nce 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 unreasonable,
against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It rests on some
confusion between the race and the individual, as 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 the earlier marriage of members of the
superior race, through their greater vitality under equal stress,
through their better chances of getting a livelihood, or through
their prepotency in mixed marriages. That the members of an inferior
class should dislike being elbowed out of the way is another matter;
but it may be somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals
struggle for a single place, one must yield, and that there will be
no more unhappiness on the whole, if the inferior yield to the
superior than conversely, whereas the world will be permanently
enriched by the success of the superior. The conditions of happiness
are, however, too complex to be disposed of by _a priori_ argument;
it is safest to appeal to observation. I think it could be easily
shown that when the differences between the races is not so great as
to divide them into obviously different classes, and where their
language, education, and general interests are the same, the
substitution may take place gradually without any unhappiness. Thus
the movements of commerce have introduced fresh and vigorous blood
into various parts of England: the new-comers have intermarried with
the residents, and their characteristics have been prepotent in the
descendants of the mixed marriages. I have referred in the earlier
part of the book to the changes of type in the English nature that
have occurred during the last few hundred years. These have been
effected so silently that we only know of them by the results.

One of the most misleading of words is that of "aborigines." Its use
dates from the time when the cosmogony was thought to be young and
life to be of very recent appearance. Its usual meaning seems to be
derived from the suppositi