n which his experiments,
observations, and writings are preserved to see how he viewed the world
which his countrymen were opening up beneath his eyes. In a short paper,
drafted some time before his death, he gives the most minute directions
to guide navigators in drawing up reports of newly discovered lands. His
directions relate to every conceivable property or aspect of a new
country--its geography, mineral wealth, natural products, climate--all
but its inhabitants. Like many Englishmen of his time, Boyle conceived
that his duty by native peoples began and ended when he had seen that
they were supplied with copies of the Bible. For him, and for most of
his contemporaries, there seem to have been no racial problems; for they
did not regard the meeting and mingling of diverse races or of peoples
of different nationalities as matters which deserved investigation and
explanation. Boyle witnessed the acutest phases of the 'plantation' of
Ireland, but the inquiries he set on foot regarding that country were:
'How it cometh to pass that there are not frogs, toads, snakes, moles,
nightingales, rarely magpies' within its borders; he inquired, too,
concerning the true nature of 'diverse things which the Irish foolishly
report of St. Patrick'--especially concerning the 'birds turned into
stones for chirping when St. Patrick was preaching'. There were, of
course, racial and national problems in Boyle's time, but they had not
then presented themselves before the tribunal of the public mind as
matters demanding investigation and treatment.

RACE AND NATIONALITY IN RECENT YEARS

We need not blame the statesmen and writers of Boyle's time for failing
to recognize the inward significance of national and racial
manifestations any more than we condemn his contemporary physicians for
failing to separate from the mass of disease such conditions as are
known to modern medical men as appendicitis and typhoid fever. Typhoid
fever and appendicitis existed in Boyle's time just as did national
disturbances and racial antipathies, but their nature and significance
passed undiagnosed. It was not until England had laid siege, by means
of armies of colonists, to lands inhabited by native races, or had come
to guide the destinies of great tropical empires by handfuls of civil
servants, that she realized that racial contact gives rise to live and
burning antagonisms. Nor are national problems new to England; they have
always dogged the footsteps