200 Inquiries into Human Faculty
replace that of the old one. Such strains are of no
infrequent occurrence. It is easy to specify families who
are characterised by strong resemblances, and whose
features and character are usually prepotent over those
of their wives or husbands in their joint offspring, and
who are at the same time as prolific as the average of
their class. These strains can be conveniently studied in
the families of exiles, which, for obvious reasons, are easy
to trace in their various branches.
The debt that most countries owe to the race of men
whom they received from one another as immigrants,
whether leaving their native country of their own free will,
or as exiles on political or religious grounds, has been
often pointed out, and may, I think, be accounted for as
follows :—The fact of a man leaving his compatriots, or so
irritating them that they compel him to go, is fair evidence
that either he or they, or both, feel that his character is alien
to theirs. Exiles are also on the whole men of considerable
force of character ; a quiet man would endure and succumb,
he would not have energy to transplant himself or to become
so conspicuous as to be an object of general attack. We
may justly infer from this, that exiles are on the whole men
of exceptional and energetic natures, and it is especially
from such men as these that new strains of race are likely
to proceed.
Influence of Man upon Race.
The influence of man upon the nature of his own race
has already been very large, but it has not been intelligently
directed, and has in many instances done great harm. Its
action has been by invasions and migration of races, by
war and massacre, by wholesale deportation of population,
by emigration, and by many social customs which have a
silent but widespread effect.
There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreason¬
able, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It
rests on some confusion between the race and the individual,
äs if the destruction of a race was equivalent to the destruction
of a large number of men. It is nothing of the kind when
the process of extinction works silently and slowly, through