310 MAN --AN ADAPTIVE MECHANISM 



Polish, Russian, Jewish, Irish, English, German, 

 Scandinavian, African, Spanish and Hindoo children 

 rapidly lose their definite lines of demarcation under 

 the steady drill of new teachings and new sur- 

 roundings. When intermarriage shall have added its 

 influence to that of education, the structural lineaments 

 of race, as well as the customs and manners of these 

 descendants of the first products of the melting pot, 

 will in many essentials be indistinguishable from those 

 of the descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims. 



The greatest single influence in bringing about 

 this leavening of the mass and the production 

 of a common type of humanity is the spread of 

 commercial interests and scientific knowledge. The 

 new ideas, new customs, new languages, new reli- 

 gions and new inventions of invading strangers are 

 accepted or rejected in the proportion in which 

 they are indispensable to life. In proportion as the 

 Mexican, the Hindoo, the Chinaman and the African 

 need recreation, food, clothing and improved dwellings 

 do they accept the American missionary or German 

 hardware. One may interpret the habits, thoughts, 

 customs and reactions of individuals, classes and races 

 by the conception that they are produced by an activat- 

 ing environment playing on a plastic nerve mechanism, 

 and producing action patterns whose responses to 

 recurring stimuli are inevitable. As with Pawlow's 

 dog, any set of action patterns may be modified by 

 superadded associations. 



