128 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



the race becomes extinct."^ The only argument which even 

 M. Bougie, in a book evidently written with a most unscientific 

 farti pris,' is able to adduce in favour of hybrid populations is 

 that in BrazU nearly all the painters and musicians, and a con- 

 siderable number of doctors, are half-breeds ; and that in Vene- 

 zuela a nimiber of mulattoes have been distinguished as orators 

 or poets.^ Without pausing to consider whether attaining dis- 

 tinction as a musician or orator in BrazU is in itself a particularly 

 high claim to intellectual or artistic pre-eminence, we may 

 remark that this argument does not invalidate the fact of physical 

 and moral degeneracy which is a consequence of social hybridism. 



1 G. de Lapouge, Les Selections socialea, p. 169. Paris, Fontemoing, 

 1896. 

 ^ C. Bougl6, La Democratic devant la Science, p. 80. Paris, Alcan, 1904. 



