The Ideal State 257 



average type, with special characteristics which depend 

 solely upon environmental influences, and the lesson 

 from this study of observed phenomena is to improve 

 the environment all round, and we shall soon have 

 universally gentler manners and what is called good 

 breeding and that air of refinement which a knowledge 

 of literature and art tends to convey. There is not 

 much doubt that this fetish is tottering to its fall : the 

 majority of the people do not regard it, and think of it 

 only as one of those stupid superstitions which helbl 

 sway among men until the enlightenment of Christian 

 ethics dissipated the mist which obscured their vision, 

 and demonstrated the native equality of man, when 

 robbed of those artificial distinctions which are as 

 useless as they are false. 



The process of racial development going on in 

 America at the present day is most interesting, and 

 bears upon this point. Emigrants from Europe are 

 being poured into that continent as into a huge mortar, 

 and as a consequence we have a mixture there of all 

 the nations represented in our Western civilisation. 

 And what is the result ? A race possessed of intense 

 virility and energy, with a capacity for work which is 

 unrivalled. This proves the benefit from the union of 

 different strains in the white races at any rate, and 

 shows that we are more likely to get a strong, virile, 

 energetic race from this intermixture than we can get 

 on the average from any one of the individual strains. 

 Further, what do ethnologists tell us ? That a type is 

 being developed from this intermixture which from 

 generation to generation is becoming more and more 

 like the original inhabitants of the country — the Red 

 Indian. If true, what can this mean ? It can mean 

 nothing else than that the environment of this huge 

 continent, with its illimitable plains, mountains, rivers, 

 and forests, is evolving a type similar to that of the 



