RACIAL AND INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS 103 



individual of a race possesses certain characters peculiar 

 to itself. 



These individual differences are the immediate outcome 

 of variation. Variations may be transmitted from parent 

 to offspring ; therefore in races we may find subdivisions in 

 which all the individuals possess certain peculiarities which 

 are not generally found in the other members of the race. 

 The subdivisions may include only the members of one 

 family for two or three generations ; they may include the 

 members of a large number of families all descended from 

 a common ancestor. Though it is quite usual for these in- 

 dividual characters to be preserved for several generations, 

 in the great majority of cases they seem to disappear very 

 rapidly. The racial characters are incomparably more per- 

 manent than these smaller individual differences. 



It appears certain, however, as evolution has been brought 

 about by the selection of variations, that the comparatively 

 stable racial characters must have been derived from the 

 comparatively unstable individual characters. The former 

 are the more remote, the latter the immediate results of 

 variations. We may in fact say that the individual 

 characters are the variations of the individual perhaps 

 transmitted through a few generations of the offspring, while 

 the racial characters are the variations of the race. 



Most racial characters in man are of such long standing, 

 that if we were confined to such differences as colour, features, 

 or shape of skull, it would be difficult to cite an example 

 of the probable transition of a character from individual 

 to racial. Immunity to particular disease, however, gives us 

 what we want. 1 We will take malaria as an example. It 

 is well known that strangers going to a malarial country 

 vary in their susceptibility to the disease. A few very 

 few appear to be quite immune. Others have attacks, 



1 The, application to the study of heredity and evolution of the available 

 evidence with regard to immunity to disease is due to Archdall Reid, who has 

 formulated the following theory in a most able manner in The Principles of 

 Heredity, Chapman & Hall, London, 1905. 



