6 THE TREND OF THE RACE 



the same statement would apply to each of the component 

 groups. 



f But now the trend of racial development has changed. Barriers 

 that formerly kept peoples apart have become broken down. 

 Races are meeting and amalgamating at a rate which becomes 

 more rapid as time goes on and facilities for travel and intercom- 

 munication increase. The diversities which were the product of 

 the long period of man's earlier evolution are becoming rapidly 

 submerged. The period of divergence is now superseded by a 

 period of convergence which, if it does not involve the ultimate 

 obliteration of our present distinctions of race, will certainly 

 greatly diminish the number of separate ethnic stocks. Perhaps 

 the final result, if we can speak of any result as final, will be the 

 formation of a few races which occupy those climatic zones to 

 which they are peculiarly adapted and which will form a perma- 

 nent barrier against successful invasion by their enemies. But, 

 however the process of racial fusion may work out, it is evident 

 that the growing amalgamation of races and peoples and the 

 extension of civilization over the earth will leave no room for the 

 replacement of decadent products of civilization by superior 

 stocks which have not yet been overtaken by culture. If civiliza- 

 tion is really an enemy of racial improvement, it will ultimately 

 check the course of man's biological evolution unless some effec- 

 tive means can be instituted for counteracting its insidious effects. 

 That it has a profound effect upon our biological development is a 

 conclusion that cannot be escaped. But to discover just how it 

 acts involves an attack upon a number of problems many of which 

 are of great difficulty and man\ incapable of solution with the 

 data at present available. Civilization influences human heredity 

 in very diverse ways, some favorable and some the reverse. For 

 a long time it may be impossible to estimate, with any degree of 

 accuracy, the potency of the factors which are responsible for 

 evolutionary changes in man. In an attack upon a complex and 

 many-sided problem such as this, one has to be continually on 

 guard against making hasty generalizations and falling into 

 statistical fallacies. The reader who peruses tlie following chapters 



