Expansion of races / by Charles Edward Woodruff.

  • Woodruff, Charles E. (Charles Edward), 1860-1915.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Expansion of races / by Charles Edward Woodruff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    there are constant deviations in obedience to new forces, such as the steam engine, which make new paths of least resistance. MOVEMENTS IN CONFINED FLUIDS AND POPULATIONS Confined fluids which do not move as a whole, are still in inter¬ nal motion, and there is a restless ‘'convection” by which internal currents cause a ceaseless mixing of particles. In the same way there are minor currents in each nation at peace, or from nation to nation, causing a ceaseless movement of mixing, so that the inhabitants of a district are constantly changing. The longer a confined fluid is kept at rest, the less become the currents of convection, and the longer a people is at peace the quieter it becomes, and the more steadfast is the population of any one district. Our own spreading currents were compara¬ tively feeble and sluggish until stirred up by the Mexican War and the discovery of gold in the West, when they became tre¬ mendous. Currents which overflow political boundary lines are now just as constant as ever, but they are more evidently over¬ flows. It seems as though the effect of modern governments is to build high walls along the borders to confine the fluid so that it is deeper, like a mill pond. Thus, population may be dense in one place and thin in another, but no marked mixing occurs as of old, until the fluid rises above the retaining walls and the surplus flows over. If the counter pressure on the other side should diminish, the wall might break and the fluid pour out, like the recent German flood into Alsace-Lorraine. In that case the nations build new retaining walls around the flooded territory. A homogenous population, if allowed to rest, settles itself into layers like liquids of different densities, and this phenomenon is due to the normal variations in brain power. There is an upper, middle and lower class in every nation, except possibly among the lowest savages. We have our submerged tenth, and our best people, just as they have in England; and likewise in both countries, there are constant currents carrying men from one class into another. After a few generations in an upper or a lower class, the descendants are apt to die out or seek the great
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