Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/613

Rh of all these bodily characteristics we discover that in reality in Europe we have to do with three physical types and not two. Thus we reject at once that old classification in our geographies of all the peoples of Europe under a single title of the white, the Indo-Germanic, or Aryan race. Europe, instead of being a monotonous entity, is a most variegated patchwork of physical types. Each has a history of its own, to be worked out from a study of the living men. Upon the combination of these racial types in varying proportions one with another the superstructure of nationality has been raised.

Among other points illustrated by our map of Europe is the phenomenon paralleled in general zoölogy, that the extreme or pure type is generally to be found in regions of marked geographical individuality. Such areas of characterization occur, for example, in the Alpine valleys, in Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat less so in Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia. The British Isles, particularly Ireland, at least until the full development of the art of navigation, afforded also a good example of a similar area of characterization. Europe has always been remarkable among continents by reason of its "much-divided" geography. From Strabo to Montesquieu political geographers have called attention to the advantage which this subdivision has afforded to man. They have pointed to the smooth outlines of the African continent, for example, to its structural monotony, and to the lack of geographical protection enjoyed by its social and political groups. The principle which they invoked appears to hold true in respect of race as well as of politics. Africa is as uniform racially as Europe is heterogeneous.

Pure types physically are always to be found outside the great geographical meeting places. The latter, such as the garden of France, the valleys of the Po, the Rhine, and the Danube, have always been areas of conflict. Competition, the opposite of isolation, in these places is the rule, so that progress which depends upon the stress of rivalry has followed as a matter of course. There are places where too much of this healthy competition has completely broken the mould of nationality, as in Sicily, so ably pictured by the late Mr. Freeman. It is only within certain limits that struggle and conflict make for an advance forward or upward. Ethnically, however, this implies a variety of physical types in contact, from which by natural selection the one best fitted for survival may persist. This means ultimately the extinction of extreme types and the supersession of them by mediocrity. In other words, applying these principles to the present case, it implies the blending of the long and the narrow heads and the substitution of one of medium breadth. The same causes, then, which conduce socially and politically to progress have as