the natural tendency to union has its way, and there is formed by intermarriage a third race in which the component elements are undistinguishably blent and lost. Is this third race a new race? If one of the elements is greatly larger than the other, the resultant progeny will be only the more numerous race slightly altered. But even if the elements are numerically equal, the resultant product may not be an evidently new race, unlike either progenitor. There is a distinction to be drawn between the physical and the intellectual characteristics of the issue. The resultant race, being drawn in equal proportions from each blood, may as respects physical structure and aspect stand midway between the two sources whence it springs; as the average mulatto presents in colour, hair and feature some of the characteristics of each parent. But its mental type (including under that term notions and modes of thinking) may be, and often is, nearer to the type of the more advanced than it is to that of the more backward race. This may possibly be partly due to the fact that it is usually to the higher race that the male parent belongs[1]. More white men have married coloured or Indian women than vice versa. But it is also ascribable to the fact that the higher race has more to give, and that the lower race wishes to receive. The ideas and habits of the white man tell upon and permeate the offspring of mixed marriages with all the greater force because that offspring seeks to resemble its higher rather than its inferior progenitor. I must not, however, attempt to
- ↑ Whether the character of the male parent tends in such cases to prevail does not appear to have been definitely ascertained.
