AND ITS INHABITANTS 149 



ently migrated from Asia to America by way of Bering Strait. 

 If that is the case, they must have spent many generations in 

 the extremely trying environment of the Far North where the 

 January temperature averages 10 F. below zero, and where 

 the winter night lasts months. Such an environment is a 

 terrible strain on the nerves. White men go crazy under it. 

 To a man of quick, inventive mind who always wants to be 

 up and doing, the enforced monotony of the long, icy night is 

 torture. His mind preys upon itself and in time gives way. 

 The type that survives is the phlegmatic man who can sit idly 

 for weeks inside his stuffy hut, and not care whether anything 

 happens or not. When they left the primitive home of man 

 in Asia, the ancestors of the Indians presumably had minds 

 like those of their neighbors who became the fathers of other 

 races. When they emerged from their long sojourn in the 

 Far North, however, they had lost some of their most valu- 

 able qualities. 



In the same way the European Nordics possess the type of 

 mind to be expected of a race that has always lived in a stimu- 

 lating climate. The Japanese show similar characteristics to 

 an almost equal degree. It is significant that although these 

 two races pushed out from central Asia in opposite directions, 

 neither was ever forced far to the north or south, and each 

 finds its present home in one of the world's best climates. 

 Neither race, however, has evolved in a uniform climate, for 

 changes due to the Glacial Period, especially in Europe, have 

 forced them to endure repeated epochs of stress. The stress, 

 however, was of a stimulating kind because it was apparently 

 characterized by variability and not by the monotonous uni- 

 formity of the Far North or the equator. The African 

 negroes, on the other hand, have by no means been so fortu- 

 nate. Because their migrations led them into southerly regions 

 they suffered a repressive evolution much like that of the 

 Indians. In tropical regions the energetic types unfortunately 



