INTERMIXTURE OF RACES
Defoe, in his _Trueborn Englishman_, outlines a factor of great importance
in degeneracy.[133] Race intermixture is much more common than is
generally believed, owing to that ethnologic error consequent on the
discovery of Sanscrit, which tests race by speech. Keane[134] excellently
explodes this error by the following table:
Peoples. Race. Speech.
English Kelto-Teutonic Teutonic
Scotch Kelto-Teutonic Teutonic
Cornish Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic Teutonic
Irish (West) Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic Keltic
Welsh Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic Keltic
French Ibero-Kelto-Teutonic Italic
Spanish Ibero-Keltic Italic
Germans Slavo-Kelto-Teutonic Teutonic
Bohemians Kelto-Teuto-Slavonic Slavonic
Russians (many) Finno-Slavonic Slavonic
Hungarians Ugro-Slavonic Slavonic
Bulgarians Ugro-Teuto-Slavonic Finnic
Prussians (East) Letto-Teuto-Slavonic Teutonic
Rumanians Italo-Slavo-Illyric Italic
Italians Liguro-Kelto-Italic Italic
Profoundly mixed as this table indicates European races to be, it is far
from representing the full extent of race mingling. The primitive worship
of the Slavonic Czernebog by the Saxons in England demonstrates a Slavonic
strain, derivable, as Kiernan[135] remarks, from their contact with the
Wends of the Baltic. Not merely are the Aryan races of Europe mixed
together, but the blood of all has a pre-Aryan and a Turanian dash. In
Great Britain, as Taylor[136] and others have shown, the Iberian type is
found in Wales and Scotland as well as elsewhere, though in lesser degree.
These admixtures date back to palaeolithic times when, although, as Keane
remarks, the predominant type of skull was dolicocephalic (or
long-headed), the brachycephalic (or round-headed type) had begun to
appear in America, then connected by land with both Africa and Europe. In
the subsequent neolithic time, while the type is at first generally
brachycephalic, it soon becomes mesatocephalic (mixed long and
round-headed), pure brachycephals and dolicocephals becoming rare. Vogt
went so far as to maintain that were the three chief anthropoid apes
developed further, two dolicocephalic and one brachycephalic type of man
would result; the first two from the chimpanzee and gorilla, the last from
the orang. The orang descendant would have long arms and red hair. The
chimpanzee descendant would be of small size, dark colour with slender
bones and jaws. The gorilla race would have massive chest, big bones,
massive jaws and teeth. These three types appear in Great Britain and
Ireland and traces of their blood are still detectable in living men. Sir
Walter Scott draws an excellent picture of the "orang" type in _Rob Roy_,
whose hero, according to reliable tradition, represented the Pict type.
Gomme[137] has lately shown that these races persisted long enough to
stamp their savage beliefs on coming races and intermingled with them. The
Neolithic race in Great Britain was dark, of feeble build, short stature,
with dolicocephalic skulls. This race remained to the historic period, as
the Silures in Great Britain and the Firbolgs in Ireland. It had high
cheek-bones and oblique eyes, as Kiernan[138] points out. Towards the
middle of the neolithic period this race was conquered by a
brachycephalic, tall, long-armed, muscular race, with florid complexion
and yellowish or red hair.[139] Scott's _Rob Roy_ is an example of this
type. A third race of fair complexion with prognathous face,
dolicocephalic skulls, of tall stature, great bones, great chest
development and massive jaws, later invaded Great Britain. While these
races resemble Vogt's hypothetical descendants of the anthropoid apes, it
should be stated that there is not the slightest evidence for this line of
descent. Writers who ignore these race characteristics have often brought
serious criticism and even discredit on the doctrine of degeneracy.
Lombroso, starting from the correct premise, that wide departure from the
race type is evidence of degeneracy, erroneously cites in illustration
Virchow's departure from the German type, Byron's departure from the
English type, O'Connell's dolicocephalic departure from the
mesatocephalic Irish type, and Robert Bruce's neanderthaloid departure
from the Scandinavian type. As Kiernan has shown,[140] Virchow, as his
name denotes, is a German-speaking Slavonic Wend; Byron was a
Celto-Scandinavian Scotchman; O'Connell was born in a district conquered
by the tall dolicocephalic race which invaded Ireland. The Bruce type of
skull is still found among the purer Norwegians, Frisians, Swedes, and
Danes, and was common just before his day and just after, as has been
shown by Taylor.
As the intermingling of races began early, the question of the existence
of pure races to-day, or even during the historic period, is an open one.
The Hebrews have been comparatively pure since the return from the
Captivity. Before that, as the history of Solomon's foreign marriages
demonstrates, they were a raceless chaos, the Semitic element
predominating. Researches by Flinders Petrie[141] and others show that the
Egyptians were a mixture of Turanians, Hamites, Aryan and Semite peoples
imposed on a negroid basis. When these elements were finally fused, the
race bred relatively true, although the lower classes tend to the negroid
type and the higher to the Caucasic.
