Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/750

728 harmoniously into one society. The government and customs of neither were suited to both. Forced together as they were, there could only result a struggle for supremacy, and the gradual assimilation of the more yielding characters of each. Passions and vices were earlier the habits of mankind than reason and virtues: the former were, therefore, the more constant, the latter the more readily destroyed. The mental characters and customs were more alike also among primitive than among advanced societies, and would more readily assimilate. So we find, for many generations after the union, that the new society is lower in the scale of civilization than were either of the parts which composed it.

Now, after three and a half centuries, the conflicting elements have been so far eliminated, and the remaining parts have become so far assimilated, that the society consists of a people who are of an increasing homogeneity, and which represents a civilization that has been reared upon an Aztec foundation, with a Spanish superstructure.

If, however, these general principles be admitted—that societies by mingling produce a new society having the characteristics of each of its parts, and the persistence of the characters of the respective parts are controlled by laws, the operation of which may be approximately determined by a knowledge of the several societies—it may still be objected that the application of the principles to the influence of the Chinese in the United States would lead to a conclusion favorable to their immigration. Why, it may be asked, is not the civilization of the Chinese one which would affect ours for the better? With an antiquity which fades away in the prehistoric past, it still exists with the apparent vigor of youth, and controls under one government a larger population than has existed in any nation which history mentions. Why are not its antiquity and success an exemplification of the survival of the fittest? We have received from the Chinese silk, tea, and paper; and by the invention of gunpowder and printing they have added to those great agents of civilization, the sword and the pen, a thousand-fold. We have been told that the dream of the Western political reformer was long since realized among this people whom we teach our children to call semi-civilized; that government offices, from the highest to the lowest, the most prized honors and social position, are all based upon an educational qualification. By the adoption of the Chinese system England, and, following her, the United States, are endeavoring to advance the efficiency and to raise the moral and intellectual standard of their civil services. For these and many other products of the civilization of the Chinese they must always command the respect of Christendom. Is not, then, the conclusion justified that, if we have heretofore profited so much from our slight knowledge of that people, we may be indefinitely benefited by their absorption into our body politic?

A reply to these objections can only properly be made by such a