DESTRUCTION OF INFERIOR RACES 357 



evolved races dwindle away before the more evolved ; not 

 because tbe degree of evolution in the latter is necessarily greater, 

 in a physiological sense, but because it is greater in other ways 

 more directly connected with social evolution. It is true that 

 intelligence plays a certaiu role in the conflict between the lower 

 animals ; but its sphere and its applications are much more re- 

 stricted than in social evolution. The more progressive white 

 races fatally exterminate the less progressive black races, whose 

 lands they till and render fertile, thereby destroying the con- 

 ditions under which alone these hunting or pastoral peoples can 

 exist. Greater fertiUty is, in every sphere of evolution, a de- 

 cisive factor in victory. The destruction of the Australian 

 aborigines, of the New Zealand Maoris, of the Tasmanians, of 

 the Red Indians of North America, is not due to brute force ' 

 being pitted against brute force, but to those forces which attain 

 especial importance in the field of social evolution — forces such 

 as greater intelligence, greater capacity for reproduction, and 

 less abihty on the part of the native races to resist the vices and 

 maladies imported by the invader. Darwin has estimated the 

 decrease in the native population of the Sandwich Islands in the 

 forty years between 1832 and 1872 at 68 per cent.^ The Ger- 

 man geographer and anthropologist, Ratzel, informs us that in 

 1815 the native population of Tasmania was still estimated at 

 5,000. In 1860 only sixteen remained, and in 1876 the race was 

 extinct.^ It is calculated that the Maoris of New Zealand, whose 

 total number in 1858 was believed to be 53,700, were reduced to 

 a total of 36,359 in 1872, being a decrease of nearly 33 per cent, 

 in fourteen years. ^ It is the same with the Hottentots of South 

 Africa, with the Red Indians of North America, with all the less 

 civilised tribes with whom Western civihsation comes into con- 

 tact. And it is not necessarily the physical value of the indi- 



1 Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 289. 



* F. Ratzel, Volkerkunde, vol. ii., p. 100. Leipzig, 1887. 



3 Darwin, The Desceyit of Man, p. 286. 



U 



