TRADITION AND HEREDITY 453 



himself was not a Frenchman by birth ; one of his marshals, an 

 Italian, became king of Sweden, and founded the present Swedish 

 line of monarchs.' ^ 



This reference to the nature of minor racial differences thus 

 tends to confirm what was said above. Germinal differences are 

 not to be disregarded, but we must reject such theories as those 

 of Gobineau and Houston Chamberlain, who see in race the 

 primary explanation of all national achievement. Mommsen 

 poured scorn upon the Celts and Vacher de Lapouge attributed 

 most of the misfortunes of France to the brachycephalic element 

 in the population.^ But we are now sceptical of any such facile 

 explanations of the course of history. 



11. We can now come rather closer to the problem if we go on 

 to examine certain instances of germinal change that we know 

 to have taken place, and ask what effect is to be attributed to 

 them and to such traditional changes as have accompanied them. 



Again and again in the course of history certain stocks have 

 been exterminated. This was apparently the fate of the Neander- 

 thal race, and in modern times was the fate of the Tasmanians. 

 But though in this manner the average germinal constitution of 

 the whole species has been altered, and as a rule raised, there has 

 been little or nothing in such events working towards the further 

 evolution of the remaining stocks. 



Intermingling of different racial stocks has been of frequent 



occurrence.^ As we have seen, if the differences are large, vigour 



may be exhibited in the first cross but will soon disappear ; 



unfavourable combinations of characters on the other hand are 



likely to arise, and the mulatto thus tends to be a genetically 



undesirable type. Nevertheless, the undesirable character of the 



mulatto is in large part traditional. The mulatto is neither of one 



race nor the other and he knows it. He is an outcast. There is 



no tradition which he naturally absorbs. He neither grows up 



with the pride of the white man nor with the feeling of community 



with his coloured relatives, whose position with regard to other 



races is generally accepted as something inevitable. In the 



world of tradition there is no home for him. There are no channels 



which enable his capacities, such as they are, to develop in 



a favourable manner, and we have thus to give greater weight 



1 Pollard, Factors in Modern History, p. 15. ^ Vacher de Lapouge, Seleciions 



sociales, pp. 293 £f. ^ For a discussion of this problem see Hoemes, Xatur- 



und Urgeschichte des Menschen, vol. i, pp. 119 fE. 



