Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/272

268 institution of slavery. In Rome, "whole tribes were borrowed" for the work of agriculture, while conquered groups were utilized as menials or slaves.

Everywhere, under these conditions, the blood of the slave or the conquered has diluted that of the dominating race, usually to its detriment. For example, in most Spanish and Portuguese colonies Latin blood has been mixed with the aboriginal, producing crosses showing few of the virtues of the European stock. Indeed, in Portugal, the mixture from subject races in Brazil, Africa and India, has invaded the parent itself to its social and political confusion.

Two main facts appear in this connection. In many racial crossings occurs the mingling of the least desirable types of each. Naturally where the dregs of one race mix with the offscourings of another arise distressing possibilities of vice and incompetence. For instance, the Eurasian in Asiatic sea-ports "is damned from his birth and on both sides." But when good European blood mingles with Asiatic strains as good, there is no evidence that the progeny is inferior to either parent stock.

The words "hybrid" or "mongrel," terms of reproach as usually applied to the human race, relate commonly to the union of widely different peoples. But the question of "race or mongrel" can not be settled by a priori assertions as to superiority of pure over mixed races. There is no general law that mongrels are sterile, inert and non-resistant. It is a matter to be determined in any individual case of crossing by a study of the results derived. Experiments of the sort have no pertinency unless best is mated with best, and even then they might prove conclusive only if many times repeated. And no result shown in individuals need be valid as a general law of crossing. It would apply only to the particular types in question. No important information could be expected from the study of the first generation. One would need to know the nature of the recessive characters involved as well as of the dominant ones. The final Mendelian disposition of mixed race characters must determine the final answer.

The intermarriage of European races can hardly be called crossing at all, as the racial differences concerned are of slight order, little more than temperamental at the best, and most of the traits we commonly recognize are matters of education. All those qualities which disappear in a generation in America must be chargeable to education, not to race. And, in general, other things being equal, the advantage seems to be on the side of the blended races which belong to the same general stock. Moreover, in civilized lands, there are only blended races. Blending is part of civilization. Pure strains confined to isolated islands or valleys, thus withdrawn from competition, by no means represent the best of any race. There is no wide-spread race which is pure. There is no such