Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/30

24 pursue this line of inquiry, significant as it is for the future of mixed races; nor can I stop to illustrate the power of a strong intellectual type to stamp itself upon other races from the two salient instances of the Hellenization of Asia after Alexander the Great, and the assimilation of new elements by the Anglo-American race in the United States during the last seventy years. But it is worth remarking that the present mixed population of Mexico, though doubtless drawn far more largely from native than from Spanish sources, conforms more to the Spanish than to the Indian type, even if it be less industrious and less thrifty than the people of Old Spain.

The data we possess regarding the result of race-mixture as between races of different colour are not yet sufficient to enable us to speak positively on many points. We cannot, for instance, predict what the result may be on the American people, after another half-century, of the great stream of non-English blood which is being poured into its veins. The type may remain, yet the national character may prove to have been affected. If, however, one may venture on a generalization, it will be to the following effect.

Where two races are physiologically near to one another, the result of intermixture is good. Where they are remote, it is less satisfactory, by which I mean not only that it is below the level of the higher stock, but that it is not generally and evidently better than the lower stock. The people formed by the blending of a Low German with a Norse or Danish stock in the lands between the Trent and the Moray Firth,