It is not difficult to argue from a point of view of Christian religion and humanity against an instinct which finds its extreme, but yet its logical, expression in the burning of some negro offender at the stake. But all the arguments in the world will not prevail against Nature. Once a type has won a step up it must be jealous and "selfish," and even brutal in its scorn of lower types; or must climb down again. This may not be good ethics, but it is Nature. Russian backwardness in civilisation to-day is a living proof that the scorn of the coloured man is a necessary condition of the progress of the White Man's civilisation. But the race-mixture which was of evil to Russia has been of benefit to the rest of Europe. To borrow a metaphor from modern preventive medicine, the Russian marches between Europe and Asia have had their power of resistance to Yellow invasion strengthened by the infusion of some Yellow blood. A land of high steppes, very cold in winter, very hot in summer, and of great forests, which were difficult to traverse except where the rivers had cut highways, Russia was never so tempting to the early European civilisations as to lead to her area being definitely occupied and held as a province. Neither Greek nor Roman attempted much colonisation in Russia. By general consent the country was left to be a No-Man's-Land between Asia and Europe. Alexander, whose army penetrated through to India and actually brought back news of the existence of Australia, never marched far north into the interior of Russia. There the mixed tribes of Finns, Aryans, Semites, Mongols held a great gloomy country influenced little by civilisation, but often temporarily submerged by waves of barbarians from the Asiatic steppes. Still Western Europe in time made some little impression on the Russian mass. Byzantine culture impressed its mark on the Southern Slavs; Roman culture, after filtering through Germany, reached the Lithuanians of the north. In the twelfth century we hear of Arabian caravans making their way as far as the Baltic in search of amber. But more important to the Russian civilisation was the advent of the Normans in the ninth century. They consolidated White Russia during the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, appeared as warriors before the walls of Byzantium, and learned the Christian faith from the priests of the Eastern communion. (Russia has since been faithful always to the Greek Church.) That period was rich in national heroes, such as Rurik, Simeon and Truvor, and definitely set the current of Russian national life towards a place in the European family of nations. By the thirteenth century the White Russians, with their capital established at Moscow, were able to withstand for a while a new Mongol invasion. But they could not prevent Gengis Khan's lieutenants establishing themselves on the lower Volga, and the Grand Prince of Moscow had to be content to become a suzerain of the Grand Khan of Tartary.