Darwin has proved experimentally that in the vegetable kingdom
“cross-fertilisation is generally beneficial, and self-fertilisation
injurious. This is shown by the difference in height, weight,
constitutional vigour, and fertility of the offspring from crossed
and self-fertilised flowers, and in the number of seeds produced by
the parent plants.” He also showed that “the benefit from
cross-fertilisation depends on the plants which are crossed having
been subjected during previous generations to somewhat different
conditions.”
Similarly, concerning animals, we read in Topinard, that “breeders who
select their subjects with a definite object to breed _in and in_, that
is to say, between near relations, rapidly obtain excellent results.
They know, however, that fertility then diminishes, and that it will
cease altogether if they do not have recourse from time to time to
crossing, in order to _strengthen the race_.”
But both in the vegetable and the animal kingdom, as we have seen,
superior Health also implies superior Beauty.
The inference is natural that the human race also must be benefited by
marriages of individuals of different races, or of the same race, but
brought up under different conditions of life. And the facts are
entirely in favour of this supposition, as are the best authorities in
Anthropology. Dr. Topinard gives the following instances among many
others: “Immigration into the United States, which has taken so
considerable a flight during the last thirty years, has already been
enormous. Every variety of cross has been going on between English,
Irish, Germans, Italians, French, etc., with the greatest possible
success. We may also mention numberless Spaniards from the Peninsula,
among whom are found the features of the Saracen invaders of the ninth
century; then that population on the Barbary coast, called Moors, and
which is a medley of races of every description, the Arab and Berber
blood predominating. On tracing back the yellow races, we also discover
a perfect eugenesis.... De Mas speaks in the highest terms of mixed
breeds of Chinese and Mongolians, and MM. Mondières and Morice of those
of Chinese and Annamites under the name of Minuongs. Dr. Bowring
describes a race in the Philippine Islands, intermediate between the
Malays and Chinese, as the principal agent of civilisation in these
latitudes.”
On the other hand, “it is undeniable that in Africa the Negro races do
not cross to any great extent.” Nor has any one ever accused the Negroes
of an excessive amount of Beauty. Whereas in Lima, which has the finest
women in South America, “there are twenty-three different names to
designate the varieties of mixed breeds of Spaniards, Peruvians, and
Negroes.” “The number of mongrels on the face of the globe has been
estimated at twelve millions, of whom no fewer than eleven millions are
in South America.” South American women are already famous for their
Beauty, and there is reason to believe that when the fusion of all these
elements is complete the race will be one of the finest in the world.
What Beauty it has now seems to be owing chiefly to the magic of
Crossing; for attention to Health there is little but what comes from
life in the open air; while Romantic Love is perhaps as rare as Mental
Refinement, inasmuch as Courtship is not so free and easy a matter as in
North America. All the more honour to the potency of Crossing.
Take a few more cases. The African Negroes, as just stated, do not mix
much, and are an ugly type. Among the Polynesians, on the other hand,
there are many very fine types of human beauty; and it is therefore not
surprising to read that to-day in Polynesia, “mixed breeds are so
numerous that it would be difficult to find among them any individuals
of pure race.”
Again, concerning the Magyars or Hungarians, Schweiger-Lerchenfeld
remarks that “they are a splendid race, physically and
intellectually.... The girls and young women are of most piquant charm,
models of health in mind and body.” But these Magyars, when they first
came to Europe, were, as Waitz states, “of a repulsive ugliness in the
eyes of all their neighbours.” That they have mixed with the
Indo-Germanic type is shown by their appearance, as well as by
peculiarities of their language. “Where they have probably remained less
mixed,” Waitz continues, “and at the same time less cultivated, in some
remote regions, especially in the mountains, the ugly primitive type may
be found to the present day; in the plains may be found every
transitional form from this to the nobler type; at Szegedin both are
found face to face.”
The Magyars, in turn, have, like the Slavo-Italians, Czechs, etc.,
assisted the Austrians in evolving a superior type of Beauty by fusing
with them. That there is very much more Beauty in Vienna than in any
purely German city is an almost proverbial commonplace; and the reason
why may be found in the statistics: in Germany 31·80 per cent are blond,
14·05 brunet, 54·15 mixed; in Austria 19·59 per cent are blond, 23·17
brunet, and 68·04 mixed.
The European Turks have much nobler forms of the head and features than
their Asiatic relatives; and the inference seems inevitable that they
owe these improvements to intermarriage with Circassian women.
