Heredity and the Law of Evolution. 297 



of nature, the more convinced do we become of this truth : that 

 the highest phenomena of thought and life are also the most 

 complex, and that, as a general rule, the inferior is always the 

 simpler. Civilization has everywhere grown by contact, mixture, 

 union. ' The more elements a people gains,' says M. Serres, ' the 

 more it advances; the life of a people augments in proportion as its 

 characteristics are multiplied.' Nor is there anything to prove that 

 when two families or two races combine the mixture is rudely 

 made, as in the mingling of wines. It may be that talent, cha- 

 racters, and new aptitudes may be revealed by the mere fact of 

 cross-breeding, just as in chemistry two bodies which combine 

 form a third possessing new properties. But ethnic chemistry is 

 not sufficiently advanced to warrant this opinion, and therefore we 

 must be content with simple conjecture. 



We now return to our original question : When two elements 

 cross, one inferior and the other superior, does the latter finally 

 get the mastery, so that in the end there is a clear profit for the 

 human race ? This problem is far from being solved, especially in 

 its psychic aspects, as psychologists have studied it only cursorily 

 and in a general way. 



Half-breeds have furnished the chief materials for this study, for 

 in them it is more easily pursued. The mixed elements being 

 widely different usually blacks and whites are naturally mag- 

 nified, so that we can study them, as it were, through a microscope. 



Some naturalists regard these mixed races as doomed to dis- 

 appear, either because the race has but little fecundity, or because 

 the individual possesses but little vital resistance. Yet, according 

 to M. Omalius d'Halloy, if we take the whole population of 

 the globe as 750,000,000, the half-breeds would count at least 

 10,000,000. In Mexico and in South America they have in three 

 centuries risen to be about one-fifth of the total population. 

 D'Orbigny, who has closely studied man in America, is a strong 

 partizan of cross-breeding between nations. * Among the nations 

 in America,' says he, ' the product is always superior to the two 

 types that are mixed.' Finally, in Polynesia, and in the Marquesas 

 Isles in particular, while the indigenous population is falling away 

 with fearful rapidity, the half-breeds are increasing in numbers, so 

 that this region seems destined to be re-peopled by a race half 



