it exceedingly difficult to classify existing human varieties. On the
other hand we see throughout nature how a pronounced disparity between
varieties of the same species engenders an aversion from one another of
the different varieties which seems to arise, in men and animals alike,
through the instinct of sexual jealousy which is probably bound up with
the primary instinct of self-preservation. Those people who profess
belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race naturally look
upon the tendency towards race-blending as a perverse proclivity, while
those who think that all men are potentially equal regard it as a
wholesome instinct provided by nature to counteract the feebleness and
infertility which cause the dying-out of the race that becomes too
pure.

Racial antipathy seems to depend in the degree of its strength upon the
degree of physical disparity between given races. In the so-called Latin
races of to-day, prejudice against black people is certainly weaker than
in the blond races of Northern Europe. Is this aversion a matter of
absolute instinct or is it an acquired social characteristic and as such
liable to change? I think the answer must be that this racial repugnance
is not naturally inherent in children, nor in women towards the men of a
different kind, nor in men towards the women of another race, but that
it arises naturally and spontaneously and, in this sense, instinctively,
through the feeling of jealousy which is caused, in both men and women,
by fear of losing their natural mates to rivals of both sexes from
another and disparate race.

White children who grow up together with Native children certainly have
no instinctive feeling against their black playfellows; they have to be
taught to look down upon and keep away from the companions of their
childhood, a fact which no candid observer will deny. It is also a