266 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



Jfrp^re feeble. Mating out of the race, when mates within the 

 yrace are available, is prima facie evidence that the individual 

 so mating is a social outcast. It is not surprising that the 

 progeny of such individuals are sometimes feeble. If the 

 , parents were diseased, licentious, or feeble-minded, it is 

 V natural that the children should be of like character. 



Of course not all racial crossing implies such conditions. 

 Frequently Europeans, when pioneers in a new country and 

 without mates of their own race, have married native women. 

 Such men have not always been social outcasts; frequently 

 they have been men of great energy, ability, and courage 

 both physical and moral, and free from disease. When, in 

 such cases, the mothers belonged to a race with capacity for 

 civilization, the results have been good. Examples may be 

 found among the Indian citizens of our southwest states. 

 But human racial crossing in general is a risky experiment, 

 because it interferes with social inheritance, which after all 

 is the chief asset of civilization. Physically and also intel- 

 lectually, according to Professor Osborn, we are no whit 

 superior to the men of twenty-five thousand years ago. All 

 the advantage which we have over them lies in the accumu- 

 lated experience of the human race since then. 



All this we as individuals learn from our mothers and 

 fathers, or in the schools, the churches, the markets, -or the 

 courts of justice. Wide racial crosses unsettle the founda- 

 tions of these agencies of enlightenment. At times it is 

 necessary that some of these agencies be disturbed in order 

 that we may lay their foundations deeper and broader, but 

 racial crossing leads rather toward the discarding of all 

 foundations of civilization than to improving them. 



Such crosses, therefore, as of Europeans with Asiatics or 

 Africans can not be recommended as agencies for the improve- 

 ment of the human race. Physically Europeans on one hand 

 and Asiatics or Africans on the other, are sufficiently diversi- 

 fied among themselves to allow the maximum benefit from 

 intercrossing, without resorting to crosses with a distinct 

 branch of the human family. Socially the effects of such 



