Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/815

 SOCIAL ASSIMILATION 801

fragments of the different peoples who, from time to time, have passed by it, or who have been driven by conquest into it from the lower country." 1 The last persons to resist union with Eng- land were the Scotch Highlanders, and the mountain districts of our own country in east Tennessee and Georgia give instances of belated development. Also in islands, such as Corsica and Sar- dinia, traditions and ancient customs persist long after they have been given up in the mainland. In these places the blood feud or vendetta is still the popular method of meting out justice, and the ancient laws of hospitality are still in force.

The process of assimilation is of a psychological rather than of a biological nature, and refers to the growing alike in charac- ter, thoughts, and institutions, rather than to the blood-mingling brought about by intermarriage. The intellectual results of the process of assimilation are far more lasting than the physiologi- cal. Thus in France today, though nineteen-twentieths of the blood is that of the aboriginal races, the language is directly derived from that imposed by the Romans in their conquest of Gaul. 2 Intermarriage, the inevitable result, to a greater or less extent, of race-contact, plays its part in the process of assimila- tion, but mere mixture of races will not cause assimilation. Moreover, assimilation is possible, partially at least, with- out intermarriage. Instances of this are furnished by the partial assimilation of the negro and the Indian of the United States. Thinkers are beginning to doubt the great importance once attributed to intermarriage as a factor in civilization. Says Mayo-Smith, "It is not in unity of blood, but in unity of insti- tutions and social habits and ideals, that we are to seek that which we call nationality," 3 and nationality is the result of assimilation. Bryce, too, declares that intermixture of blood has not the effect once attributed to it. 4 Waitz cites two

1 Transcaucasia and Ararat, p. 51. a TAYLOR, The Origin of the Aryans, p. 204.

3 "Assimilation of Nationalities in the United States," II, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. IX, p. 670.

4 "There are Europeans who hold and in this physiologically minded age it is natural that men should hold that the evolution of a distinctively American type of character and manner must be still distant, because the heterogeneous elements of