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attitudes of peasant peoples in all parts of the world, although the
external differences are often great. In the Black Forest, in Baden,
Germany, almost every valley shows a different style of costume, a
different type of architecture, although in each separate valley every
house is like every other and the costume, as well as the religion, is
for every member of each separate community absolutely after the same
pattern. On the other hand, a German, Russian, or Negro peasant of the
southern states, different as each is in some respects, are all very
much alike in certain habitual attitudes and sentiments.

What, then, is the role of homogeneity and like-mindedness, such as we
find them to be, in cosmopolitan states? So far as it makes each
individual look like every other--no matter how different under the
skin--homogeneity mobilizes the individual man. It removes the social
taboo, permits the individual to move into strange groups, and thus
facilitates new and adventurous contacts. In obliterating the external
signs, which in secondary groups seem to be the sole basis of caste and
class distinctions, it realizes, for the individual, the principle of
_laissez faire_, _laissez aller_. Its ultimate economic effect is to
substitute personal for racial competition, and to give free play to
forces that tend to relegate every individual, irrespective of race or
status, to the position he or she is best fitted to fill.

As a matter of fact, the ease and rapidity with which aliens, under
existing conditions in the United States, have been able to assimilate
themselves to the customs and manners of American life have enabled this
country to swallow and digest every sort of normal human difference,
except the purely external ones, like the color of the skin.

It is probably true, also, that like-mindedness of the kind that
expresses itself in national types contributes indirectly by
facilitating the intermingling of the different elements of the
population to the national solidarity. This is due to the fact that the
solidarity of modern states depends less on the homogeneity of
population than, as James Bryce has suggested, upon the thoroughgoing
mixture of heterogeneous elements. Like-mindedness, so far as that term
signifies a standard grade of intelligence, contributes little or
nothing to national solidarity. Likeness is, after all, a purely formal
concept which of itself cannot hold anything together.

In the last ana