ion would have called into action. The adults
coming from such a civilization seem to be inferior in their mental
qualities, but their children, placed in the new environments of the
advanced civilization, exhibit at once the qualities of the latter. The
Chinaman comes from a mediaeval civilization--he shows little of those
qualities which are the product of Western civilization, and with his
imitativeness, routine, and traditions, he has earned the reputation of
being entirely non-assimilable. But the children of Chinamen, born and
reared in this country, entirely disprove this charge, for they are as
apt in absorbing the spirit and method of American institutions as any
Caucasian.[134] The race is superior but backward.

The Teutonic races until five hundred years after Christ were primitive
in their civilization, yet they had the mental capacities which made
them, like Arminius, able to comprehend and absorb the highest Roman
civilization. They passed through the mediaeval period and then came out
into the modern period of advanced civilization, yet during these two
thousand years their mental capacities, the original endowment of race,
have scarcely improved. It is civilization, not race evolution, that
has transformed the primitive warrior into the philosopher, scientist,
artisan, and business man. Could their babies have been taken from the
woods two thousand years ago and transported to the homes and schools of
modern America, they could have covered in one generation the progress
of twenty centuries. Other races, like the Scotch and the Irish, made
the transition from primitive institutions to modern industrial habits
within a single century, and Professor Brinton, our most profound
student of the American Indian, has said,[135] "I have been in close
relations to several full-blood American Indians who had been removed
from an aboriginal environment and instructed in this manner [in
American schools and communities], and I could not perceive that they
were either in intellect or sympathies inferior to the usual type of the
American gentleman. One of them notably had a refined sense of humor as
well as uncommon acuteness of observation."

The line between superior and inferior, as distinguished from advanced
and backward, races appears to be the line between the temperate and
tropical zones. The two belts of earth between the tropics of Capricorn
and Cancer and the arctic and antarctic circles have been the areas