This astonishing progress is not due alone to the North Mediterranean branch of the Eurafrican race. The representatives of the South Mediterranean branch are for a large part in it. In the forefront of it, whether in the great capitals of Europe or in the pioneer towns of the frontiers, we find the acute and versatile Semite, full of energy and knowledge, guiding in councils, his master hand on the levers of the vastest financial schemes, his subtle policy governing the diplomacy of statesmen and the decisions of directors. As Prof. Gerland has well said, there is something in the Semitic character which is complementary to that of the Aryan,[208] and it is not without significance that the surprising development of the latter began when the religious prejudices against the Jews commenced to yield to more enlightened sentiments. They are now the growing people. Statistics show that in Europe, while the Aryac population doubles in number in thirty-four years, the Semites double in twenty-five years, having more children to a marriage and less infantile mortality.[209] When bigotry ceases on both sides, and free inter-marriage restores the Aryo-Semitic stock to its original unity, we may look for a race of nobler capacities than any now existing.

Still more rapid would that progress be, still more beneficent would be the sway of European civilization, could the great powers of that continent lay aside unworthy jealousies, and agree to extend in harmony the blessings of just government and sound education over other races. An unreasoning distrust has prevented the removal of the barbaric Sibiric power which centers at Constantinople; and the excellent results of the extension of the Slavonian supremacy in Central Asia have been studiously ignored by British writers.

Reflections such as these teach us how closely the study of ethnographic science is related to practical politics. Ethnography, indeed, is the necessary basis of correct history and sound statesmanship. It offers to history a foundation on natural law; it explains events by showing their dependence on the physical structure, the mental pecularities, and the geographic surroundings of the peoples engaged in them; it presents, in its present pictures of savage life, the condition of the highest nations in the earlier stages of their culture.

To the statesman it offers those facts about the capacities and limitations of peoples which should guide his dealings with them; it comes with no vague theory of optimism or pessimism, such as doctrinaire philosophers love to air, but with the admonition that each people, each race, must be studied by itself, free from bias, free from bigotry, and with the conviction that no matter what metaphysics say, any nation, as any man, may lift itself by the recognition of those indefeasible and universal elements of the mind, the “I,” the “ought,” and the “can”—the reverence of self, the respect for duty, and the devotion to freedom.

“Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.”

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS.