Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/821

 SOCIAL ASSIMILATION 807

Prankish assimilation of the Bavarians and Saxons offers a good illustration on this point. The Bavarians, a loosely united peo- ple, with little race-sentiment and tradition, yielded easily to the Franks, who soon imposed their whole system upon them. With the Saxons, however, a people of compact race-homogeneity, the case was quite different. By the end of the eighth century they were the only German people who still clung to their primitive religion and their social and political institutions. It took thirty- three years of hard righting to reduce them to the rule of the Franks. Though Charlemagne forced the Christian religion and Roman law upon the Saxons, Saxon thought and custom in turn reacted upon the civilization of the conquering people. If race- consciousness is intense enough to prevent change of attitude or adaptation to new conditions, assimilation cannot take place. Thus in India, English civilization has little or no effect on the Hindu, and in the United States the Chinese seems utterly impervious to American influence. In both these cases there is such a radical difference in tradition and history that fusion of ideas is practically impossible.

In concluding this chapter it may be well to sum up the laws of assimilation herein noted :

1. The greater the number of points of contact between the races, the more rapid will be the assimilation, and con- versely.

2. When the planes of culture differ, the higher element tends to predominate over the lower, even though the higher culture is possessed by the conquered people.

3. The nearer the planes of culture, the greater will be the interaction.

4. Other things being the same, the more equal the two ele- ments in mass, the more reciprocal will be their action; hence the effect of assimilating forces varies inversely with the com- pactness of the passive element.

5. The more intense its race-consciousness, the greater the resistance of the passive element, and possibly the greater its counter-influence ; but this consciousness may be so intense as to prevent all assimilation.