PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 833 



As oUr discussion must from its nature concern itself witli questions of race, 

 let us first examine the criteria by which anthropologists distinguish one race 

 from another. If you ask an anthropologist how he distinguishes an Aryan from 

 a non- Aryan race, he will tell you that he relies on three main tests : (a) the 

 colour of the skin, hair, and eyes ; {b) the shape of the skull and certain other 

 osteological characteristics ; and (c) the system of descent through males. 

 Formerly language was included in the tests of race, but when it was pointed out 

 that the Negroes of Jamaica speak English, those of Louisiana French, hence- 

 forward it was assumed that one race can embrace the language of another 

 with the greatest ease. Yet it may turn out, after all, that language was too 

 hastily expelled from the criteria of race. On the other hand, we may find that 

 too implicit faith has been placed on the three criteria of cranial characteristics, 

 pigmentation, and law of succession. 



(a) As it is assumed that all Aryans were blonde and traced descent 

 through males, so it is held that all Europeans, who are dark-complexioned, and 

 whose forefathers traced descent through women, are non-Aryan in race, and 

 that, although they now in almost every case speak an Aryan tongue, this is not 

 their primitive speech, but simply that learned from their Aryan conquerors. 

 According to this orthodox view, the dark-skimied inhabitants of Italy, Spain, 

 and Greece are all non-Aryan, and all have borrowed the language of their 

 masters, whilst of course the same is held respecting the melanochrous popula- 

 tion of France and of the British Isles. Ever since Professor Sergi comprehended 

 under what he terms the ' Eurafrican species ' all the dark-complexioned peoples 

 of Southern and Western Europe, as well as the Semitic and Hamitic peoples 

 of Western Asia and Northern Africa, the doctrine that the dark-skinned 

 peoples of Europe once spoke a non-Aryan tongue or tongues is supposed to have 

 been finally established. But under his Eurafrican species Sergi includes the 

 blonde race of Northern Europe who speak Aryan languages along with the dark 

 races who speak non-Aryan tongues. It is argued that as all the dark-skinned 

 peoples on the north side of the Mediterranean belong by their physical type to 

 the same original stock as the Semites and Hamites, they must likewise have 

 spoken non-Aryan languages. Yet it might as well be maintained that the Finns, 

 who speak a non-Aryan tongue, and the Scandinavians, who speak an Aryan, 

 •were originally all of one stock, because both races are blonde. 



This doctrine of a Mediterranean race depends upon the tacit assumption 

 made by the physical anthropologists that identity or similarity of type means 

 identity of race. Yet this assumption does not bear the test of scientific exami- 

 nation, for it assumes that only those who are sprung from a common stock 

 can be similar in physical structure and coloration, and it leaves altogether out 

 of sight the effects of environment in changing racial types, and that, too, in 

 no long time. The change in the type of the American of New England from 

 that of his English ancestor and his approximation to the hatchet face and 

 thin scraggy beard of the Eed Indian have long been remarked, whilst the Boers 

 of South Africa, in less than 150 years, have quite lost the old Dutch build, and 

 become a tall weedy race. The etfects of climatic conditions are very patent 

 amongst the native peoples of the New World. The Iroquois of the temperate 

 parts (lat. 40°-46°) of North America were a tall rather light-complexioned race, 

 but as we keep moving south and approach the equator, their kindred tribes grow 

 somewhat darker in complexion and more feeble in physique, except where they 

 live at a considerable altitude, for of course altitude acts in the same way as 

 latitude. When once we pass below the equator the physique keeps steadily im- 

 proving until we come to the Pampas Indians, a vigorous race who defied all the 

 efforts of the Spaniards to subdue them ; and finally we meet the Patagonians 

 (lat. 40°-5.3°), a fine, tall, light-complexioned race, who form in the south the 

 counterpart of the Iroquois and their closely allied tribes in the north. 



The same law, as is well known, can be seen at work in Europe. Starting 

 from the Mediterranean, we meet in the lower parts a melanochrous race ; but; 

 gradually, as we advance upwards, the population as a whole is growing less 

 dark, until finally, along the shores of the Baltic, we meet the tallest and most 



1908. 3 H 



