THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 593 



of all these bodily characteristics we discover that in reality in 

 Europe we have to do with three physical types and not two. 

 Thus we reject at once that old classification in our geographies 

 of all the peoples of Europe under a single title of the white, 

 the Indo- Germanic, or Aryan race. Europe, instead of being a 

 monotonous entity, is a most variegated patchwork of physical 

 types. Each has a history of its own, to be worked out from a 

 study of the living men. Upon the combination of these racial 

 types in varying proportions one with another the superstructure 

 of nationality has been raised. 



Among other points illustrated by our map of Europe is the 

 phenomenon paralleled in general zoology, that the extreme or 

 pure type is generally to be found in regions of marked geograph- 

 ical individuality. Such areas of characterization occur, for ex- 

 ample, in the Alpine valleys, in Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat 

 less so in Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia. The British Isles, par- 

 ticularly Ireland, at least until the full development of the art 

 of navigation, afforded also a good example of a similar area of 

 characterization. Europe has always been remarkable among 

 continents by reason of its "much-divided" geography. From 

 Strabo to Montesquieu political geographers have called attention 

 to the advantage which this subdivision has afforded to man. 

 They have pointed to the smooth outlines of the African conti- 

 nent, for example, to its structural monotony, and to the lack of 

 geographical protection enjoyed by its social and political groups. 

 The principle which they invoked appears to hold true in respect 

 of race as well as of politics. Africa is as uniform racially as 

 Europe is heterogeneous. 



Pure types physically are always to be found outside the great 

 geographical meeting places. The latter, such as the garden of 

 France, the valleys of the Po, the Rhine, and the Danube, have 

 always been areas of conflict. Competition, the opposite of isola- 

 tion, in these places is the rule, so that progress which depends 

 upon the stress of rivalry has followed as a matter of course. 

 There are places where too much of this healthy competition has 

 completely broken the mould of nationality, as in Sicily, so ably 

 pictured by the late Mr. Freeman. It is only within certain lim- 

 its that struggle and conflict make for an advance forward or 

 upward. Ethnically, however, this implies a variety of physical 

 types in contact, from which by natural selection the one best 

 fitted for survival may persist. This means ultimately the ex- 

 tinction of extreme types and the supersession of them by medi- 

 ocrity. In other words, applying these principles to the present 

 case, it implies the blending of the long and the narrow heads 

 and the substitution of one of medium breadth. The same causes, 

 then, which conduce socially and politically to progress have as 



VOL. L. 43 



