Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/179

Rh say, except by the continued accession of new elements from pure races. If they are abandoned to themselves and left to form connections with each other, the mongrels will become infertile after a few generations, and the mixed race will disappear.

None of the eminent men with whom I regret to differ take any account of the influence of the action of the surroundings. I believe that the conditions of the surroundings play as important a part in the crossing of races as they do in other matters. They may sometimes favor, sometimes restrict, sometimes prevent, the establishment of a mixed race. This simple consideration accounts for many apparently contradictory facts. Etwick and Long have affirmed that in Jamaica the mulattoes hold out only because they are constantly recruited by the marriage of whites with negresses. But in San Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, there are, we may say, no whites, and the population consists of two thirds mulattoes and one third negroes. The numbers of the mulattoes are there well kept up by themselves without the introduction of fresh blood. In respect to fertility, different instances of crossing between individuals of the two same races may give different results, according to the place where they are effected. I believe it is unnecessary to insist and show that the physical and physiological faculties of children born of mixed unions ought to present analogous facts.

In my view the aggregation of physical conditions does not in itself alone constitute the environment. Social and moral conditions have an equal part in it. Here, again, it is easy to establish, in the results of crossings, differences which have no other cause than differences in these conditions. It is true that mongrels, born and grown up in the midst of the hatred of the inferior race and the contempt of the superior race, are liable to merit the reproaches which are commonly attached to them. On the other hand, if real marriages take place between the races; and their offspring are placed upon a footing of equality with the mass of the population, they are quite able to reach the general level, and sometimes to display superior qualities.

All of my studies on this question have brought me to the conclusion that the mixture of races has in the past had a great part in the constitution of a large number of actual populations. It is also clear to me that its part in the future will not be less considerable. The movement of expansion, to which I have just called attention, has not slackened since the days of Cortez and Pizarro, but has become more extended and general. The perfection of the means of communication has given it new activity. The people of mixed blood already constitute a considerable part of the population of certain states, and their number is large enough to entitle them to be taken notice of in the population of the whole world.

In using the word (metis) mongrel, or person of mixed race, I do not mean the fruit of union between individuals belonging simply to