It is suggested that the supreme power of Greece and Rome, each in its own direction, was due to the attainment of a fortunate balance between the social and political functions of the constituents of the nation, the directing power being supplied chiefly by the invaders of northern race, who formed the dominant class among the southern indigenous Mediterranean population. In each case, the northern elements grew gradually less, through such agencies as losses in war, the selective action of a differential birth rate, and by racial merging into the more numerous southern stock.
The outburst of artistic genius and intellectual pre-eminence which marked the Renaissance in North Italy may perhaps be due to a similar racial composition, the northern elements being supplied by the descendants of the barbarian invaders of the later Roman Empire.
Great Britain has also similar racial elements. The Mediterranean race, spreading up the shores of the Atlantic, enters largely into the composition of the people of the south-west. The northern element, immigrant from the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, is strongest in the east and north.
We know that there are now at work two influences affecting the average racial character of the English nation; (1) the increase in the urban population at the expense of the rural, (2) the voluntary restriction of the birth rate which affects certain sections of all classes more than others. It is probable that both these changes tend to favour selectively the southern racial elements at the expense of the northern. Eventually, the present structure of society may become unstable in consequence of this racial alteration, and the necessary readjustment, in its turn, will contribute a chapter to history.
[SOME INTER-RELATIONS BETWEEN EUGENICS AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH.]
(Abstract.)
By Frederick Adams Woods, M.D.,
Harvard Medical School.
The relative influence of heredity and environment has long been a subject for debate, but, for the most part, such debates have not been profitable. It is true that heredity cannot be separated from environment if only one individual be considered; but as soon as we inquire into the causes of the differences between man and man, it is perfectly possible to gain real light on this subject, so important to the advocates of eugenics. Everything must be made a problem of differences. The mathematical measurements of resemblances between relatives close of kin will sometimes serve. At other times, the correlation co-efficient is of no avail, and only an intensive study of detailed pedigrees will bring out such differences as cannot be due to the action of surroundings.