The Passing of the
Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part I - Race, Language, And Nationality
Chapter
III
Race and Habitat
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THE laws which govern the
distribution of the various races of man and their evolution through
selection are substantially the same as those controlling the evolution and
distribution of the larger mammals. Man, however, with his superior mentality,
has freed himself from many of the elements which impose restraint upon the
expansion of animals. In his case selection through disease and social and
economic competition has replaced selection through adjustment to the
limitations of food supply. Man is the most cosmopolitan of animals,
and in one form or another thrives in the tropics and in the arctics, at sea
level and on high plateaux, in the desert and in the reeking forests of the
equator. Nevertheless, the various races of Europe with which we deal in this
book have, each of them, a certain natural habitat in which each achieves its
highest development. THE NORDIC HABITAT The Nordics appear in their present centre
of distribution, the basin of the Baltic, at the close of the Paleolithic, as soon as the
retreating glaciers left habitable land. This race was probably at that time
in possession of its fundamental characters, and its extension in the
Teutonic group from the plains of Russia to Scandinavia was not in the nature
of a radical change of environment. The race in consequence is now and always
has been, probably always will be, adjusted to certain environmental conditions,
chief of which is protection from a tropical sun. The actinic rays of the sun
at the same latitude are uniform in strength the world over, and continuous
sunlight affects adversely the delicate nervous organization of the Nordics.
The fogs and long winter nights of the North serve as a protection from too
much sun, and from its too direct rays. Scarcely less important is the presence of
a large amount of moisture, but above all a constant variety of temperature
is needed. Sharp contrast between night and day temperature, and between
summer and winter are necessary to maintain the vigor of the blond race at a
high pitch. Uniform weather, if long continued, lessens its energy. Too great
extremes, as in midwinter or midsummer in New England, are injurious. Limited
but constant alternations of heat and cold, of moisture and dryness, of sun
and clouds, of calm and cyclonic storms, offer the ideal surroundings for the
Nordic race. Men of the Nordic race may not enjoy the
fogs and snows of the North, the endless changes of weather, and the violent
fluctuations of the thermometer, and they may seek the sunny southern isles,
but under the former conditions they flourish, do their work, and raise their
families. In the south they grow listless and cease to breed. In the lower classes the increasing
proportion of poor whites and "crackers" are symptoms of lack of
climatic adjustment. The whites in Georgia, the Bahamas, and above all the
Barbadoes are excellent examples of the deleterious effects of residence
outside the natural habitat of the Nordic race. The poor whites of the Cumberland Mountains
in Kentucky and Tennessee present a more difficult problem, because here the
altitude, even though small, should modify the effects of latitude, and the
climate of these mountains cannot be particularly unfavorable to men of
Nordic breed. There are probably other hereditary forces at work here as yet
little understood. No doubt bad food and economic conditions,
prolonged inbreeding, and the loss through emigration of the best elements
have played a large part in the degeneration of these poor whites. They
represent to a large extent the offspring of bond servants brought over by
the rich planters in early Colonial times. Their names indicate that, many of
them are the descendants of the old borderers along the Scotch and English
frontier, and the persistence with which family feuds are maintained
certainly points to such an origin. The physical type is typically Nordic,
for the most part pure Saxon or Anglian, and the whole mountain population
show somewhat aberrant but very pronounced physical, moral, and mental
characteristics which would repay scientific investigation. The problem is
too complex to be disposed of by reference to the hookworm, illiteracy, or
competition with negroes. This type played a very large part in the
settlement of the Middle West, by way of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.
