CONSANGUINEOUS MARRIAGES 265 



mediate product for the most highly endowed stock. It is the ' 

 very best inheritance that should be conserved at all costs. Out 

 of it come the rare minds that rise like mountain peaks above the 

 general level of humanity. And it is to these minds, small in 

 number, but incalculably great in influence, that advancement in 

 civilization and culture is largely due. 



I cannot close this chapter without a few remarks on the 

 increasing fusion of racial elements and the possible eventual 

 outcome of this process. As the human species became dispersed 

 into various quarters of the globe it became more and more 

 divided into isolated groups. Given a heterozygous stock, isola- 

 tion would of itself afford a condition under which the race would 

 be broken up into varieties through the influence of segregate 

 breeding. As a result of spreading into regions of different climatic 

 and other environmental conditions, the race would also tend 

 to become modified in different ways through the action of 

 natural selection. In the early periods of the history of man when 

 he was spreading over and becoming adapted to the diverse 

 regions of the earth, the predominant trend of development was 

 toward divergence. The result is a multiplicity of groups within 

 groups, which ethnologists are still far from having arranged in a 

 satisfactory system of classification. 



For long periods and with increasing frequency as mankind 

 has advanced; there have been migrations, conflicts and inter- 

 mixtures of previously differentiated peoples. But at the present 

 time, when railroads and steamships, to say nothing of other 

 conveniences of travel and communication, are bringing races into 

 closer and closer contact, the process of race fusion goes on at an 

 accelerated pace. Many of the old barriers of religion and na- 

 tional or sectional prejudice are breaking down. People of minor 

 racial distinctions such as those of the countries of Europe are 

 rapidly commingling their blood and over large areas such as 

 South America, parts of Africa and Asia and in numerous islands 

 of the Pacific there is an extensive blending of distinct races. If 

 in the early history of mankind development was along diverging 

 lines it is now proceeding more conspicuously and rapidly in the 



