498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mixed, the race continues heterogeneous, and the mean type be- 

 comes more difficult to establish, because the common traits that 

 compose it are less numerous. It is easy to comprehend that the 

 more homogeneous a race is, the stronger it will be, and the more 

 called upon to march rapidly in the way of progress. When, on 

 the contrary, thoughts, traditions, creeds, and interests remain 

 separated, dissensions will be frequent, and progress always slow 

 and often completely hindered. 



"We see by this how important to the explanation of the history 

 of a people is the study of its composition. We see also that the 

 word " people " can not be in any case considered synonymous with 

 " race." An empire, a people, or a state is a more or less consider- 

 able number of men united by the same political or geographical 

 necessities, and subjected to the same institutions and laws. 

 These men may belong to the same race, but they may equally 

 belong to different races. If the races are too dissimilar, no 

 fusion is possible. They may, under necessity, live side by side, 

 like Hindus subject to Europeans, but we must not think of giv- 

 ing them common institutions. All great empires uniting dis- 

 similar peoples are created only by force, and are condemned to 

 perish by violence. Those only can endure which are formed 

 slowly by the gradual mixture of races differing but little, con- 

 tinually crossing with one another, living on the same soil, sub- 

 ject to the action of the same climate, and having the same insti- 

 tutions and creeds. These different races may thus, after a few 

 centuries, form a new homogeneous race.* 



As the world grew old, the races gradually became more 

 stable, and their transformations by mixture rarer. In prehis- 

 torical times, when man's hereditary past was not so long, when 

 he had neither well-fixed institutions nor well-assured conditions 

 of existence, mediums had a more profound action upon him 

 than now. Civilization has permitted man to subtract himself, 

 to a large extent, from the influence of the medium, but not from 

 that of his past. As mankind grows older, the weight of heredity 

 grows heavier. For heredity to act in the mixture of races, it is 

 necessary that one of the races shall not be too inferior to the 

 other in numbers, and that their physical and mental constitu- 

 tions shall not be too different. 



The first of these conditions is fundamental. When two dif- 

 ferent races are brought together, the more numerous one absorbs 

 the other. In a black population, a few families of whites will 



* The mechanism of this fusion of the different elements of a race is rarely observed. 

 I, however, witnessed it once, during my travels, among a mountaineer population isolated 

 in the interior of Galicia, at the foot of the Tatras Mountains. The memoir in which 

 I recorded my observations appeared in the "Bulletin de la Societe de Geographie de 

 Paris " (1888). 



