Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/594

588 to-day in its greatest purity only in Scandinavia, in northwestern Germany and in England. Its chief physical characteristics are blond hair, a fair complexion, tall stature and especially a distinctly dolichocephalic shape of the head. Now as Ripley justly remarks, this longheadedness does not ipso facto imply a strong character, or superior mental power. The negroes, the Spaniards, the Sicilians are dolichocephalic without showing any intellectual superiority. But this particular long-headed northern race excelled and still excels by great mental qualities. It is the dominating race of modern times. It forms the ruling and predominating element in the three most powerful nations of the present day, England, Germany and the United States. Through the Anglo-Saxons, its most vigorous branch, it carried European civilization to the uttermost parts of the earth. The higher classes and the dynasties of the modern European nations belong to this northern race. Lapouge found that most of the great Frenchmen are of this type and are the descendants of the early Teutonic invaders. The majority of the great Italians who, during the Renaissance, made northern Italy the most enlightened country in the world, were the descendants of the northern conquerors, who during the great migration settled in that part of Europe. Likewise a close inquiry would probably show that the great thinkers and writers of middle and southern Germany, where the brachycephalic Alpine race forms the bulk of the population, are the descendants of the long-headed Teutons who settled among them. These northern peoples surpass all others in vigor, energy and self-control; they are aristocratic in their nature, domineering, oppressive to inferior races; but they are liberty-loving, have an innate love for law and order, and are above all other races capable of self-government; and it is certainly not accidental that all the branches of this race are protestants.

It is of descendants of this long-headed northern race that the great majority of the agricultural population of the United States is made up, and it is its very best elements that settled the American states. The people that founded the thirteen colonies belonged to the most energetic and most independent elements of old England. Only men of an indomitable courage and superior intellect would dare to brave the dangers of a distant and unknown country. Many left their homes