty black, naked,

mop-headed savages seemed intoxicated with joy and excitement. Not one of them could remain still for a moment. Every individual of our crew was in turn surrounded and examined, asked for tobacco or arrack, grinned at, and deserted for another. All talked at once, and our captain was regularly mobbed by the chief men, who wanted to be employed to tow us

in, and who begged vociferously to be paid in advance Under similar

circumstances Malays could not behave as these Papuans did. If they came on board a vessel (after asking permission) not a word would at first be spoken, except a few compliments, and only after some time, and very cautiously, would any approach be made to business. One would speak at a time, with a low voice and great deliberation, and the mode of mak-

^'^ Race Prejudice, 53.

anthropological, the biological, and the sociological: Modcrne Rassentheorien, 3. Cf. Giddings, Inductive Sociology, 49. for a somewhat similar classiRcation.
 * Hertz distinguishes four tjrpes of modern race theory, the linguistic, the