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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we may expect to find among them a different civilization, based upon 

 different mental characters and temperament. If their customs, laws, 

 and government have remained the same from a remote antiquity, 

 we may expect to find them so persistent as to resist all effort at change ; 

 and we may find forms, which were anciently of great benefit, still 

 transmitted by inheritance, though they may now have become inju- 

 rious by interfering with the introduction of new forms of greater 

 utility. These expectations, as will hereafter appear, are fully justified 

 by the facts. 



As nations are the necessary product of their parts as the govern- 

 ment is as it is because the people are as they are it follows that a 

 certain degree of homogeneity is necessary to secure peace and perma- 

 nence. A majority of the people must have sentiments, instincts, and 

 temperaments, as nearly similar as possible, where a difference in cir- 

 cumstances, occupations, and position is necessary. It is a constant 

 strain upon the coherence of a nation, where the parts are of different 

 civilizations. This would in fact be opposed to the very idea of a na- 

 tion. As defined by Bagehot, * " a nation means a like body of men, 

 because of that likeness cajiable of acting together, and because of that 

 likeness inclined to obey similar rules." A nation may, like the United 

 States, be composed of parts of various other nations, but they must 

 be of a common race and civilization. The history of the Indians and 

 the negroes in America too plainly demonstrates the truth that, where 

 the races are different and the societies have different civilizations, rapid 

 assimilation is impossible. As long as such a difference exists there 

 will be a conflict, which can be ended only by the slow process of as- 

 similation by variation of race, or by the extermination of the weaker. 

 The permanence of national structure can be maintained only by the 

 homogeneity of its civilization. " So long," says Spencer, " as the char- 

 acters of the citizens remain unchanged, there can be no substantial 

 change in the political organization which has slowly evolved from 

 them." f Conversely, it follows that, upon the introduction of inhar- 

 monious foreign elements, the society must be proportionately modi- 

 fied. The introduction of the Chinese into our American society 

 would be a union of different civilizations and different races. Each 

 would stand by itself, from being too different to appreciate the other. 

 They would be united only in the common interests of protection to 

 life and property, and would defeat those primary objects by differing 

 so fundamentally as to the method of their accomplishment. Yery 

 little assimilation could take place, and, by the law of heredity, the 

 newer institutions would be the more readily changed, the older and 

 more deeply rooted would be the more persistent. If the immigration 

 should be so small though there are reasons for believing it would 

 not be that the American population would always be in a large ma- 



* "Physics and Politics," p. 21. 



f " Study of Sociology," " Popular Science Monthly," vol. ii, p. 263. 



