Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/374

360 this influence simply adds itself to that of inheritance, and does not diminish its strength or importance. Taking a general view of the question, the case becomes very obvious. It will scarcely be disputed that national characteristics manifest themselves definitely, not only in the temperament, ideas, etc., of the people, but also in their bodily features. We speak of the English type of facial features, the German type, etc., and every one appreciates that these terms express real distinctions. Moreover, we know that these types have existed a long time, slightly variable, no doubt, but never losing the main lines. It is scarcely necessary to say that this continuance of type rests on heredity. The case is precisely the same as that of the continuance of the family likeness, only the family is larger and the features less distinctive, though, in the long run, they are more faithfully conserved.

Lying deeper than those characteristics that mark us as members of a nationality are others that mark us as members of one of the great races of the human family. The term race has different significations according to its use, whether referring to distinctions chiefly of an anatomical character (though connoting others), as the Caucasian, Mongolian, etc., races, or to distinctions based more directly on differences of lineage, as the Celtic, Teutonic, etc., races. For the purpose in hand we use it in the former sense, dividing mankind into the usual five races, Caucasian, negro, Indian, etc. Now, it is obvious that our race characteristics come to us in the same way as our national and family characteristics: we get our white skin and orthognathous skulls by inheritance just as truly as our more specific bodily features, only these qualities come to us from ancestors more remote. We need not concern ourselves here how they obtained them, nor whether they were acquired suddenly in a single generation or gradually through many generations. The point to be insisted upon is that, race characteristics once established, they are transmitted by inheritance through all succeeding generations. Of course, the principle applies not only to merely anatomical features, but to mental traits as well. The peculiarities of mental constitution that make the Caucasian the most progressive race are handed down by inheritance just as truly as the color of the skin and the shape of the skull.

Still deeper than the race characteristics—more fundamental than they—are those that mark us as members of the human family itself. Our convoluted brains, our power of verbal speech, certain of our intellectual and our moral faculties, these are the qualities that belong to us in common with all men, and that distinguish us from the highest animals. Whence came these qualities? It can only be answered that they came from the