Indeed, a certain paradox is to be noted here.  The Negro, one would naturally say, is in general more emotional than the white man.  Yet some experiments conducted by Miss Kellor of Chicago on negresses and white women, by means of the test of the effects of emotion on respiration, brought out the former as decidedly the more stolid of the two.  And, whatever be thought of the value of such methods of proof, certain it is that the observers of rude races incline to put down most of them as apathetic, when not tuned up to concert-pitch by a dance or other social event.  It may well be, then, that it is not the hereditary temperament of the Negro, so much as the habit, which he shares with other peoples at the same level of culture, of living and acting in a crowd, that accounts for his apparent excitability.  But after all, “mafficking” is not unknown in civilized countries.  Thus the quest for a race-mark of a mental kind is barren once more.

* * * * *

What, then, you exclaim, is the outcome of this chapter of negatives?  Is it driving at the universal equality and brotherhood of man?  Or, on the contrary, does it hint at the need of a stern system of eugenics?  I offer nothing in the way of a practical suggestion.  I am merely trying to show that, considered anthropologically—­that is to say, in terms of pure theory—­race or breed remains something which we cannot at present isolate, though we believe it to be there.  Practice, meanwhile, must wait on theory; mere prejudices, bad as they are, are hardly worse guides to action than premature exploitations of science.

As regards the universal brotherhood of man, the most that can be said is this:  The old ideas about race as something hard and fast for all time are distinctly on the decline.  Plasticity, or, in other words, the power of adaptation to environment, has to be admitted to a greater share in the moulding of mind, and even of body, than ever before.  But how plasticity is related to race we do not yet know.  It may be that use-inheritance somehow incorporates its effects in the offspring of the plastic parents.  Or it may be simply that plasticity increases with inter-breeding on a wider basis.  These problems have still to be solved.

As regards eugenics, there is no doubt that a vast and persistent elimination of lives goes on even in civilized countries.  It has been calculated that, of every hundred English born alive, fifty do not survive to breed, and, of the remainder, half produce three-quarters of the next generation.  But is the elimination selective?  We can hardly doubt that it is to some extent.  But what its results are—­whether it mainly favours immunity from certain diseases, or the capacity for a sedentary life in a town atmosphere, or intelligence and capacity for social service—­is largely matter of guesswork.  How, then, can we say what is the type to breed from, even if we confine our attention