ls; but individual divergence from the normal or average
appears always to be of a sporadic sort,--it does not run on class
lines, whether of occupation, status or property, nor does it run at all
consistently from parent to child. When all is told the argument returns
to the safe ground that these variations in point of patriotic animus
are sporadic and inconsequential, and do not touch the general
proposition that, one with another, the inhabitants of Europe and the
European Colonies are sufficiently patriotic, and that the average
endowment in this respect runs with consistent uniformity across all
differences of time, place and circumstance. It would, in fact, be
extremely hazardous to affirm that there is a sensible difference in the
ordinary pitch of patriotic sentiment as between any two widely diverse
samples of these hybrid populations, in spite of the fact that the
diversity in visible physical traits may be quite pronounced.

In short, the conclusion seems safe, on the whole, that in this respect
the several racial stocks that have gone to produce the existing
populations of Christendom have all been endowed about as richly one as
another. Patriotism appears to be a ubiquitous trait, at least among the
races and peoples of Christendom. From which it should follow, that
since there is, and has from the beginning been, no differential
advantage favoring one racial stock or one fashion of hybrid as against
another, in this matter of patriotic animus, there should also be no
ground of selective survival or selective elimination on this account as
between these several races and peoples. So that the undisturbed and
undiminished prevalence of this trait among the European population,
early or late, argues nothing as to its net serviceability or
disserviceability under any of the varying conditions of culture and
technology to which these Europeans have been subjected, first and last;
except that it has, in any case, not proved so disserviceable under the
conditions prevailing hitherto as to result in the extinction of these
Europeans, one with another.[4]

[Footnote 4: For a more extended discussion of this matter, cf.
_Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution_, ch. i. and
Supplementary Notes i. and ii.]

The patriotic frame of mind has been spoken of above as if it were an
hereditary trait, something after the fashion of a Mendelian unit
character. Doubtless this is not a competent account of the matter; b