Whetham.Sociology and Eugenics.241
ruling castes of Persia and North India. This Northern race is tall and
long skulled; and, in its pure condition, blue eyed and fair haired. We
find it in its greatest purity in the Scandinavian peninsulas and around the
Dutch and English shores of the North Sea. We may recognize many of
its characteristics, its vigour, its loyalty, its determination, its perseverance,
its love of adventure in the tales of the Homeric heroes and in the Norse
sagas. It has colonized North America and created the United States
and Canada; it has descended on South Africa, and occupied Australia
and New Zealand with its typical civilization; while the Mediterranean
race has found a second home in the Republics of Central and Southern
America. The ancient and modern history of Europe, if we leave out of account
the extraneous influence of the Semitic peoples, is probably, at bottom,
only the history of the interaction of these three races. The Mediterranean
race has multiplied and pressed northwards, gathering itself into towns
and cities on its way. The Northern race has always looked across the
mountains down into the fertile plains and river valleys of Southern
and Western Europe, tempted by the vineyards and the cornfields, the
plunder of the towns and the adventures by the way. Doubtless, too,
seasons of excessive cold or drought, or pressure on its eastern flank, have
driven it afield without any more intent. At times, blending with men of
the Alpine race, or passing through their mountain ranges and pushing
them up the hillsides, the Northern race has reached the Mediterranean
Sea, as a predatory, renovating, directing and conquering force; destined,
after a time, to melt away and lose its identity amid the aboriginal native
stock, more persistent, more numerous, and more fitted for a southern
environment. Both in ancient Greece and ancient Rome we find distinct traces of the
two races, the part played by the Alpine race being as yet less well
defined. The admixture of religions, the physical characters, the mental
bias, the trend of civilization, all reveal the same story. A conquering race
of Northern origin, tall, fair, and often blue eyed, had descended from
the hills, possessed itself of the land, monopolized the government, inspired
the art and literature, and retained the aboriginal population in a condition
of serfdom and dependence. Man, as the ancient Greek philosopher
observed some five hundred years before the Christian era, makes his
god9 in his own image; or, perhaps, more correctly, in the image
of the fellow-being he admires and fears most greatly. The divine
beings of Greece, as portrayed by their poets and artists, are tall
fair haired, and blue or gray eyed. This alone should assure us of the
then acknowledged supremacy of the Northern race.
It is impossible at this distance of time to reconstruct the sequence
in the numerical and social relations of the two races with sufficient accuÂ
racy to enable us to follow the alterations that must have taken place R
