THE HEREDITY OF RICHARD ROE, 145 
Another necessary conclusion is this, that race char- 
acteristics imply direct personal relationship among 
those who exhibit them. The English- 
men of to-day are such because they 
are related by blood. They are the 
variously intermingled descendants of 
some few. robust families of a thousand years ago, a 
hundred thousand of them at the most, “Saxon and 
Norman and Dane are we.” From these families— 
Dane, Norman, and Saxon—the weak, the infertile, and 
the unfortunate are constantly undergoing elimination, 
leaving the strong and fecund to persist. The withered 
branches are only kept in existence through misplaced 
charity which continues the pauper; or through bad so- 
cial conditions which propagate the criminal. Pauper- 
ism, criminality, and folly have their lineage, but it is 
not a long one; and wiser councils will make it shorter 
than it now is. This persistence of the strong shows 
itself in the prevalence of the leading qualities in the 
dominate strains. To these dominant ancestors every 
line of deviation will be found to lead, when we come to 
follow it, backward. In following the pedigree of an 
individual backward for a thousand years, we find that 
millions of duplications must occur in his ancestry. 
That is, thousands of persons would be reached from 
one to a thousand times each in the following up of 
different ancestral lines. The growth of colonial types 
comes from the narrowing of the range of crossing 
and from intermarriage with lines not English, which 
occurs most frequently outside of England. This is 
especially true in the United States. But in a few 
centuries these same conditions will unite to form 
a “Brother Jonathan” as definite in qualities and as 
“set in his ways’ as his ancestor, the traditional 
“John Bull.” 
Origin of the 
English charac- 
ter. 
