4. It is becoming clear that every race is a composite of several races. Ethnological data show that the five grand divisions of the human race may be subdivided into racial stocks, and into races and sub-races, until more than 600 races may be described; and furthermore, that each of the 600 or more races represents an amalgamation of at least three or four races. It is evident that no clear line of racial demarcation can be drawn, and that purity of race may be a fictitious term.
5. Intermarriage of the representatives of races belonging to similar racial stocks seems advisable—according to the ethnologist. Pure bloods apparently die out. The strongest races today are those in which amalgamation has taken place recently—that is, within one thousand or two thousand years, for example, the English, or the Scotch-Irish.
A mooted question of world importance relates to the intermarriage of the representatives of races widely different, such as the white and the yellow races, or the white and the black races. No race has yet developed out of such combinations. Race prejudices and social distinctions have produced conflicts which thus far have prevented the formation of such a race. Very few scientific data are available regarding miscegenation.
Apparently, the interbreeding of whites and blacks leads ultimately to the elimination of the racial characteristics of the blacks and to the complete dominance of the whites. There are some writers who assert that this process takes place to the gain of the lower race and to the loss of the higher race. The last-mentioned point has not yet been proved. Miscegenation between whites and blacks occurs under such abnormal and vicious social conditions that the racial tendencies are definitely obscured.
6. Conflict between races is primordial; conflict between races today is illustrated in national wars and race persecutions. Weaker races have often combined against a stronger race; from these experiences there has come a growing sense of the value of co-operation. Nations with high moral principles have united against a powerful neighbor nation with bullying tendencies. Out of these temporary combinations there has arisen a sense of need for permanent forms of national co-operation. This common need will ultimately lead, undoubtedly, to a permanent association of nations.
The conflict between the grand divisions of the human race will probably continue for a long time to come. Sometimes it is concentrated in an antagonism between the white and yellow races; and again, it is expressed in the more fundamental struggle between Occidentalism and Orientalism.
7. The origin and development of primitive ways of doing constitute a well-cultivated field of study. Anthropologists have published an endless amount of materials on the origin of languages, religions, occupations, sex distinctions. A portion of this work has been done without an accurate understanding of the psychological principles that are involved, and hence has to be viewed with caution or neglected entirely.
W. G. Sumner, whose argument in favor of individualism and of a laissez faire governmental policy was given in [Chapter XI], published in his Folkways a minute and extended account of the nature of primitive institutions.
In the development of his theories, Sumner began with the needs of primitive peoples and with the attempts to meet these needs. Repetition of these acts leads to established ways of doing, that is, to folkways. Folkways are “the widest, most fundamental, and most important operation by which the interests of men in groups are served.”[XVIII-2] Societal life consists chiefly in making folkways and applying them. Even the science of society might be defined as the study of folkways. Folkways are the product of the trial and failure method of meeting needs. They tend to become firmly established and to be passed on from generation to generation. They become traditional. They acquire all the authority which is attached to the memory of respected ancestors. Even the ghosts of ancestors stalk the earth keeping guard over the folkways. The folkways carry with them the conviction that they are essential to human welfare. It is this conviction which gives them the force of mores. Thus the folkways are not purposeful methods of securing progress but unconscious ways of meeting current exigencies; they are blindly and rigorously forced upon successive generations.
8. Races are guilty of ethnocentrism.[XVIII-3] Each race considers itself the center of mankind. It judges all other races by its own standards, and not by a higher standard that is determined by data that are representative of the best interests of all races. Ethocentrism compels each race to exaggerate the importance of its own folkways and to depreciate the folkways of other races. For example, the Romans and Greeks called all outsiders “barbarians.” The Jews considered themselves “the chosen people,” and the Romans and Greeks as “pagans.”