6 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
the same statement would apply to each of the component 
groups. 
But now the trend of racial development has changed. Barriers 
that formerly kept peoples apart have become broken down. 
Races are meeting and amalgamating at a rate which becomes 
more rapid as time goes on and facilities for travel and intercom- 
munication increase. The diversities which were the product of 
the long period of man’s earlier evolution are becoming rapidly 
submerged. The period of divergence is now superseded by a 
period of convergence which, if it does not involve the ultimate 
obliteration of our present distinctions of race, will certainly 
greatly diminish the number of separate ethnic stocks. Perhaps 
the final result, if we can speak of any result as final, will be the 
formation of a few races which occupy those climatic zones to 
which they are peculiarly adapted and which will form a perma- 
nent barrier against successful invasion by their enemies. But, 
however the process of racial fusion may work out, it is evident 
that the growing amalgamation of races and peoples and the 
extension of civilization over the earth will leave no room for the 
replacement of decadent products of civilization by superior 
stocks which have not yet been overtaken by culture. If civiliza- 
tion is really an enemy of racial improvement, it will ultimately 
check the course of man’s biological evolution unless some effec- 
tive means can be instituted for counteracting its insidious effects. 
That it has a profound effect upon our biological development is a 
conclusion that cannot be escaped. But to discover just how it 
acts involves an attack upon a number of problems many of which 
are of great difficulty and many incapable of solution with the 
data at present available. Civilization influences human heredity 
in very diverse ways, some favorable and some the reverse. For 
a long time it may be impossible to estimate, with any degree of 
accuracy, the potency of the factors which are responsible for 
evolutionary changes in man. In an attack upon a complex and 
many-sided problem such as this, one has to be continually on 
guard against making hasty generalizations and falling into 
statistical fallacies. The reader who peruses the following chapters 
