CHAPTER IV 



THE PRODUCTION OF NATIONALITY ! 

 SELECTIVE FACTORS 



ATTEMPTS, innumerable and unsuccessful, have 

 been made to associate particular mental or moral 

 characters with the three races of which the nations 

 of modern Europe are composed. Thus when 

 the statistics of suicide and of divorce were plotted 

 out on the map of France, the areas of greatest 

 incidence coincided with the Nordic or Teutonic 

 race, as opposed to the Alpine race. In France, 

 moreover, crimes against property are associated 

 peculiarly with the Nordic race, crimes against 

 the person with the Alpine areas, and the Nordic 

 areas have a relative preponderance of radicalism 

 and republicanism, and of artistic, literary and 

 commercial success. But such associations of 

 character with race break down when they are 

 investigated in other countries. In Italy, for in- 

 stance, the Alpine population in the north shows 

 a great excess of precisely the features exhibited 

 by the Nordic race in France. The distribution 

 appears to be more closely associated with econo- 

 mic factors, with the presence of great cities, 

 with the relative importance of town and country 

 pursuits, and so forth. Modern Germany is prepon- 



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