Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/33

Rh We have been considering one of the two methods in which the problems presented by the contact of two races, each strong enough to hold its ground against the other, may be solved. This method, that of the fusion of the two into one through intermarriage, has in the eyes of the sociologist and the politician two great merits. It is Natural and it is Final. It comes by the ordinary working of human impulse, which induces unions that bring the members of one race into friendly relations with those of the other, make it difficult for either to go on despising the other, and ultimately bring down the humbler members of the dominant race to the level of the theretofore subject, while raising the stronger members of the subject race to a level with the dominant. Slow it may be, though its effect is usually seen in two or three generations, but it is sure. And its power appears by this, that while exclusive race aristocracies have generally tried to preserve their supposed purity by discouraging intermarriage, they have never succeeded except where either physical dissimilarity or religious sentiment supported their efforts. It is true that troubles originally engendered by race-antagonism have sometimes (as in our own islands and some parts of the East) outlasted their origin and become the source of political dissensions. But such troubles will always yield to appropriate political remedies. Race-antagonism, an evil more dangerous, because rooted in nature, than any political enmities, cannot but vanish when the races have been blent.

We have, however, seen that the method of Fusion