Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/199

 ETHNIC TYPE.

'T^HE startling Linnaean description, — Homo monstrostis, -^ macrocephahiSy capite-conico, ChinensiSy — can hardly be said to prepare us for the commonplace and prosaic. Yet such is the uniformity of the Chinese type, ^he chi- that sculptors use one model for hundreds of faces, ^^^se Eth- It is like the homogeneousness of an undeveloped order of life. To eyes accustomed to the mobility of Aryan features this placid platitude seems almost inorganic, and these accumulated living atoms are like dust of iron or heaps of sand. But their lack of individuality would natu- rally allow freedom of combination ; and it may be the result of a corresponding precedent fusion. It is ^^^^^ ° a well-recognized law, that the resources of a great civilization depend on the crossing of races. And such is the extent of this fusion in all developed communities, that some physiologists have denied the reality of race distinc- tions, as mere theoretic solutions of problems too compli- cated for analysis.^ A people who have shown themselves competent to such constructive force as the Chinese can hardly be an exception to the rule, — a pure, unmixed variety. Yet, as was stated in the outset, the elements are limited, and the result is unique among nations. There has been an intermingUng of Asiatic, chiefly Mongolian, tribes, whose 1 'Rz&'Qx^^Ethnologie, pp. 24, 25, 29.