TU[': BLOOD OF THE NATION. 91 



blood of the people concerned is, at once, the cause and the result of the 

 deeds recorded in their history. For example, wherever an Englishman 

 goes, he carries with him the elements of English history. It is a 

 British deed which he does, British history that he makes. Thus, too, a 

 Jew is a Jew in all ages and climes, and his deeds everywhere bear the 

 stamp of Jewish individuality. A Greek is a Greek; a Chinaman re- 

 mains a Chinaman. In like fashion, the race traits color all history 

 made by Tartars, or negroes, or Malays. 



The climate which surrounds a tribe of men may affect the activities 

 of these men as individuals or as an aggregate; education may intensify 

 their powers or mellow their prejudices; oppression may make them 

 servile or dominion make them overbearing, but these traits and their 

 resultants, so far as science knows, do not 'run in the blood.' They are 

 not 'bred in the bone.' Older than climate or training or experience 

 are the traits of heredity, and in the long run it is always 'blood which 

 tells.' 



IV. On the other hand, the deeds of a race of men must in turn 

 determine its blood. Could we with full knowledge sum up the events 

 of the past history of any body of men, we could indicate the kinds of 

 men destroyed in these events. The others would be left to write the 

 history of the future. It is the 'man who is left' in the march of history 

 who gives to history its future trend. By the 'man who is left' we mean 

 simply the man who remains at home to become the father of the fam- 

 ily — as distinguished from the man who in one way or another is sacri- 

 ficed for the nation's weal or woe. If any class of men be destroyed 

 by political or social forces, or by the action of institutions, they leave 

 no offspring, and their like will cease to appear. 



V. 'Send forth the best ye breed.' This is Kipling-'s cynical advice 

 to a nation which happily can never follow it. But could it be accepted 

 literally and completely, the nation in time would breed only second- 

 rate men. By the sacrifice of their best, or the emigration of the best, 

 and by such influences alone, have races fallen from first-rate to second- 

 rate in the march of history. 



VI. For a race of men or a herd of cattle are governed bv the same 

 laws of selection. Those who survive inherit the traits of their own 

 actual ancestry. In the herd of cattle, to destroy the strongest bulls, 

 the fairest cows, the most promising calves, is to allow those not strong, 

 nor fair, nor promising, to become the parents of the coming herd. 

 Under this influence the herd will deteriorate, although the individuals 

 of the inferior herd are no worse than their own actual parents. Such 

 a process is called race-degeneration, and it is the only race-degeneration 

 known in the history of cattle or men. The scrawny, lean, infertile 

 herd is the natural offspring of the same type of parents. On the other 

 hand, if we sell or destroy the rough, lean, or feeble calves we shall have 



