438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The second factor in our argument is the impossibility of fusion 

 between whites and blacks. The latter have been, and must continue 

 to be, a distinct and alien race. The fusion of races is the resultant 

 from social equality and intermarriage, and the barrier to this here is 

 insurmountable. The human species presents three grand varieties, 

 marked off by color white, yellow, and black. One at the first, in 

 origin and color, the race multiplied and spread, and separate sections, 

 settled in different latitudes, took on under climatic conditions acting 

 with abnormal force in that early and impressionable period of the 

 race's age took on (we say) different hues, which, as the race grew 

 and hardened, crystallized into permanent characteristics. Social affin- 

 ity exists among the families of these three groups. The groups 

 themselves stand rigidly apart. The Irish, German, French, etc., who 

 come to these shores, readily intermarry among themselves and with 

 the native population. Within a generation or two the sharpness of 

 national feature disappears, and the issue is the American whose mixed 

 blood is the country's foremost hope. It can not be a fusion like 

 this between whites and blacks. Account for it as we may, the antip- 

 athy is a palpable fact which no one fails to recognize an antipathy 

 not less strong amontj the Northern than amonsr the Southern wdiites. 

 However the former may, on the score of matters political, profess 

 themselves special friends to the blacks, the question of intermarriage 

 and social equality, when brought to practical test, they will not touch 

 with the end of the little finger. Whether it be that the blacks, be- 

 cause of their former condition of servitude, are regarded as a perma- 

 nently degraded class ; whether it be that the whites, from their his- 

 toric eminence, are possessed with a consciousness of superiority which 

 spurns alliance the fact that fusion is impossible no one in his senses 

 can deny. 



These, then, are the factors in our argument, and the source of the 

 inferences to follow : 1. That the black population is gaining on the 

 whites ; 2. That the former is, and must continue to be, a distinct and 

 alien people. 



Two inferences follow the first of a social character ; the second, 

 political : 



1. The status of the black population, as a distinct and alien race, 

 condemns the race to remain, in perpetuum, the laboring class. If its 

 blood can not commingle with that of the whites, social advancement 

 ceases at an early stage ; the higher social planes are incapable of at- 

 tainment ; whereby is broken a fundamental social law that allows to 

 the individual full freedom to rise or fall in the social scale, without 

 hindrance from race prejudice or prestige. 



That is the healthiest society which is the freest, which gives the 

 fullest play to individual intelligence and energy ; and in such a social 

 state we note a tendency on the part of the rich upper class to sink, 

 and the poor laboring class to rise ; we observe therein a social cycle 



