THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 587 



wholly cast off the leading strings of physical circumstance, as it 

 is our purpose ultimately to show. 



By this time it will have been observed that the differences in 

 respect of the head form become strongly noticeable only when 

 we compare the extremes of our racial series ; in other words, 

 that while the minor gradations may be real to the calipers and 

 tape, they are not striking at first glance to the eye. As a matter 

 of fact, it is the modesty of this physical trait not forcing itself 

 conspicuously upon the observer's notice as do differences in the 

 color of the skin, the facial features, or the bodily stature which 

 forms the main basis of its claim to priority as a test of race. Were 

 the head form as strikingly prominent as these other physical 

 traits, it would tend to fall a prey to the modifying factor of arti- 

 ficial selection : that is to say, it would speedily become part and 

 parcel among a people of a general ideal, either of racial beauty 

 or of economic fitness, so that the selective choice thereby in- 

 duced would soon modify the operation of purely natural causes. 

 However strenuously the biologists may deny validity to this ele- 

 ment of artificial selection among the lower animals, it certainly 

 plays a large part in influencing sexual choice among primitive 

 men and more subtly among us in civilization. Just as soon as a 

 social group recognizes the possession of certain physical traits 

 peculiar to itself that is, as soon as it evolves what Prof, Gid- 

 dings has aptly termed a " consciousness of kind " its constant 

 ondeavor thenceforth is to afford the fullest expression to that 

 ideal. Thus the nobility in Japan are as much lighter in weight 

 and more slender in build than their lower classes as the Teutonic 

 nobility of Great Britain is above the British average. The 

 Japanese aristocracy in consequence might soon come to consider 

 its bodily peculiarities as a sign of high birth. That it would 

 thereafter love, choose, and marry unconsciously perhaps, but 

 no less effectively in conformity with that idea is beyond per- 

 adventure. 



Is there any doubt that where, as in our own Southern States, 

 two races are socially divided from one another, the superior 

 would do all in his power to eliminate any traces of physical 

 similarity to the menial negroes ? Might not the Roman nose, 

 light hair and eyes, and all those prominent traits which distin- 

 guished the master from the slave, play an important part in con- 

 stituting an ideal of beauty which would become highly effective 

 in the course of time ? So uncultured a people as the natives of 

 Australia are pleased to term the Europeans, in derision, " toma- 

 hawk-noses," regarding our primary facial trait as absurd in 

 its make-up. Even among them the "consciousness of kind" 

 an not be denied as an important factor to be dealt with in the 

 theory of the formation of races. 



