376 PROCEEDINGS OP SECTION F. 



energy is not absorbed in assimilating foreigners. Uniform 

 standards of conduct and living are easily maintained. The com- 

 munity of sentiment among the people is strong. The conscious- 

 ness of national kinship, the collective family spirit, is greater than 

 in America, and for this reason commercial sympathies are more 

 active, and the socialist tendency more pronounced. But this is 

 at the cost of some national inbreeding, and at the sacrifice of the 

 virility and aggressive energy begotten by the fusion of kindred 

 races, and of the greater amount of variation and wider scope 

 for national selection in nation building that the mingling of 

 different peoples causes." 



The criticism regarding national inbreeding and the sacrifice 

 of the virility and aggressive energy begotten by the fusion of 

 kindred races appears plausible ; but what are the Anthropological 

 facts ? On the subject of inbreeding, consider for a moment cousin- 

 marriage, the most intense inbreeding that custom, law, religion, 

 and normal human feeling allow. In Fiji, as in many other 

 places, cousin-marriage was not merely permissible, but impera- 

 tive. But the Fijians made a distinction among cousins. The 

 children of two brothers were not allowed to marry. So, likewise, 

 the childi'en of two sisters were not allowed to marry. But the 

 children of a brother and a sister were compelled to marry. And 

 the progeny of such marriages was more numerous, and the physical 

 condition of it much superior, than in the case of the progeny of 

 mixed or outbred marriages. The greatest vitality is found among 

 the inbreds. More light is cast on this subject by a study of the 

 marriage of half-brother and half-sister not uterine related. Con- 

 sider the historical account of the origin of the Jews, one of the 

 most virile races the world has seen. Abraham, the founder of it, 

 married his half-sister, Sarah, not uterine related. Isaac, their 

 son, married Rebeccah, not an outsider, but one belonging to his 

 father's own kindred. Their son, Jacob, married his two cousins, 

 Leah and Rachel, children of his mother's brother. From these, 

 eight of the twelve tribes originated. The whole of the details 

 regarding inbreeding in animals, including human beings, are not 

 known, nor are the principles fully established. But it is clear that 

 the vast majority of people who talk about cousin-marriage and 

 racial inbreeding have no clear knowledge of the subject; they have 

 not even defined the terras or recognised the factors of the problem. 



Now turn to the subject of race, and the assumption that the 

 ' ' almost pure British stock ' ' that peoples Australia implies that 

 something is lost from a want of fusion of kindred races. People 

 speak of a " pure race," usually meaning a race that has originated 

 from one pair, or from one family or tribe, and- that has not 

 received tributary streams in its onward course — or that has 

 received no life-giving rivulets into its stagnant wafers. On the 