The Koreans, as Keane remarks, are a mixture of two primitive races, one
white and one yellow. The Japanese, whose ancestors emigrated to Japan
from Korea are, according to Topinard,[142] the product of the addition of
three distinct types to that forming their Korean ancestors. The Caucasic
to a small extent, the Polynesian to a greater, and the Malay to a still
greater, are mixed with the original Korean.
The Chinese are neither a homogeneous people nor a pure race, albeit the
relatively few Mantchus are dominant. The Aryan of India, on whom Max
Mueller laid such stress, is known to be, despite a rigid caste system, a
non-Aryan race, feebly infused with a modicum of Aryan blood. The
so-called "Gypsy" seems, of all the races of India, to have retained most
Aryan speech and type as well as its original semi-nomadic
waggon-journeying tendencies in the midst of settled civilisation. Ghetto
seclusion long helped to preserve relative purity of race in the Jew, but
despite vagabond surroundings the "Gypsy" has remained even purer.
Great as has been the mixture of even widely separated types like the
three races described as mingling in Great Britain and Ireland, even
greater admixture occurred in comparatively late historic times. The
so-called Scotch-Irish (whose blood enters so largely into the dominant
race of the United States) are, despite their speech (much more Teutonic
and monosyllabic than English), as Kiernan[143] has shown, a raceless
chaos of Gaelic and Cymric Celts, Lowland Scotch, French Huguenots, Danes
(Celto-Teuto-Slaves),[144] Palatinate Germans, Magyars, English Puritans,
Hollanders, Swedes, Protestant Italians, Poles, and Spaniards. The
intermixture of the dark, small-boned, dolichocephalic, orthognathous
(with in-drawn jaws) race first with the brachycephalic, prognathous,
big-boned, red-haired race, and then with the dolichocephalic prognathous,
deep-chested, big-boned, fair race, must have produced in the British
Isles as marked variations in type as now occur from the admixture of the
Indian and negro. These are especially noticeable in the Marshpee Indians
of Cape Cod, the Long Island tribes and the "Red Bones" of South Carolina.
The Marshpee tribe is an admixture of Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese, Indian, and
negro. The Indian element, while still demonstrable, is lessening. Some of
the older people still retain Indian characteristics. A girl of ten was
negro in all respects except her hair. An adult whose mother was half
white, half Marshpee, while the father is negro, had all the negro
characteristics except the skin, which was Indian in type, and the jaws,
which were slender. Another adult who had a negro great-grandfather,
Marshpee mother, and a three-fourths Marshpee father, had large,
negro-like jaws, Indian hair, skin, and cheek-bones. Another adult had a
Portuguese maternal grandmother, negro grandfather, an Indian-white
paternal grandmother and Indian-negro paternal grandfather. His hair,
jaws, and nose were negro, his cheek-bones were high, his upper and lower
jaws met so that the front teeth occluded.[145] The like condition obtains
in the Long Island Indians, but to a less extent with the "Red Bones,"
who, after the type was formed, avoided admixture with the negro.
The influence of race intermixture in the production of degeneracy is
easily settled. Basing their opinion on the notorious sterility of the
hybrid offspring of the horse and ass, certain biologists have assumed
like results in man and have cited the alleged absence of Australian
half-breeds in evidence. Since the hare and rabbit, dog and wolf, sheep
and goat produce breeds intermediate between the parents, fertile while
environment is unchanged, horse and ass sterility cannot be accepted as of
much value in settling the question. Recent researches have shown that the
half-breeds which survived birth among the Australians were killed in
accordance with tribal usages regulating population in accordance with
food supply.
Whether the results of race intermixture prove degenerate or not will turn
largely on the environment. The mulatto is certainly better adapted to the
white environment than the pure negro, albeit less so than the white. That
race intermixture may, however, determine degeneration, is shown by the
relapse into voodooism and cannibalism of the Haiti and Louisiana French
hybrids, and the Anglo-Saxon hybrids of Liberia, who contrast
disadvantageously with the Arabianised Moslem Mandingoes and Veys, which
last have advanced so far as to devise a system of writing. The extent of
the influence of environment is shown in the career of the Dumas family,
which is of Haitian-negro origin. The grandfather was a general in the
French army, the father and son were two stars in the literary firmament.
The sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, was of similar stock to these. Evidences of
degeneracy were rare among the Marshpee Indians, as I have elsewhere
shown.[146]
The Abyssinians have preserved that antique type of Christianity which had
Jewish usages; they had their own literature, alphabet, and old type of
civilisation. According to Keane, the present inhabitants of Abyssinia
form an extremely complex ethnical group in which it is not always
possible to distinguish the constituent elements. The prevailing colour
is a distinct brown, shading northwards to a light, olive, fair
complexion, southwards to a deep chocolate and an almost sooty black.
