13 MADISON GRANT “The Mixture of Two Races” (1917) There exists day a widespread and fatuous belief in the power of environment, as well as of education and opportunity to alter heredity, which arises from the dogma of the brotherhood of man, derived in carn from the loose thinkers of the French Revolution and their American mimics, Such beliefs have done much damage in the past, and if allowed to go uncontradicted, may do much more serious damage in the future, Thus the view that the negro slave was an unfortunate cousin of the ply tanned by the tropic sun, and denied the blessings of Christianity and civilization, played no small part with the sentimental- ists of the Civil War period, and it has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing gooel clothes, and going to school and to chureh, docs not transform a negro into a white man. Nor was a Syrian or Egyptian freedman transformed into a Roman by wearing a toga, and applauding his favorite gladiator in the amphitheatre. We shall have a similar experience with the Polish Jew, whose dwarf stature, peculiar mentality, and ruthless concentration on self-interest are being engrafted upon the stock of the nation. Recent attempts have been made in the interest of inferior races among our immigrants to show that the shape of the skull docs change, not merely in a century, but in a single generation. In 1910, the report of the anthropological expert of the Congressional Immi- gration Commission, gravely declared that a round skull Jew on his way across the Adantic might and did have a round skull child, but that a few years later, in response to the subtle elixir of American institutions, as exemplified in an East Side tenement, might and did have a child whose skull was appreciably longer; and that a long skull south Italian, breeding freely, would have precisely the same experience in the reverse direction. In other words, the Melting Pot was acting instantly under the influence of a changed environme: What the Melting Pot actually does in practice, can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish canquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican, and which is now engaged in demonsirating its incapacity for self-government. The world has seen many such mixtures of races, and the character of a mongrel race is only just beginning to be unde stood at its true value, lt must be barne in mind that the specializations which charact the higher races are of relatively recent develop are highly unstable and when mixed with gencralized or primitive characters, tend to disappear. Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mixture white man, dee eeARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR of two races, the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a negro is a negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew. In the crossing of the blond and brunct clements of a population, the more deeply rooved and ancient dark traits are prepotent or dominant. This is a matter of everyday observation, and the working of this law of nature is not influenced or affected by democratic instirutions or by religious beliefs As measured in terms of centuries, unii characters are immutable, anc. the only benefit to be derived from a changed environment and better food conditions, is the opportunity afforded a race which has lived under adverse conditions, to achieve its maximum development, but the limits af that development are fixed for it by heredity and not by environment.