496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



women as lower animals belonging to all the members of the tribe, 

 and those who have made them the object of a chivalrous cult ; 

 between those who expose their malformed children to perish, 

 and those who lodge their idiots and incurables in magnificent 

 hospitals — we trace out the close bonds which connect, through 

 the ages, the most different thoughts, institutions, and creeds. We 

 realize that present civilizations have been derived from past civ- 

 ilizations, and contain in the germ all the civilizations to come. 

 The evolution of thoughts, religions, industries, and art — in short, 

 of all the elements that enter into the constitution of a civiliza- 

 tion—is as regular and inevitable as that of the different forms of 

 an animal series. 



The factors that determine the birth and development of the 

 constituent elements of a civilization are as numerous as those 

 which control the development of a living being. The study of 

 them has as yet hardly begun ; but the influence of some of them 

 can be brought into evidence. One of the most important among 

 these factors is race — that is, the aggregation of the physical, 

 moral, and mental traits that characterize a people. 



When human races appear in history they have generally 

 already acquired marked characteristics, which afterward under- 

 go only very slow transformations. The oldest Egyptian bas- 

 reliefs, on which are depicted the various types of the peoples 

 with whom the Pharaohs had to do, are proof that our present 

 grand characterizations of races could have been applied even 

 then, in the dawn of history. 



The various human races had formed themselves during the 

 hundreds of thousands of years that preceded historical times. 

 They were so formed, no doubt, like all the animal species, by 

 means of slow changes produced by variability of the environ- 

 ment, limited by selection and enforced by heredity. The first 

 step toward understanding the history of a people and the origin 

 of their institutions, moral ideas, and creeds, is to study their 

 mental constitution. It is vain to ask from anatomical charac- 

 teristics, as has been done for a long time, for the means of 

 differentiating races. Psychology alone permits a precise defi- 

 nition of racial distinctions. It shows us that peoples of similar 

 mental constitution will have similar fates when placed in like 

 circumstances, however they may differ in external aspect. In this 

 way we have been able to make a rational comparison between 

 the modern English and the ancient Romans. There exists, in . 

 fact, an evident mental relationship between these two peoples ; 

 the same indomitable energy of character, the same respect for 

 their institutions, the same capacity for conquering people and 

 for holding colonies. But, regarding the external type, there is a 

 complete want of resemblance between the two peoples. 



