3 88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" The etlinic character has a profound influence on the choice 

 between the two modes of government. With some peoples, in- 

 dividual autonomy — independence of character — is strongly traced; 

 for example, among the Germanic nations. Each one engages only 

 his extreme exterior in society. With nations of such temperament, 

 family life is strongly developed; the home is a sacred ark. . . . 



" With some other peoples — with the Latin nations in general — 

 it is quite different; the autonomy is less refractory; they like to 

 live in society, and prefer to discharge the functions of thinking and 

 wishing upon others. . . . The will not being carefully cultivated, 

 it diminishes, and the state acts for the individual. 



" It is not the race alone that has influence in this matter, but 

 many other factors — climate, soil, religion, and time; usually all 

 these concur in giving direction." * 



Nevertheless, the writer fails to reach important conclusions 

 logically deducible from his premises, although the diverse racial 

 composition of the nations of Europe, where it is an almost unvary- 

 ing factor, can scarcely be brought into analogy with the same 

 phenomenon in America, where it is constantly changing. 



American civilization can scarcely be regarded as a native prod- 

 uct, for it did not slowly grow up upon the soil, but was transplanted 

 by the earlier settlers from European shores early in the seventeenth 

 century. The progress of civilization is largely due to the evolution 

 of thought, the passage from the less to the more complex — from 

 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, the advance in religion, 

 science, art, literature, liberty, which are themselves again all inter- 

 dependent upon the primal factor, the evolution of thought. 



Many conditions were then favorable to a rapid advance in 

 American civilization: the colonists were in most cases men of some 

 education, their minds were imbued with the principles of liberty, 

 and the early fanaticism which characterized the religious refugees 

 gradually disappeared under the influence of the new life. In Penn- 

 sylvania, which in its conception was planned as a refuge for all per- 

 secuted for religion's sake, where the greatest freedom of mind and 

 person was enjoyed, we discover that civilization progressed most 

 rapidly, a progress which placed her at the head of all the other 

 coknies until the beginning of the nineteenth' century. What effect, 

 then, we must ask, has the foreign element had upon American 

 thought, and incidentally upon the material resources of the country. 

 To the former question history vouches no reply, and even to the 

 latter no satisfactory answer is afforded. It is true that many writers 

 have attributed the rapid increase of the population to the immigra- 



* Tevue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. iv, p. 888. 



