THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 481 



France apply this last-named criterion of progress? I doubt not we 

 should find it to accord with all the facts we have instanced above. 

 To ascribe them to racial causes is to lose sight of the primary factors 

 in social evolution. 



Our theory, then, is this: that most of the social phenomena we 

 have noted as peculiar to the areas occupied by the Alpine type are 

 the necessary outcome, not of racial proclivities, but rather of the 

 geographical and social isolation characteristic of the habitat of this 

 race. The ethnic type is still pure for the very same reason that 

 social phenomena are primitive. We discover, primarily, an influ- 

 ence of environment where others perceive phenomena of ethnic in- 

 heritance. In the preceding paragraph we have referred to the 

 apparently disintegrating influence of social evolution upon domestic 

 institutions. Let us for a moment turn to^another phase of family 

 life in France, in order to illustrate the complex forces which play 

 upon it to-day. The danger of rashly generalizing from inadequate 

 data will be immediately apparent. 



An index of the solidarity of the family is afforded by the degree 

 to which it resents the interference of the state in its domestic affairs. 

 A similar expression of the force of family feeling is often rendered 

 through the tenacity with which it holds itself aloof from the intru- 

 sion of strangers not allied by blood or adoption to the other mem- 

 bers of the naturally close corporation. In other words, statistics 

 of what we may call " home families," or families occupying an en- 

 tire dwelling by themselves, give us a clew to the cohesiveness of 

 the institution. It is the question of the boarding house and the 

 tenement versus the home. Any direct comparison in this respect 

 between different parts of the same country is of course entirely 

 worthless, unless we take account of the relative proportions of city 

 population in each; for, always and everywhere, it is in the crowded 

 city that the " home " is superseded by its degenerate prototypes. 

 Fortunately, we possess for France data upon this subject, with the 

 necessary elimination of this cause of error. The accompanying 

 map shows the proportion of families occupying each a whole house 

 to itself, and with the exclusion of all cities of upward of ten thou- 

 sand inhabitants in every case. In other words, we have before our 

 eyes statistics of the separately existing families among the French 

 peasantry. 



Inspection of this map of " home families " shows the widest 

 range of variation. Some parts of France, notably Brittany, ex- 

 hibit twice the degree of domestic intermixture, so to speak, that 

 prevails in other regions. On the whole, the northwest manifests a 

 weaker opposition to the intrusion of strangers in the family circle 

 than does the south. In some respects this agrees with the testi- 