Thence they passed both up the Missouri River and down the Santa Fe trail,
and contributed rather more than their share of the train robbers horse
thieves, and bad men of the West. Scotland and the Bahamas are inhabited by
men of precisely the same race, but the vigor of the English in the Bahamas
is gone, and the beauty of their women has faded. The fact that they were not
in competition with an autochthonous race better adjusted to climatic
conditions has enabled them to survive, but the type could not have
persisted, even during the last two hundred years, if they had been compelled
to compete on terms of equality with a native and acclimated population. Another element entering into racial
degeneration on many other islands, and for that matter in many New England
villages, is the loss through emigration of the more vigorous and energetic
individuals, leaving behind the less efficient to continue the race at home. In subtropical countries, when the energy
of the Nordics is at a low ebb, it would appear that the racial inheritance
of physical strength and mental vigor were suppressed and recessive rather
than destroyed. Many individuals who were born in unfavorable climatic
surroundings, but who move back to the original habitat of their race in the
north, recover their full quota of energy and vigor. New York and other
Northern cities have many Southerners who are fully as efficient as pure
Northerners. This blond race can exist outside of its
native environment as land owning aristocrats who are not required to do
manual labor in the fields under a blazing sun. As such an aristocracy it
continues to exist under Italian skies, but as a field laborer the man of
Nordic blood could not compete with his Alpine or Mediterranean rival. It is
not to be supposed that the Teutonic armies which for a thousand years after
the fall of Rome poured down from the Alps like the glaciers to melt in the
southern sun, were composed solely of knights and gentlemen who became the
landed nobility of Italy. The man in the ranks also took up his land and work
in Italy, but he had to compete directly with the native under climatic
conditions which were unfavorable to his race. In this competition the blue
eyed Nordic giant died, and the native survived. His officer, however, lived
in the castle and directed the labor of his bondsmen without other
preoccupation than the chase and war, and he long maintained his vigor. The same thing happened in our South before
the Civil War. There the white men did not work in the fields or in the
factory. The heavy work under the blazing sun was performed by negro slaves,
and the planter was spared exposure to an unfavorable environment. Under
these conditions he was able to retain much of his vigor. When slavery was
abolished, and the white man had to plough his own fields or work in the
factory, deterioration began. The change in the type of men who are now
sent by the Southern States to represent them in the Federal Government from
their predecessors in ante-bellum times is partly due to these causes, but in
a greater degree it is to be attributed to the fact that a very large portion
of the best racial strains in the South were killed off during the Civil War.
In addition the war shattered the aristocratic traditions which formerly
secured the selection of the best men as rulers. The new democratic ideals
with universal suffrage in free operation among the whites result in the
choice of representatives who lack the distinction and ability of the leaders
of the Old South. A race may be thoroughly adjusted to a
certain country at one stage of its development and be at a disadvantage when
an economic change occurs, such as was experienced in England a century ago
when the nation changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing community.
The type of man that flourishes in the fields is not the type of man that
thrives in the factory, just as the type of man required for the crew of a
sailing ship is not the type useful as stokers on a modern steamer. THE HABITAT OF THE ALPINES AND
MEDITERRANEANS The environment of the Alpine race seems to
have always been the mountainous country of central and eastern Europe, as
well as western Asia. This type has never flourished in the deserts of Arabia
or the Sahara, nor has it succeeded in maintaining its colonies in the north
of Europe within the domain of the Nordic long heads. It is, however, a
sturdy and persistent stock, and, while much of it may not be overrefined or
cultured, undoubtedly possesses great potentialities for future development. The Alpines in the west of Europe,
especially in Switzerland and the districts immediately surrounding, have
been so thoroughly Nordicized, and so saturated with the culture of the
adjoining nations, that they stand in sharp contrast to backward Alpines of
Slavic speech in the Balkans and east of Europe. The Mediterranean race, on the other hand,
is clearly a southern type with eastern affinities. It is a type that did not
flourish in the north of Europe under old agricultural conditions, nor is it
suitable to the farming districts and frontiers of America and Canada. It is
adjusted to subtropical and tropical countries better than any other European
type, and will flourish in our Southern States and around the coasts of the
Spanish Main. In France it is well known that members of the Mediterranean
race are better adapted for colonization in Algeria than are French Alpines or
Nordics. This subspecies of man is notoriously intolerant of extreme cold,
owing to its sensibility to diseases of the lungs, and it shrinks from the
blasts of the northern winter in which the Nordics revel. The brunet Mediterranean element in the
native American seems to be increasing at the expense of the blond Nordic
element generally throughout the Southern States, and probably also in the
large cities. This type of man, however, is scarce on our frontiers. In the
Northwest, and in Alaska in the days of the gold rush, it was in the mining
camps a matter of comment if a man turned up with dark eyes, so universal
were blue and gray eyes among the American pioneers. |
Continue on to Chapter 4 -
The Competition of Races