Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898: Volume LIV, No. 2, December 1898
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
In _Yetta Ségal_,[65] a slender thread of a story is used by Mr.
_Rollin_ as the vehicle for a theory of "type fusion" or convergence
which he thinks has not received sufficient attention from social
or scientific students. There are a pair of lovers, one of whom is
discovered at a critical period in the courtship to have negro blood
in his veins, and a philosopher who comes forward to satisfy the
parties (who hardly need it) that this is no serious matter, but is
all according to human evolution and the destiny of the race. "You
must be impressed," he says, "by the fact that there are a great
many people here and there, of mixed blood, and that the number is
increasing; ... it is well that not a few are indeed truly admirable
specimens of the human race. Such phenomena must be interpreted in
a way consistent with man's nature: if he is developmental; if he
shall attain a higher status through struggle, or through means that
are seemingly, or for the time, degrading; if he is moving from the
simple to the complex, as to organization; if universal movement
tends to unific existence--then race interchange, with elimination
of peculiar characteristics, has probably made its appearance as a
phase of infinite order, and for the benefit of future man.... It is
presumptuous for the wisest to assert that the man of lower type has
no element of strength peculiar to his race which the most advanced
does not need in his present organization. It may be needed either
for present protection in the way of re-enforcement, or as an element
of strength for further advancement." Mr. Rollin does not advocate
type fusion or wish to accelerate the movement, but presents it as
a fact and factor in human evolution deserving more extensive and
thorough study than it has received.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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