roduct of the
controversy in regard to the relative superiority and inferiority of
races. This controversy owes its existence, in the present century, to
the publication in 1854 of Gobineau's _The Inequality of Human Races_.
This treatise appeared at a time when the dominant peoples of Europe
were engaged in extending their benevolent protection over all the
"unprotected" lesser breeds, and this book offered a justification, on
biological grounds, of the domination of the "inferior" by the
"superior" races.

Gobineau's theory, and that of the schools which have perpetuated and
elaborated his doctrines, defined culture as an essentially racial
trait. Other races might accommodate themselves to, but could not
originate nor maintain a superior culture. This is the aristocratic
theory of the inequalities of races and, as might be expected, was
received with enthusiasm by the chauvinists of the "strong" nations.

The opposing school is disposed to treat the existing civilizations as
largely the result of historical accident. The superior peoples are
those who have had access to the accumulated cultural materials of the
peoples that preceded them. Modern Europe owes its civilization to the
fact that it went to school to the ancients. The inferior peoples are
those who did not have this advantage.

Ratzel was one of the first to venture the theory that the natural and
the cultural peoples were fundamentally alike and that the existing
differences, great as they are, were due to geographical and cultural
isolation of the less advanced races. Boas' _Mind of Primitive Man_ is
the most systematic and critical statement of that view of the matter.

The discussion which these rival theories provoked has led students to
closer studies of the effects of racial contacts and to a more
penetrating analysis of the cultural process.

The contacts of races have invariably led to racial intermixture, and
the mixed breed, as in the case of the mulatto, the result of the
white-Negro cross, has tended to create a distinct cultural as well as a
racial type. E. B. Reuter's volume on _The Mulatto_ is the first serious
attempt to study the mixed blood as a cultural type and define his role
in the conflict of races and cultures.

Historical cases of the assimilation of one group by another are
frequent. Kaindl's investigations of the German settlements in the
Carpathian lands are particularly instructive. The story of the manner
in which the