There are Abyssinians who may certainly be called black, and in whom the
negro strain is revealed in the somewhat tumid lip, small nose, broad at
base, and frizzly, black hair. But the majority may be described as a
mixed Hamito-Semitic people, who, beyond question, belong fundamentally to
the Caucasic division. While the Hamitic, Semitic, and the Latin branch of
the Aryans are admitted to form a fertile, progressive admixture with the
negro, the reverse is commonly assumed to be the case with the English
speaking Celto-Teutons. Daniel Wilson[147] is of opinion that this is not
true as to millions of the coloured race who now constitute the indigenous
population of the Southern States. They are at home there in a climate to
which the white race adapts itself with very partial success. The
offspring of white fathers and of mothers of the African races, they have
multiplied to millions; and now, with the recently acquired rights of
citizenship, and with the advantage of education within their reach, the
country is their town. The very social prejudices against miscegenation
protect them from the effacing influence to which the Indian half-breed is
exposed, by ever-recurrent intermarriage with the dominant race. As yet
there are discernible the various degrees of heredity from the mulatto to
the quinteron. But the abolition of slavery has placed the coloured race
on an entirely new footing. Left as it now is, free to enjoy the
healthful, social relations of a civilised community, and protected, by
the very prejudices of race and caste, from any large intermixture with
the white race, it can scarcely admit of doubt that there will survive on
the American Continent a Melanochroi of its own, more distinctly separated
from the white race, not only by heredity but also by climate influences,
than the "dark Whites" of Europe are from the blonde types of Hellenic,
Slavic, Teutonic, or Scandinavian stock. This condition will be modified
by the fact that the negro American, like the others, is a traveller and,
with a rise of culture, tends to city life.
The admixture with the white has reduced negro prognathism and
dolichocephaly. It must, however, be admitted that these reductions had
already been begun in Africa. Sir H. H. Johnston, however, fully agrees
with the negro writer[148] who holds that the "pure and unadulterated
Negro cannot, as a rule, advance with any certainty of stability above his
present level of culture; that he requires the admixture of a superior
type of man." But the white and black races are "too widely separated in
type to produce a satisfactory hybrid"; hence Johnston thinks that, "the
admixture of yellow that the Negro requires should come from India, and
that Western Africa and British Central Africa should become the America
of the Hindu. The mixture of the two races would give the Indian the
physical development which he lacks, and he, in his turn, would transmit
to his half Negro offspring the industry, ambition, and aspiration toward
a civilised life which the Negro so markedly lacks."
On the whole, race intermixture will not tend to elevate the race where
there is a decided difference in the state of evolution of the two races,
and moreover especially where, as is usually the case, the mother is of
the inferior race. It must be obvious that, given a negro pelvis and the
head of a white, results damaging to the offspring cannot but occur. And
these results are of a nature likely to be transmitted by heredity. The
same would hold true with other races as well. Although the differences
between the Hawaiian and the white are much less than those between the
negro and the white, it is notorious that while the labours with pure
Hawaiians are easy, those with half-whites are difficult. The same
conditions have been observed from time to time between different breeds
of dogs, whose pelves vary. Therefore it is safe to assume that admixtures
of races of different grades of evolution will, if carried to any great
extent, tend to render the superior race more liable to the action of the
factors producing degeneracy. Dixon[149] has shown that mulatto families
tend to disappear, if they be not crossed with either black or white, and
that the limit of descent is the fourth generation. He has also pointed
out that morbid proclivities and retrogressive tendencies are peculiarly
rife among mulattoes. The fact, long ago shown by Menatta,[150] that the
conflict for existence between brain growth and reproductive organ growth
at puberty, results, in the mulatto, as in the negro and anthropoids, in
the triumph of the reproductive, indicates that the mulatto has factors of
degeneracy which would be fatal to the establishment of an intermediate
type on the environment of the white. While Menatta is in error in
regarding skull mal-development as the cause, when it and brain growth
disturbance are defects due to the same cause, still general observation
supports his opinion that "negro children are sharp, intelligent, and full
of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change sets in.
The intellect seems to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of
lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily infer that
the development of the negro and white proceeds on different lines. While
with the latter the volume of brain grows with the expansion of the brain
pan, in the former the growth of the brain is, on the contrary, arrested
by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and laternal pressure of
the frontal bone." Since, as Havelock Ellis remarks,[151] even the highest
races do not fulfil the promise of evolution they make before puberty,
anything which tends still further to impede the fulfilment must be
regarded as a factor of degeneracy. Hence intermixture with an inferior
race, having an inferior type of pelvis, would tend to degeneracy.