296 Heredity. 



like the inhabitants of the woods and waters.' Humanity will 

 have existed from twelve to fourteen thousand years. 1 



If we accept M. de Gobineau's doctrine, and apply to families 

 what he says of races and peoples, the conclusion to be drawn 

 from it is evident enough. We should say to them : Beware of 

 all admixture, and preserve your blood pure at any cost. Do not 

 try to bring up to your own level inferior members of the human 

 race, men, peoples, or races, for you would lose far more than 

 they could gain. But this conclusion appears to us very rash; 

 and though on this point there are many hypotheses and conjec- 

 tures, and but few truly scientific assertions, though the facts are 

 so contradictory as to warrant every possible interpretation, still 

 it seems to us that there are some very good arguments against 

 this theory of pure races, this horror for all admixture. 



In the first place, I do not think that, with perhaps the ex- 

 ception of China, history presents a single instance of any great 

 civilization, without a preliminary mingling of peoples and races. 

 Take the Arabs, originally Asiatic. So long as the race remained 

 pure, it made little or no progress. Mahomet appeared, and then 

 they overran, as conquerors, Asia, Africa, and Spain, giving rise to 

 the great civilization of Persia, Damascus, Bagdad, and Cordova. 

 The Jewish people, rigidly exclusive as they were, had to admit 

 some Syrian, Persian, Phoenician, and Greek elements, in order to 

 work out their own civilization. Nor were the indigenous civiliz- 

 ations of the New World exempt from this law. The Incas of 

 Peru were a superior race that came to that country at a late 

 period in its history, probably in the thirteenth century. The 

 Aztecs in Mexico, who were conquered by Cortes, had been pre- 

 ceded by the Chichimecs and the Toltecs. But not to multiply 

 instances, it is evident that civilization, being by its nature a com- 

 plex state, a harmony, many dissimilar and even unequal elements 

 were needed to form it. The more we advance in the knowledge 



1 M. Gobineau's view has been held in a very mitigated form by M. Perier, 

 who, in his Essai sur les Croisements Ethniques, takes chiefly the physiological 

 standpoint. He also inclines to the opinion that any race that is endowed 

 with any natural gift loses much by crossing. The author, notwithstanding, 

 admits that ' the people of purest blood is not therefore the least civilized, and 

 vice versd.' 



