Dr. Karl Pearson, in his celebrated book _National Life and Character_, writes: "In the long run the inferior civilisations give proof of a vigour greater than that of the superior civilisations; the disinherited gain upon the privileged castes, and the conquered people absorbs the conquering people." He declared further that Brazil would quickly fall into the power of the negroes, and that while the Indians would multiply and develop in the inaccessible regions of the north and the centre, the white peoples, crowded out by the progress of these races, would be numerous only in the cities and the more salubrious districts. This painful prophecy will be accomplished to the letter if, in the conflict of castes, {363} the white population is not promptly reinforced by the arrival of new colonists. But crossing alone will not communicate the superior characteristics of the race to the mestizo in a lasting manner. "It is necessary that he should be the fruit of a union of the third, fourth, or fifth degree; that is, that there should have been as many successive crossings, with a father or a mother of the white race, before the mestizo can be in a condition to assimilate European culture," writes an Argentine sociologist. For this vast process of selection to be realised to the profit of the white man not only must the races subjected to admixture exist in certain proportions, but the mass of Europeans must prevail and impose their temper upon the future castes. In short, the problem of race depends upon the solution given to the demographic problem. Without the help of a new population there will be in America not merely a lamentable exhaustion but also a prompt recoil of the race. The phrase of Alberdi is still true: "In America to govern means to populate." The colonists brought with them the traditions and manners of the disciplined races, a moral organisation which was the work of centuries of common life. People of rural extraction, when they reached America, upheld the established interests, the government, the law, and the peace; they worked, fought, and laid up treasure. Moreover, only the most enterprising of men emigrated, and they transmitted to the new democracies an element of vitality they had not before known. As early as the second generation the descendants of the foreign colonists were already Argentines, Brazilians, or Peruvians; their patriotism was as ardent and devoted and exclusive as that of their fathers. They completely adopted the local manners. They had been transformed by the action of the American environment. {364}