THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 199 



but directly unattainable thing." In this sense alone do we main- x 

 tain that there are three ideal racial types in Europe to be dis- 

 tinguished from one another. They have often unfortunately 

 dissolved in the common population ; each trait has gone its own 

 way ; so that at the present time rarely, if indeed ever, do we dis- 

 cover a single individual corresponding to our racial type in every 

 detail. It exists for us nevertheless. 



Thus convinced that the facts do not warrant us in expecting 

 too much of our anthropological means of isolating racial types, 

 we have recourse to a second or inferential mode of study. In 

 this we work by geographical areas rather than by personalities. 

 We discover, for example, that the north of Europe constitutes a 

 veritable center of dispersion of long-headedness. Quite independ- 

 ently we discover that the same region contains more blond traits 

 than any other part of Europe ; and that a high average stature 

 there prevails. The inference is at once natural that these three 

 characteristics combine to mark the prevalent type of the popula- 

 tion. If one journeyed through it, one might at first expect to 

 find the majority of the people to be long-headed and tall blondes; 

 that the tallest individuals would be the most blond, the longest- 

 headed most tall, and so on. This is, as we have already shown, 

 too good and simple to be true, or even to be expected. Racial 

 combinations of traits indeed disappear in a given population, as 

 sugar dissolves, or rather as certain chemical salts are resolved 

 into their constituent elements when immersed in water. From 

 the proportions of each element discovered in the fluid, quite free 

 from association, we are often able to show that they once were 

 united in the same compound. In the same manner, we, finding 

 these traits floating about loose, so to speak, in the same popula- 

 tion, proceed to reconstitute types from them. We know that the 

 people approach this type more and more as we near the specific 

 center of its culmination. The traits may refuse to go otherwise 

 than two by two, like the animals in the ark, although they may 

 change partners quite frequently ; and they may still manifest dis- 

 tinct affinities one for another nevertheless. 



The apparent inference is not always the just one, although it 

 tends to be. Suppose, for example, that one observer should 

 prove that sixty per cent of ten thousand natives of Holland were 

 blondes : and another, studying the same ten thousand individuals, 

 should prove that a like proportion were very tall would this of 

 necessity mean that the Hollanders were mainly tall blondes ? 

 Not at all ! It might still be that the two groups of traits merely 

 overlapped at their edges. In other words, the great majority of 

 the blondes might still be constituted from the shorter half of the 

 population. Only twenty per cent need necessarily be tall and 

 blond at once, even in this simple case where both observers stud- 



