The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
Where two races occupy a country side by side, it is not correct to
speak of one type as changing into the other. Even if present in equal
numbers one of the two contrasted types will have some small advantage
or capacity which the other lacks toward a perfect adjustment to
surroundings. Those possessing these favorable variations will flourish
at the expense of their rivals and their offspring will not only be more
numerous, but will also tend to inherit such variations. In this way one
type gradually breeds the other out. In this sense, and in this sense
only, do races change.
Man continuously undergoes selection through the operation of the forces
of social environment. Among native Americans of the Colonial period a
large family was an asset and social pressure and economic advantage
counselled both early marriage and numerous children. Two hundred years
of continuous political expansion and material prosperity changed these
conditions and children, instead of being an asset to till the fields
and guard the cattle, became an expensive liability. They now require
support, education and endowment from their parents and a large family
is regarded by some as a serious handicap in the social struggle.
These conditions do not obtain at first among immigrants, and large
families among the newly arrived population are still the rule,
precisely as they were in Colonial America and are to-day in French
Canada where backwoods conditions still prevail.
The result is that one class or type in a population expands more
rapidly than another and ultimately replaces it. This process of
replacement of one type by another does not mean that the race changes
or is transformed into another. It is a replacement pure and simple and
not a transformation.
The lowering of the birth rate among the most valuable classes, while
the birth rate of the lower classes remains unaffected, is a frequent
phenomenon of prosperity. Such a change becomes extremely injurious to
the race if unchecked, unless nature is allowed to maintain by her own
cruel devices the relative numbers of the different classes in their due
proportions. To attack race suicide by encouraging indiscriminate
reproduction is not only futile but is dangerous if it leads to an
increase in the undesirable elements. What is needed in the community
most of all is an increase in the desirable classes, which are of
superior type physically, intellectually and morally and not merely an
increase in the absolute numbers of the population.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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