90 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE BLOOD OF THE NATION. 



A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF BACES THROUGH THE SURVIYAL OF THE 



UXFIT. 



Part I — In Peace. 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN, 



PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY. 



"Over trench and clod 

 Where we left the brave.st of us, 

 There's a deeper green of the sod." 



— Brown«ll. 



I. In this paper I shall set forth two propositions, the one self- 

 evident, the other not apparent at first sight, but equally demonstrable. 

 The Hood of a nation determines its history. This is the first proposition. 

 The second is: The history of a nation determines its Hood. As for the 

 first, no one doubts that the character of men controls their deeds. In 

 the long run and with masses of mankind this must be true, however 

 great the emphasis we may lay on individual initiative or on individual 

 variation. 



Equally true is it that the present character of a nation is made by 

 its past history. Those who are alive to-day are the resultants of the 

 stream of heredity as modified by the vicissitudes through which the 

 nation has passed. The blood of the nation flows in the veins of those 

 who survive. Those who die without descendants can not color the 

 stream of heredity. It must take its traits from the actual parentage. 



II. The word 'blood' in this sense is figurative only, an expression 

 formed to cover the qualities of heredity. Such traits, as the phrase 

 goes, *run in the blood.' In the earlier philosophy, it was held that 

 blood was the actual physical vehicle of heredity, that the traits be- 

 queathed from sire to son as the characteristics of families or races ran 

 literally in the literal blood. We know now that this is not the case. 

 We know that the actual 'blood' in the actual veins plays no part in 

 heredity, that the transfusion of blood means no more than the trans- 

 position of food, and that the physical basis of the phenomena of inher- 

 itance is found in the structure of the germ cell and its contained germ- 

 plasm. 



III. But the old word well serves our purposes. The blood which 

 is 'thicker than water* is the symbol of race unity. In this sense the 



