Even then if the Japanese should outstrip all rivals, it would in no degree shake the arguments or conclusions of this volume, nor ground the least hope for the African; for neither historically nor (still less) anatomically is there any parallelism between the two races. It seems to be of interest, however, and the dictate of fairness, to recall that, according to a very high and recent, though perhaps not infallible, authority (Professor Ripley), the roots of the great European race-tree are two:[22] the broad-headed Kelt from Asia and the long-headed Teuton from Africa. If so, then this latter stock, though now the fairest among the sons of men, _Then, sad relief, from the bleak shore that hears The German Ocean roar, deep blooming, strong, And yellow-haired the blue-eyed Saxon came--_ was once the very darkest! What combined agencies, as of climate and selection, have wrought out this marvellous depigmentation, we need not here inquire. Suffice it that, on the one hand, this fact, if it be a fact,--_non nobis est componere tantas lites_--would seem to ground the bare possibility that even now such combined agencies might in the same lapse of time bring about a similar transfiguration of the West African. And this we readily grant--if the physiologic nature of the Negro be as plastic now as it was a hundred thousand years ago--which we cannot disprove, but which we have no right to assume. Be this as it may, we have never denied this or any other abstract possibility of negritic evolution. We merely maintain that probability is the guide of life, and that there is no appreciable probability of any such evolution. [22] To be sure, Prof. Ripley speaks repeatedly of three races (see Pop. Sc. Mon. LI, p. 202): Teutonic, Alpine, Mediterranean; but both the first and the last are long-faced and long-headed, and he regards the two as having a common origin, "a dolichocephalic Africanoid type in the stone age" (LII, p. 314). "It is highly probable that the Teutonic race of northern Europe is merely a variety of this primitive, long-headed type of the stone age, both its distinctive blondness and its remarkable stature having been acquired in the relative isolation of Scandinavia through the modifying influences of environment, and of natural selection" (LII, p. 312), "The European races" are thought, "as intermediate between the extreme primary types of the Asiatic and the negro races respectively" (LII, p. 306).--But the Chinese are long-heads.--Sharply opposed to Ripley's and commanding wider scientific assent, is the view of Lapouge, set forth in _L'Aryen_.