Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/704

 of the intellectual development of a race—its higher numeral system.

It would be easy to add many other illustrations from history, from physical traits, and from linguistic data, but they will hardly be deemed necessary. The conclusion to which we are brought by all the evidence is, that while the conquering energy of the European nations is doubtless due to the infusion of Aryan blood, their higher intellectual qualities and their love of freedom are derived almost entirely from the earlier races, who form the main elements in the mixed European breed. The gradual elimination of the Aryan blood and character, with the return of these earlier elements to ascendency, is the most impressive and important phenomenon in the modern history of Europe, and indeed of the civilized world. We see its results in the extension of free institutions, in the growth of science, in the multiplicity of inventions, in the lessened barbarity of war, in the abolition of slavery, in the increased sense of brotherhood among nations, in the diffusion of education, in the countless societies for charity and for learning, and in all the other evidences of material and moral progress which distinguish our age.



HE Seventh International Congress of Americanists met in Berlin, on October 2d, and was opened by Honorary President Gossler, the Prussian Minister of Worship. Although Germany, the speaker said, "had not had any remarkable part in the discovery of America, or in the earliest steps in planting European civilization in the new quarter, it had participated in a rising degree in the scientific discovery of the continent. Americanist studies had, through the brothers Humboldt, already gained burger-rights among us, and had consequently received faithful care; so that the congress finds among us a well-prepared audience, fully appreciating its aims. We understand that a quarter which includes within itself all the zones, all earth-forms, all degrees of civilization, must be closely examined as to its inner relations before the important question whether the peculiar features of the New World indicate any primary connection with the Old can be answered. We recognize, also, that in some districts of America history and prehistory lie far apart; that powerfully organized states, with elaborate constitutions and carefully regulated religious rituals, were destroyed centuries ago, while in the same neighborhoods numerous tribes are still living apparently in a state of nature. The words that were spoken at the 