258 PRINCIPLES OF ANIMAL BIOLOGY 



Genetics and Race. — It is a corollary of the foregoing discussion 

 that races of men are dependent for their existence as races solely upon 

 the inheritance of their distinguishing features. The blue-eyed fair- 

 skinned race inhabiting the Scandinavian countries has been blue- 

 eyed and fair for centuries, and will doubtless continue to be so in the 

 future, because these traits are inherited. The dark people of southern 

 Italy and Spain are dark because their ancestors were, not because of 

 geographical location. The long skulls and round skulls of northern and 

 central Europe, respectively, owe their distribution to inheritance. 

 Mental and moral features of different races are equally fixed by heredity. 

 1 he dogged determination of one race, the emotionalism and idealism of 

 another, the arrogance, the love of gain, the irresponsibility, the deception, 

 the sturdy honesty of other races, are all inherited traits. It is only 

 because of this fact that one may speak of racial characteristics at all. 



Along with the heredity of these characteristics goes a certain amount 

 of geographical isolation. Races do not wander rapidly nor uniformly. 

 They tend to go in groups when they do wander, and even when they 

 mingle with other races free intermarriage may be long postponed. Were 

 it not for this geographical separation, or avoidance of intermarriage, it 

 would be but a short time until there would be no races. All the racial 

 attributes would still exist and be transmitted as before, but they would 

 no longer be combined in individuals as they now are. Even at present 

 there is a good deal of intermingling of races, with intermarriage, and race 

 distinctions have to a considerable extent broken down. The use of the 

 words English and French, for example, to refer to races is vitiated by 

 this intermingling for it is certain that both of these nations are mixtures 

 of originally distinct races. It is difficult now to place the inhabitants 

 of these countries into one or another of the contributing races, for inter- 

 marriage has occurred, and there are numerous intergradations between 

 the racial types. 



As a result partly of migration, without intermarriage, political 

 boundaries do not coincide with racial boundaries. This is a fact of 

 capital importance in history. Few nations possess racial unity. Since 

 race implies mental and moral attributes as well as physical, most nations 

 are working at cross purposes. The chief weakness of the former empire 

 of Austria-Hungary lay in its eight or nine more or less distinct races. 

 The difference in ideals is not a temporary condition. Although racial 

 ideals and ambitions are in part traditional, they are largely the result of 

 inheritance, and are for that reason likely to be rather permanent. Pro- 

 pinquity of races may sometime enforce a cosmopolitanism that is desirable, 

 but so long as political lines of cleavage ignore racial distinctions, there 

 is danger that the nation will be a house divided against itself. 



Practical Applications of Genetics.— Although genetics as a science 

 is comparatively young, it has already yielded results in the de'v^elopment 



