PRESENT RELATIONS OF RACES.
Obliteration of Race Distinctions.—Within the historic period the rise of great monarchies, which enabled rulers to prosecute extensive foreign conquests, the increase of commercial intercourse, and the enlarged facil ities of intercommunication have tended to the obliteration of racial dis tinctions, partly by extensive migrations, partly by originating mixed races. When these commixtures are of a higher with a lower race, it is almost exclusively of males of the higher with females of the lower, and the result is that socially the children of mixed blood sink to the level of their mother's race. This is witnessed in the mulattoes and in the min gling of Mongolians and Negroes. These are also physically inferior, with less energy of spirit and vigor of body to make their way in the world and to resist disease than the pure blood of either stock. A striking example of this is the rapid decay of the Polynesian islanders, the present generation undergoing a steady diminution, although largely influenced by intermarriages with both the white and yellow races ; the children indicate a high rate of mortality, and if they survive to adult years are inferior to the pure Polynesian stock in physical power.
The contrary is the case where two races on the same plane inter marry, possibly one reason being that the women of both races partake in the commixture. Examples of this are the Melanesians, the product of long-continued intermingling of the straight-haired Polynesian with the woolly-haired Papuan. This has developed a powerful and energetic stock, bold warriors and navigators, superior to either of the pure races from which they sprang. The same improvement has been observed in the children of marriages between the negro and the Indian in America. They are usually large-limbed, muscular, with an extraordinary growth of hair, and become the leaders in the rude communities where they dwell.
Still more strongly are the advantages of such bleedings observable when they take place within the limits of the race itself. Thus, of all the Finnish folk the noble and chivalric Magyars take the lead—a people of very mixed descent, a cross between Finns, Slays, and Germans ; the most progressive of the German stock are those whose ancestors sprang from crossings either with the Slays or with the Romance nations of Southern Europe ; most vigorous and energetic of all are the English, and it is more than a coincidence that they are also the product of the most numerous crossings of Celtic, Romance, and Teutonic breeds.
Destiny of Raccs.—It is probable that the pure stock of all the more deeply colored races, the Negroes, the Australians, the Papuas, and the American Indians, is destined gradually to fade out within a few centuries. In the United States the mulattoes already decidedly outnumber the negroes of pure blood ; on some of the Indian reservations scarcely a single pure-blooded child can be found ; on many of the Pacific islands a real Polynesian is rarely to be seen ; and this process is constantly extending through the greater inducements offered by the males of the lighter races and the marked sexual preference extended them by the females of darker hue. The highest race will, however, always preserve the purity of its blood—not owing to laws or outside pressure, but to the abhorrence of its females to mingling with the lower stock, and to the independence which modern life ensures them to follow their instincts in this respect.
proper is distinguished from ETHNOGRAPHY. The latter describes the customs, laws, and habits of nations ; the former seeks for the conditions which give rise to these habits, the influence they exert on the destiny of commonwealths, and the principles of life which they illustrate. Both of them have to do not with races, but with peoples—with what the Greeks termed ethic (10202), communities bound together by some common tie and separated from other communi ties by traits peculiar to themselves.
Determinative Elements.—It is the aim of Ethnography (My(); "a people," ypditncv, describe ") to depict, of Ethnology to explain, the physical conditions, the stage of culture, and the social life of the various tribes of men, with the final aim of interpreting, by a comparison of such facts, the universal laws of progress of the human species. Ethnology acknowledges the inseparable relations of mind and body, and that man's grandest discoveries and noblest impulses are the late fruits of a long series of humble strivings. Therefore, its comparisons begin with the most rudimentary arts and with the most prosaic and coarsest needs of life. On the manner in which these were satisfied depended in a great measure the position of the community in the scale of development. They are, to use a technical form of expression, the "determinative ele. ments " in the growth and history of nations. The most important of these elements may be classified as follows :