How account for the low cephalic index of the Algonquins from the St. Lawrence to Georgia on the Atlantic coast and another long-headed group in eastern South America in comparison with the broader headed Indians of the Pacific coasts? What of the blond Eskimo or the blonds recently reported from Central America? Are these remnants of earlier stocks pushed by later comers to the periphery of the world?

Endless quotations are at hand showing the advantages and disadvantages of hybridization. Some biologists even have joined the social propagandists to warn us of the risks of race blending. In spite of it all there is little concrete evidence as to the inferiority of the hybrid. In reality all of this argument is to one side of the point. The problem is to find a full-blood. Where is he? Certainly not in any ancient or modern civilization known to us. Everywhere on earth this amalgamation is taking place, slowly perhaps in our southern states, very rapidly elsewhere as in our territory of Hawaii.20

Race Pride

What seems to have happened in history is that as each civilization has been built up the leaders have more and more stressed their ancestry, quietly ignoring earlier blends. Race pride grew. Thus the achievements became due to race. A splendid illustration of this habit can be found in our own country. The old American has been visualized as a Nordic blond. When we decided to restrict immigration we wanted a device which would let in this type of man and keep out others. Congress thought to find it by letting in a number based on an old census. When the list was made up the operation of the law was quietly suspended that a way might be found out of the dilemma.

Turn to the volume of Hrdlicka, The Old Americans. He studied present-day Americans whose grandparents had all been born here and in whose families there had been no

crossing with later comers. The tables following show the

Hrdlicka found that 16.6 per cent of the males were dolichocephalic, 21.7 per cent brachycephalic, and 61.7 per cent mesocephalic. Of the females 8.1 per cent were long headed, 41.9 per cent were round headed, while 50 per cent had medium heads. This agrees with the older study of 486 college students in Massachusetts where 4 only had an index of less than 70, the largest number (72) had an index of 77, while 4 had an index of 87.

What all of this means is that each group comes to have an idealized picture of itself—just as devils are red and angels, white. We measure our own group by the best. We are prone to judge other groups by their worst. We idealize our own-we caricature others. If we mark ourselves 100 the rest must be content with lower places. They will change the scale when they make their own estimates. The

Nordic propaganda of the present is an extremely dangerous method of playing with fire. It is not based on proven facts. It cannot be accepted by the majority of mankind. ought to be studying, not agitating.

We

Often it is stated that the downfall of some nation, say Rome, was due to intermarriage with lower class slaves or immigrants. We might just as well argue that the rise of Rome was due to the earlier blending of races for such a blending took place before Rome was. Explanation of

national success or failure in terms of race will not stand investigation. At least, it will require a definition of race not yet at hand. I am neither advocating race intermixture nor shutting my eyes to certain dangers which I think to be social rather than physical. If the crossing is selective, is it a selection of the best or the worst? Each case must be considered by itself and with reference to local conditions. Dogmatic statements either for or against are entirely unwarranted.

Is Classification Possible?

Now that some of the difficulties, both physical and psychological, have been mentioned, we may return to our starting point and see what can be suggested towards a possible classification, of men not of cultures, descriptive not evaluative.

Our survey has suggested that long ago there arose a few divergent types of men which spread over earth, blending wherever they came into contact. Modern man has such a mixed ancestry that, classify him as we will, it is extremely unlikely that any lines of separation applicable to-day will be found to hold for earlier times. At various times in the past one group after another has been in the vanguard of achievement. Regardless of innate differences which some day we may be able to discover and evaluate, and the possibility of their existence and evaluation is not to be denied,

we must try to keep social and physical facts distinct. Probably the leaders of the future will be those races which have the greatest opportunities, since this seems to have been true in the past.

Whatever merit the experts may later assign to the suggestions of Griffith Taylor, it is to his credit that he has made one of the briefest suggestions as to race classifications which will serve us as a condensation of the work of his predecessors:

1. Very long-headed folk, broad-nosed, nearly all have dark skins, very frizzly hair and live in the tropics.

2. Broad-headed folk, nearly all have white to yellow skins, wavy or straight hair and live in temperate lands.

3. Most moderately dolichocephalic folk have brown to white skins, thin noses, and wavy hair. They have no very definite climatic environment, but range throughout the tropical and temperate regions. It is this great range of migration which has prevented their common origin and real physical similarity from being recognized. On the other hand they invariably occupy a somewhat peripheral position outside group II and within group I.22

But for the rest of the world, if the theory here proposed be true, that the social history of man is in final analysis that of the struggle for dominance among the descendants of differently dowered types, together with their gradual blending into an ever more homogeneous form, the answer to the riddle of the future would seem to be written in the past. The more primitive types and races, those least endowed, must tend to pass from the stage and merge into the complex of their victors, and among these amalgamation and absorption must continue to reduce more and more the remnants of the original types, until in the end, out of many types, through a multitude of races, may come one race, which will be the consummation of them all.23

Opinions may differ as to whether we are any more likely to develop one physical type of man than to create one

religious sect or political organization. Yet Dixon strikes a true note in the quotation just given. Man is a part of the organic world. That world is characterized by variation and change. When we recall how other forms of life have been modified we see little reason to think that man will remain unchanged. If Europe and other parts of the world are becoming rounder-headed as some think and others fear, it may be but an indication of this change. As the world becomes smaller in so far as man is concerned the development of many given types may be more difficult and we may approximate the vision of Dixon. On the other hand man may devise some caste system and favor the creation of specialized types. Which will happen is not for the writer to predict. All he can do is to insist again that what we need to-day is more information, less emotion; more study, less agitation.

A Typical American

Consider carefully the meaning of the family chart just below, of a lad in a suburb of Philadelphia, called by his teachers "a typical American boy."

1. R. B. DIXON, The Racial History of Man, p. 500.

2. Ibid., pp. 501-503.

3. W. L. RIPLEY, Races of Europe, pp. 41-54.