NEW TYPES AMONG MEN 185 



present races took their place upon the stage of history. During 

 these past ages, and even in the period since the present lines of 

 racial cleavage appeared, man has passed through a great many 

 changes as important as those to which he is now subjecting him- 

 self. The effect of these has become part of his inheritance. It 

 cannot be eradicated. Grant if you will that the artificial con- 

 ditions to which man now subjects himself are causing his evolu- 

 tion to proceed much faster than ever before. Yet the case of 

 any two races is like that of two buds. Here is the bud of a pear 

 and yonder that of an apple. You may hasten or retard their 

 development. You may mutilate them or protect them from wind, 

 storm, and insect. You may en!rich the trees or tear off their 

 branches. You may do a thousand things which will cause the 

 buds to result either in wee, knotty, shrivelled nubbins, or in great, 

 luscious, juicy fruits, but after all is said and done, one is a pear 

 and one is an apple. 



So it is with races. Environment has made them, but it cannot 

 unmake them. For good or ill, each race has acquired certain 

 characteristics. These may be modified, just as the pear and the 

 apple may be modified, by long and careful selection or by sudden 

 accident, but they can never be wholly destroyed. In this sense 

 those who talk about the immutability of races are correct. The 

 whale immutably breathes air, and can never evolve into a fish 

 again. Even when a creature is said to revert to an ancestral 

 type, it really goes back no more than a step or two on a road 

 where it has taken thousands of steps. The Chinese, the Negroes, 

 the Anglo-Saxons, the Jews, and the Italians cannot be made 

 alike either by the influence of physical environment or by educa- 

 tion and training. This we must recognize. Mankind is bound 

 to change in the future, but it would be the height of folly for a 

 nation on this account to incorporate into itself elements whose 

 mental and moral aptitudes it does not now approve. 



