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7. One further general inquiry of a different kind may be added. What effect is produced on mental nature by mixture of races? There is reason for believing that throughout the animal kingdom, the union of varieties which have become widely divergent is physically injurious; while the union of slightly divergent varieties is physically beneficial. Does the like hold with the mental nature? Some facts seem to show that mixture of human races extremely unlike, produces a worthless type of mind–a mind fitted neither for the kind of life led by the higher of the two races, nor for that led by the lower–a mind out of adjustment to all conditions of life. Contrariwise, we find that peoples of the same stock, slightly differentiated by lives carried on in unlike circumstances for many generations, produce by mixture a mental type having certain superiorities. In his work on The Huguenots, Mr. Smiles points out how large a number of distinguished men among us have descended from Flemish and French refugees; and M. Alphonse de Candolle, in his Histoire des Sciences et des Savants depuis deux Siecles, shows that the descendants of French refugees in Switzerland have produced an unusually great proportion of scientific men. Though, in part, this result may be ascribed to the original natures of such refugees, who must have had that independence which is a chief factor in originality, yet it is probably in part due to mixtures of races. For thinking this, we have evidence which is not open to two interpretations. Prof. Morley draws attention to the fact that, during seven hundred years of our early history “the best genius of England sprang up on the line of country in which Celts and Anglo-Saxons came together.” In like manner Mr. Galton, in his English Men of Science, shows that in recent days these have mostly come from an inland region, running generally from north to south, which we may reasonably presume contains more mixed blood than do the regions east and west of it. Such a result seems probable a priori. Two natures respectively adapted to slightly unlike sets of social conditions, may be expected by their union to produce a nature somewhat more plastic than either–a nature more impressible by the new circumstances of advancing social life, and therefore more likely to originate new ideas and display modified sentiments. The Comparative Psychology of Man may, then, fitly include the mental effects of mixture; and among derivative inquiries we may ask–How far the conquest of race by race has been instrumental in advancing civilization by aiding mixture, as well as in other ways.

II.–The second of the three leading divisions named at the outset is less extensive. Still, concerning the relative mental natures of the sexes in each race, questions of much interest and importance may be raised.

1. Degree of difference between the sexes.–It is an established fact that, physically considered, the contrast between males and females is not equally great in all types of mankind. The bearded races, for instance, show us a greater unlikeness between the two than do the beardless races. Among South American tribes, men and women have a greater general resemblance in form, etc., than is usual elsewhere. The question, then, suggests itself–Do the mental natures of the sexes differ in a constant or in a variable degree? The difference is unlikely to be a constant one; and, looking for variation, we may ask what is its amount, and under what conditions does it occur?

2. Difference in mass and in complexity.–The comparisons between the sexes, of course, admit of subdivisions parallel to those made in the comparisons between races. Relative mental mass and relative mental complexity have chiefly to be observed. Assuming that the great inequality in the cost of reproduction to the two sexes, is the cause of unlikeness in mental mass, as in physical mass, this difference may be studied in connexion with reproductive differences presented by the various races, in respect of the ages at which reproduction commences, and the periods over which it lasts. An allied inquiry may be joined with this; namely, how far the mental developments of the two sexes are affected by their relative habits in respect to food and physical exertion? In many of the lower races, the women, treated with great brutality, are, physically, much inferior to the men: excess of labour and defect of nutrition being apparently the combined causes. Is any arrest of mental development simultaneously caused?