THE INFLUENCE OF RACE IN HISTORY. 501 



progress gives it an accelerated march as it advances. The supe- 

 rior races are now developing themselves by giant steps, while the 

 others still demand the long ages which our ancestors traversed 

 in order to reach the point where we are now. And when the in- 

 ferior races reach that point, where shall we be ? Farther from 

 them, without doubt, than we are now, unless we shall have dis- 

 appeared. The evident conclusion then is, that as human races 

 become civilized they tend to greater differentiation rather than 

 to an approach to equality. Civilization not being able to act 

 equally on unequal intelligences, and the most developed neces- 

 sarily profiting more than those who are less so, it is easy to see 

 that the difference between them will increase considerably in 

 each generation.* It increases all the more because the division 

 of labor, condemning the lower strata to a uniform and identical 

 work, tends to destroy all intelligence in them. The engineer of 

 our days, who composes a new machine, needs much more intelli- 

 gence than the engineer of the last century ; but the modern work- 

 man requires much less intelligence to make the detached piece of 

 a watch, which he will keep on making all his life, than his ances- 

 tors had to have to make the whole watch. 



These considerations do not rest on theoretical reasonings 

 alone. "We some time ago fortified them also by anatomical argu- 

 ments. Studies of the skulls of human races have shown us that 

 while among savages the heads of different individuals vary but 

 little in their dimensions, the differences in our civilized societies 

 are formidable. From the upper to the lower ranks of society 

 the anatomical gulf is as immense as the psychological gulf, and 

 the advance of civilization is constantly making it wider. Since, 

 then, the differences among men of the same race become more 

 and more extended as the race rises in civilization, we conclude 

 that the higher the civilization the more considerable will be the 

 intellectual diversities among individuals of the race. No doubt 

 the mean level will also rise.f 



* Theoretically, the differentiation between individuals should follow a kind of geomet- 

 rical progression, and consequently accentuate itself with extreme rapidity. It is, however, 

 less rapid than the theory indicates. The reason of it doubtless lies in the observed fact 

 that the families of superior men — scientific and literary men, artists, statesmen, etc. — sel- 

 dom endure. Their descendants disappear rapidly by degeneration, or at least soon return 

 to the crowd. There seems to be a mysterious law constantly tending to eliminate or re- 

 duce to the mean intellectual type of a race all the families which depart very greatly from 

 it. This is so, perhaps, because a superiority in one direction has to be acquired at the 

 cost of an inferiority, and consequently a kind of degeneracy, in another. A great man is 

 most frequently an ill-balanced man ; and cerebral unbalancing, however little accentuated 

 it may be, is as hard to perpetuate by reproduction as an anatomical monstrosity. Societies 

 also seem condemned, like individuals, not to pass a certain level. 



f Most of the thoughts embodied in this article, especially the theory of the progressive 

 differentiation of races, individuals, and the sexes with the advance of civilization, are the 