A negative instance, showing the disadvantages of abstaining from
Crossing, is given by the Jews. There are handsome Jews and, up to a
certain age, very beautiful Jewesses. But the typical Jew is certainly
not a thing of beauty. The disadvantages of Jewish separatism are shown
not only in the long, thick, crooked nose, the bloated lips, almost
suggesting a negro, and the heavy lower eyelid, but in the fact that the
Jews “have proportionately more insane, deaf mutes, blind, and
colour-blind” than other Europeans. From an intellectual and industrial
point of view, the Jews are one of the finest races in the world, and
their absorption by the natives of the countries in which they have
settled could not but benefit both parties concerned. From this point of
view there may be something said even in favour of the money-marriages,
which are now so frequent between extravagant German officers and Jewish
heiresses. Unfortunately, the Jews have kept apart so long from the rest
of the world that they do not readily mix with non-Jews. Contrary to the
general rule, mixed marriages of Jews and Christians are less fertile
than pure Jewish unions.
The precise manner in which a mixture of races improves physical
appearance is a question still open to debate. Professor Kollmann
(_Plastische Anatomie_) thinks “the result of the crossing of two forms
is comparable, not to a chemical, but to a mechanical mixture”; and this
agrees with the view of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who endeavours to trace to
this fact the frequent want of correspondence between intellectual and
physical beauty. He believes, however, the time will come “when the
present causes of incongruity will have worked themselves out,” and
intellectual beauty emerge in harmony with physical, in all details, as
it no doubt exists in general.
There is no lack of facts supporting the view that sexual fusion is a
mere mechanical mixture. The “Bourbon nose” seems to defy mitigating
circumstances for generations; and “M. de Quatrefages knew a
great-grandson of the bailiff of Suffren who was a striking likeness of
his ancestor after four generations, and who, nevertheless, bore no
resemblance either to his father or his mother.” A child may resemble
its father, mother, aunt, uncle, grand-parents, or several of them at
once; and the resemblance may vary at different ages.
More extraordinary are the following cases cited by Topinard: “Sometimes
the child possesses altogether the character of one or other parent: for
example, the child of a European father and a Chinese mother, Dr.
Scherzer says, is altogether a European or altogether a Chinese. A
Berber with blue eyes and with the lobule of the ear absent, married to
a dark Arab woman with a well-formed ear, had two children, one like
himself, the other like his wife. An English officer, fair, with blue
eyes and florid complexion, had several children by an Indian negress.
Some were the image of the father, others exactly like the mother.... A
decided negro, having had a white among his ancestors, has unexpectedly
a child with a white skin by a negress.”
Yet all these are exceptional cases, which, like the winning number in a
lottery, get a disproportionate amount of attention. Moreover, this
“mechanical” form of assimilation seems to occur chiefly where very
unrelated races are fused, and then especially in the first generation.
In subsequent generations the union doubtless tends to become more and
more chemical—no longer a negro character floating on a white one, like
oil on water, but a mixture, as of wine and water.
Take the American quadroons, for instance, famous for their beauty of
form and features. They are mongrels of the third generation, having
one-eighth black, seven-eighths white blood in their veins. Surely these
characters are not “mechanically” mixed in such a woman, but
“chemically.” That is, you do not find her with the eyes and nose of a
negro, the lips and ears of a white, one part of her skin dark the other
light: but in everything there is a fusion of the ancestral elements.
Her nose is not flat like that of her ancestress, nor her lips swollen,
but both are intermediate between those of her white and black
ancestors. Her lip is still thicker than that of the whites, and that
gives her a sensuous aspect, kiss-inviting. Her eyes, again, have lost
the fierce glare and opaque blackness of the negro-grandmother, and
assumed a more crystalline, tender lustre; while their form and
surroundings have become more refined and expressive. All this is
homogeneous fusion, not “heterogeneous mixture.”
Finally, it is hardly correct to state dogmatically that a certain
person resembles this or that ancestor. In nothing else do opinions vary
so constantly and so ludicrously. No one who has ever been “trotted
around” among his relatives in the “old country,” can have failed to be
amused at the countless resemblances to this and that uncle, aunt, or
grand-parent discovered in him, until he came to the conclusion that he
must be a veritable epitome of the whole genealogy. A man who at home is
supposed to be absolutely unlike his brother, is elsewhere mistaken for
him and addressed as such; while another man finds a friend who knew his
father in his youth, and declares he is exactly like him; though a
second friend who knew only the mother, claims a similar hereditary
influence for her. All of which tends to show that there is more of both
parents in each person than is commonly supposed; and that the reason
why opinions differ so, is because the fusion is chemical rather than
mechanical, which makes it difficult to put the finger on distinct
points of resemblance.
It is in the more closely allied races, like the English and German, or
Italian and Spanish, that “chemical” fusion is most readily attained,
and Beauty most rapidly evolved. Such are the unions which take place on
such a large scale in the United States and Canada; and this may account
for the fact that there is more Beauty in North America than in South
America, where the races that intermingle are less related. There is a
golden mean here as in everything else.