There is, indeed, one, though it appears to us only one, scientific fact which in any way lends support to the theory of inherited anti-sociality on the part of the Half-caste.
It has been ascertained by those who have profoundly studied the matter, that where two varieties of the same domestic animal—such, for example, as the totally distinct varieties of the pigeon—which have for generations bred perfectly true, are crossed, that in certain cases the progeny resulting from this cross resembles not so much either of its parent forms, but reverts in colour, shape, and other characteristics, to that original parent stock from which both varieties have descended. Thus, in the case of pigeons: if a white fantail, which breeds quite true, be crossed with a black barb, a variety which also breeds very true, the offspring being always black, yet the mongrels resulting from this cross may be black, brown, or mottled; but they may also resemble neither father nor mother in any way; they may have the brilliant blue colour, the black wing bar, the barred and white-edged tail feathers of the wild rock pigeon, from which original all the different domestic varieties of pigeon descended. Why this crossing of different varieties which each breed perfectly true should produce these unstable creatures with a tending to revert to the primitive original type of the race, is not known; that it does so, is certain.
If, now, we apply the same law of inheritance to human creatures, and suppose that two wholly distinct human varieties cross, and take, for example, the Zulu and the Englishman—both of which varieties breed perfectly true, the Englishman always producing a white European and the Zulu a black Bantu; both races being characterized by the strongest social feeling, and both being remarkable for their bravery; if we leave this law of reversion out of consideration, the natural supposition would then be, that the offspring of such a cross, while in colour and other matters they represented a compromise between the two parent forms, would, as far as social feeling and courage are concerned, which are common to both parent varieties, be at least as well endowed in these qualities as either parent variety. But it might not be so. If this law of reversion holds with human creatures (and we have no reason to assert that it cannot do so); and supposing that the original type from which in the remote past both Zulu and Englishman have descended was of a lower order as regards social feeling and courage, than that to which both Englishman and Zulu have attained to in the process of ages of development, then their offspring might revert to that lower type; and the vulgar dictum, that the Half-caste is more anti-social than either his parent forms would in this case be naturally and scientifically true.[32]
If it be objected that the crossing of races among Europeans causes no retrogression; that the two most mixed races in Europe, the English and the French, show no more tendency to revert to a lower social type than the less mixed nations, such as the Scandinavian; and that further, when at the present day a cross is made between two European branches, such as the Italians and English, or the French and the German, the offspring are of unusual virility and power, intellectually, morally, and physically; that further, those individuals on whom depends the progress of the race, and who constitute its efflorescence—its men of genius—have in European countries, in a large proportion of cases, been of crossed European descent[33]; and, finally, that we in South Africa have continually practical evidence of the energizing effect of European crosses in the remarkable vitality and intelligence of children who result from Dutch and English intermarriages[34]:—we would reply that this in no way bears on the question.
The inhabitants of Europe, from the scientific standpoint, form merely one variety, or rather a blend of closely allied varieties, so intermixed that no invariable characteristic divides one from another. Only those who look no deeper than the superficial demarcations of the present, and who are ignorant of the manner in which, in the centuries preceding and following the Christian era, our Aryan forbears peopled Europe, when for twelve hundred years wave after wave of Aryan humanity swept across the land, now from the Danube to Spain, and then from Scandinavia to Italy or Greece; and again at other times back from Italy or Greece over North-East Europe, each disposing, now here and now there, its layer of folk, till the great conglomerate European family was formed—only those who are ignorant of the peopling of our old continent can regard as other than comparatively superficial scorings on a solid surface those national lines which conquest and political institutions, aided in the course of time by language and manners, have drawn across an essentially homogeneous mass. It is no mere coincidence which makes the Italian girl of Lombardy often as fair-haired and fair-skinned as her Swedish sister; the same old Goth may have forefathered both. And the English brunette and her Spanish rival may have an even closer blood link than that which binds them to the folk in their own street; while the so-called Teutonic peoples are so manifestly one physiological folk, though politically and socially severed, that were a German, a Dutchman, and an Englishman to trace back their parentage, they might easily find that a short twelve hundred years ago it centred in the same individuals. On the extreme West of Europe, where the Portuguese may have his trace of African blood, and on the East where the Russian has his strain of the Mongolian, real differences of race do occur; but, taking Europe roughly and as a whole, not only do our existing national divisions not represent fundamental blood divisions, but they run transversely with such variations in blood as do exist. The large blue-eyed Yorkshireman, who mates the small dark-eyed South of England lass, may easily be making a far more decided cross than had he married a large blue-eyed Dutch or Danish cousin from over the water; the South German is notoriously more distinct, in the shape of his skull and other fixed mental and physical characteristics, from the North German than he is from the Swiss and French folk across his own border; and language and political unity as little indicate common racial descent in the past as blood relationship in the present.
Common country and common political institutions resulting as they do in common ideas, common interests and common habits, are the true source of national life; and as such of vast political importance. But they have small and sometimes no connection with the profound physiological questions of race and consanguinity; and from the physiological standpoint are of little count.
It is not only possible that the most pure-blooded descendant of the Romans still existing may be some inhabitant of Treves or Marseilles; but it is more than possible that not one man or woman with the blood of the folk who founded the city on the Seven Hill exists among the herd who creep round the Capitol to-day.
Languages, and the remnants of languages, in civilized or semi-civilized conditions, remain often in places where they arose, when the tribes of men who framed them have passed away; and except among purely barbarous nations, who exterminate all whom they subdue, a common language, or the absence of a common language, forms no criterion of blood relationships. The empty shell of a mollusc may lie on the spot where it lived long after the creature has died, or been eaten out of it; and he is an unwary naturalist who, picking it up, and finding it filled with the creatures who may have taken up their abode in it, imagines there is any necessary organic relation between the shell and its inhabitants. Like the unscientific naturalist, the popular mind is quite satisfied where it finds persons using a common language to suppose racial unity and descent; and, where there is no common language, the opposite; while these things often merely signify conquest or contact.
Thus the nations of Europe are far more homogeneous from the physiological and racial standpoint than our sharply marked differences of language and political institutions would suggest.[35]
When, therefore, a cross takes place between Europeans of different nationalities, if the resulting offspring should revert to the parent stock from which both arose, his reversion will carry him no further back than a few thousand years (which in matters of racial development is but yesterday afternoon!) to those common Aryan ancestors of the race who were probably endowed with as much social feeling and perhaps more courage than their latest descendants. In truth, so homogeneous are the majority of Europeans in blood that a cross between two nationalities is of the same nature as that which takes place when farmers, having flocks of the same breed which they have inbred for several years, seek to increase their virility by crossing them with the flocks of their neighbours. There is no real change of breed; merely that increase of vitality which comes from a change of the same blood.