ism, weakness, disease, and early death. Atwater, on the other hand, has found that the average wage worker in New England consumes more food than health requires. What a host of consequences issue from this one primary contrast! A generation ago, in the first enthusiasm over the marvels of heredity, we were taught that one race is monotheistic, another has an affinity for polytheism. One race is temperamentally aristocratic, while another is by instinct democratic. One race is innovating and radical, another is by nature conservative. But it is impossible to characterize races in respect to such large complex traits. A keener analysis connects these great historical contrasts with a number of slight specific differences in body or temperament. For example, four diverse traits of the greatest social importance, namely, progressiveness, the spirit of adventure, migrancy and the disposition to flock to cities, can be traced to a courageous confidence in the unknown coupled with the high physical tone that calls for action. Similarly, if we may believe Signor Ferrero, of two equally gifted races the one that is the less sensual will be inferior in æsthetic output, less apt to cross with lower types, more loyal to the idea of duty, better adapted to monotonous factory labor, and more inclined to the Protestant form of religion. It is only by establishing fixed, specific differences of this kind that we can hope to explain those grand race contrasts that enchant the historian. The first cause of race superiority to which I invite your attention is a physiological trait, namely, climatic adaptability. Just now it is a grave question whether the flourishing and teeming peoples of the North Temperate zone can provide outlets for their surplus population in the rich but undeveloped lands of the tropics. Their superiority, economic and military, over the peoples under the vertical sun is beyond cavil. But can they assert and profit by this superiority save by imposing on the natives of the tropics the odious and demoralizing servile relation? Can the white man work and multiply in the tropics, or will his rôle be limited to commercial and industrial exploitation at a safe Vol. X-4 distance by means of a changing, male contingent of soldiers, officials, business agents, planters, and overseers? The answer is not yet sure, but the facts bearing on acclimatization are not comforting to our race. Immunity from the fevers that waste men in hot, humid climates seems to be in inverse ratio to energy. The French are more successful in tropical settlement than the Germans or the English. The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians surpass the French in almost equal measure. When it comes to settling Africa, instead of merely exploring or subduing it, the peoples may unexpectedly change their rôles. With all their energy and their numbers the Anglo Saxons appear to be physiologically inelastic, and incapable of making of Guiana or the Philippines a home such as they have made in New Zealand or Minnesota. In the tropics their very virtuestheir push, their uncompromising standards, their aversion to intermarriage with the natives-are their destruction. Orninous, on the other hand, is the extraordinary power of accommodation enjoyed by the Mongolians. Says Professor Ripley: "The Chinese succeed in Guiana where the white man cannot live; and they thrive from Siberia where the mean temperature is below freezing, to Singapore on the equator." There are even some who believe that the Chinaman is destined to dispossess the Malay in southwestern Asia and the islands of the Pacific, and the Indian in the tropical parts of South America. There is, indeed, such a thing as acclimatization; but this is virtually the creation at a frightful cost of a new race variety by climatic selection. We may, therefore, regard his lack of adaptability as a handicap which the white man must ever bear in competing with black, yellow, or brown men. His sciences and his inventions give him only a temporary advantage, for, as the facilities for diffusion increase, they must pass to all. Even his educational and political institutions will spread wherever they are suitable. All precedence founded on the possession of magazine rifles, or steam, or the press, or the Christian religion, must end as these elements merge into one all embracing, everywhere diffused, cosmopolitan culture. Even the advantage con |